For many years the existence of GBCSE has been known. Despite good practice that has been developed and implemented and successful operational activity, Baroness Casey’s National Audit published in June 2025 highlighted serious failure across multiple sectors to recognise and respond to GBCSE.
Those failures have resulted in missed opportunities to hold perpetrators to account and have left victims and survivors without the protection and support they should have received.
Delivery of the national police operation, formally tasked as Operation BEACONPORT, will be overseen by the NCA and led by an NCA Director. The overarching aim of the Operation is to restore public trust and confidence in law enforcement’s ability to investigate allegations of child sexual exploitation through the delivery of tailored justice, sustained improvement, and public accountability.
The Operation will be resourced by a joint team of officers from the NCA, CSE Taskforce, Hydrant Programme, Tackling Organised Exploitation (TOEX) Programme and NPCC, with an expectation that the following operational objectives will be delivered throughout and by the end of the Operation:
1. To understand the scale of the issue, in relation to investigations into group-based child sexual exploitation that have not resulted in a prosecution, between January 2010 and March 2025, leveraging innovative data acquisition, modelling and analysis techniques, facilitated by the TOEX programme. Using the Op Beaconport data methodology to reveal both the threats and vulnerabilities that therefore remain within communities, and to be able to sustain that capability into the future.
2. To conduct independent reviews of cases that have not resulted in a prosecution, between January 2010 and March 2025, prioritised on the basis of the threat posed by the suspect, vulnerability of the victim or survivor, indicative trauma caused by the crime and gravity of the identified offence.
3. To task new investigations and reinvestigations of cases that meet the agreed criteria, with an underlying presumption that reinvestigations will be returned to the originating force, as part of a mutual effort to provide tailored justice for victims, but that investigations may be situated anywhere within the public protection/serious organised crime system.
4. To support and assure current investigations and reinvestigations of cases, to ensure that procedures established in Operation Stovewood and the CSE Taskforce are employed, to conduct a trauma-informed, victim-centred and suspect focussed investigation.
5. To identify insights from the reviews, distil the procedures established during Operation Stovewood and the developments delivered by the CSE Taskforce, to evolve, improve and develop operational practice, to ensure GBCSEA investigations are treated as major investigations into serious and organised crime, where appropriate.
6. To support the rebuilding of community trust through regular, clear and effective communication on operational progress, insights and outputs, to demonstrate public transparency and accountability to victims and survivors, policing, and other key stakeholder groups, on efforts to tackle GBCSEA.
