Legal News

Buckinghamshire County Council has backed the majority of recommendations on child sexual exploitation (CSE), after a council scrutiny body carried out a lengthy review of practices across all organisations working with children and young people in the county.

Recommendations from the report by the Children's Social Care and Learning Select Committee include the development of a toolkit for use in schools, to help schools foster resilience in children from an early age.

Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Lin Hazell, said:

“Cabinet was very happy to take on the recommendations in the Select Committee’s inquiry report.

“This was an important and wide-ranging review, which will help combat the evil menace of child sexual exploitation.

“The safety of our children is paramount – and we need to do as much as we possibly can to keep them away from the sexual predators who destroy young lives.

“Victims of child sexual exploitation just don’t see themselves as victims until much later in life, so we need to work on their behalf to keep child sexual exploitation at top of everyone’s agenda.”

Council leader Martin Tett stressed to Cabinet that tackling child sexual exploitation was a top priority for the council:

“I hear people say it doesn’t happen here – it happens everywhere, quite frankly.

“It has to remain one of our top priorities – it’s a blot and a shame on our country that this exploitation goes on,” he added.

The only one of the ten recommendations not to be given full backing by Cabinet was that the council should commission a service to provide support to parents of victims.

Members were told that work goes on with families at present, but it was not practical – particularly within the current budget difficulties – to commission a new service for this.

During the course of the CSE inquiry, scrutiny committee members heard from a range of professionals engaged in the fight against exploitation, as well as from those directly affected by CSE – including the parent of a victim and survivors of child sexual exploitation.


Scrutiny Committee chairman Val Letheren told the Cabinet this was one of the most difficult pieces of work she had done in her long career as a councillor and added:

“We want to let the perpetrators know we are on to them.

“We are assured by Cabinet’s formal backing of our recommendations that the council considers child sexual exploitation to be a top priority – and I was particularly pleased to see that three of the recommendations we made in the report had already been implemented before the Cabinet meeting.”

Duncan Lewis Personal Injury Solicitors – No win no fee Sexual and Physical Abuse Claims

Duncan Lewis personal injury solicitors can advise survivors of sexual and/or physical abuse on how to make a no win no fee claim against the perpetrator, including advising on historical cases of sexual and physical abuse.

Claims for sexual and physical abuse can be made from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority or via the civil courts once a conviction has been obtained, or a police inquiry into historical abuse allegations has been carried out.

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