Met did not try to find missing children - report

The Metropolitan Police does not always do enough to find missing children, a police watchdog has found.

His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said in its report that in some cases the force did not act quickly enough or take any action to find them, or evaluate the levels of risk to the child thoroughly.

The HMICFRS said although more improvements were required, the Met had "made positive progress" overall in how it handled sexual and criminal exploitation of children.

The Met said the report acknowledged the "significant strides" made by the force and its work to safeguard children will continue to improve.

The HMICFRS report is a follow-up to an earlier inspection of the Met's handling of child exploitation which identified causes of concern.

The 2023 report found the Met was failing children in care who go missing, was ineffective assessing the risk of sexual exploitation, used "victim-blaming language" and was slow to respond "if at all" to reports of runaways from local authority homes.

The latest report has now closed those concerns after inspectors found a "renewed focus on child exploitation, its links to missing children and the language officers use".

Improvements include how the Met investigates the risk to missing children and crimes involving exploited children, making sure the child is the focus of investigations and use of innovative techniques to find children more quickly.

But the inspectorate said the service still has more work to do.

It described cases where the Met did not try to find missing children and there were too many missed opportunities to trace offenders involved in child exploitation.

Boy went missing for eight hours

In one case, the force took no action to try to find a 14-year-old boy who was a victim of criminal exploitation and had been stabbed in the past.

The report said the force took no action to find him during the eight hours he was missing despite being reported to the police by his care provider, after he had missed his curfew.

In another case highlighted in the report, a social worker reported a 15-year-old girl had been coerced to go to a hotel where she was given drugs and alcohol and made to carry out sexual acts on men.

At the time of the inspectorate's revisit, the force had not completed any enquiries to trace the suspects despite receiving intelligence the same people were exploiting other children.

HMICFRS also found flagging and recording information about risk to children remains a problem, as well as missing opportunities to escalate concerns with safeguarding partners over children at risk and to do more to prevent children going missing.

The Met said the report highlights improvements in response times, better training and increased resources to deal with vulnerable children.

Cdr Kevin Southworth, the Met's lead for public protection, said: "We are proud of the progress we have made since the last inspection, but we recognise there is always more to do.

"Our commitment to safeguarding children is unwavering, and we are investing heavily in resources and training to ensure that officers at every level understand the complexities of child exploitation."

It added it had trained 11,500 officers to identify child exploitation and plans to expand its child exploitation teams as part of its Children Strategy launched last year.

Last month, enhanced monitoring of the Metropolitan Police came to an end after the Met made progress on a range of fundamental concerns.

The force was placed under special measures in June 2022, following a series of scandals including the murder of Sarah Everard, the strip-search of Child Q and officers being caught exchanging offensive messages.