Child Sexual Exploitation Monthly Breakdown from 2016 to 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.029390

I note you seek access to the following information:

We would like information on recorded incidents of child sexual exploitation broken down per month from January 2016 – December 2022. For the purposes of this Freedom of Information request, child sexual exploitation offences are defined by the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as amended by Section 68 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. This includes:

• Section 47 Sexual Offences Act 2003: Paying for sexual services of a child;
• Section 48 Sexual Offences Act 2003: Causing or inciting [sexual exploitation of a child];
• Section 49 Sexual Offences Act 2003: Controlling a child [in relation to sexual exploitation];
• Section 50 Sexual Offences Act 2003: Arranging or facilitating [sexual exploitation of a child].

We are looking to find out:
• How many recorded incidents of child sexual exploitation were there per month from January 2016 – December 2022?

Barnardo’s will use the information provided to inform research we are doing to look at a potential link between school holidays and child sexual exploitation. This research will be used in our work with the Government on strengthening protection for and responses to child sexual exploitation.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

You have requested data by month which we have provided.

Please refer to the ‘Notes’ Page for a full explanation of the data provided. You will note that we have provided the Offence Codes in an uncorrelated format, i.e., on the ‘Notes’ page and not together with the stats and this is to protect the anonymity of individuals, specifically where numbers are low.

Caveat:
The data provided within the enclosed spreadsheet is the sum of the 16 offences set out in the notes tab, as well as any offence that has a relevant Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) flag attached to the crime report. CSE flags are used to identify where the sexual exploitation of a child is, or may be, an element of an offence, rather than the offence itself under the Home Office Counting Rules for crime. CSE flags can be underused when crimes are recorded on the Met’s crime recording system. The data provided may accordingly undercount the number of CSE crimes recorded by the MPS.

A Freedom of Information Act request is not a private transaction. Both the request itself and any information disclosed, are considered suitable for open publication. This is because under the Act, any information disclosed is released into the public domain, effectively to the world, not just to an individual and the MPS then has no control over what use is made of that information.