The My London news website has this report this morning which also delved into what happened with Operation Grandbye, which I followed as best I could. My London is part of the Mirror group and therefore is frequently left-leaning in many matters. But anybody trying to get truthfully to the bottom of grooming gangs in London is worth my while.
EXCLUSIVE: A MyLondon FOI investigation found there was a three-year grooming gang probe in West London. West London is probably why I never heard so much as a whisper.
Hounslow Council failed to disclose a three-year police probe into an alleged West London grooming gang that was dropped last year, despite being asked if there were recent concerns in the borough, a MyLondon investigation has found.
This week, the leader of Hounslow Council, Councillor Shantanu Rajawat called for ‘striking a balance’ between being ‘publicly serious’ and ‘creating panic’ when asked about a Freedom of Information (FOI) response to MyLondon, released in February this year, which showed the local authority knew of a 2021 to 2024 multi-borough Met Police investigation affecting a Hounslow resident.
In June, Hounslow opposition leader Cllr Peter Thompson asked ‘Whether any concerns of this nature, relating to group-based child sexual exploitation, have been identified or raised in Hounslow in recent years?’. A Hounslow Council officer assured him ‘there are no concerns around organised/group sexual exploitation of young people by men/harmers’. . . The Met did not explain why the investigation was closed. The Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has said there are ‘no reported cases or indication of these sorts of grooming gangs’ in the capital.
We asked every London borough about sexual grooming gangs and group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE) in January and August this year. Most local authorities refused to answer, citing the cost of performing manual checks on children’s files, or because the information is not held… However, the London Borough of Hounslow did respond to two of our requests.
We put these FOI responses to the council on Monday (September 15) at 10:30am, but it took their communications team more than 75 hours to provide an explanation. In that time, our reporter sent 13 emails, made countless phone calls, and attended a council meeting in person, determined to get answers directly from the council and its leader Cllr Rajawat.
During that meeting, Cllr Rajawat said his administration took the issue ‘very seriously’, and that the alleged grooming gang case ‘wasn’t just Hounslow, it was multi-borough’, adding later that ‘behind the scenes there is a lot of work going on’.
After failing to respond to our enquiries about the FOIs for three days, on Thursday (September 18) afternoon, a council spokesperson said its February FOI response “should not be taken to mean that there was a grooming gang in Hounslow, but that we were aware of an ongoing investigation in relation to a single Hounslow child . . . That investigation was subsequently closed and we understand that no criminal charges were brought. Our September 2025 FOI response refers to this closed investigation.”
A Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime (MOPAC) report from 2014/15 also detailed a CSE investigation codenamed Operation Baker, involving care homes, in neighbouring Hillingdon, where five males were convicted of sex offences against four young girls, including for rape and threatening torture. I haven’t been about to trace any newspaper report of that. These cases are not absolutely bound to be Muslim run gangs of course. There have always been sex offenders, and the Muslim gang MO has been copied recently by a couple of gangs run by East and SE European immigrants.
Aware of our FOI, Cllr Thompson told the meeting: “There were alleged concerns about grooming gangs in Hounslow, so I’m asking the question now: ….
In response, Cllr Rajawat said: “To just start by addressing the very important point made by Cllr Thompson around child exploitation and grooming gangs, and absolutely, Cllr Thompson, you have our absolute assurance we as an administration take this very seriously.
“In the comments you made I would urge a slight amount of caution, because we don’t want to create panic. We know a lot of the cases that are reported are dealt with by a specialist team within the Met. Not locally based, but centrally based, and it is for them to take that forward. The case you mentioned in your example, wasn’t just Hounslow, it was multi-borough, across a number of boroughs and it is for the Met to take that forward.
“And we have to strike that balance between absolutely being serious about it, and being very publicly serious about it, and providing the mechanisms to report cases and concerns, without creating panic amongst our communities and that is absolutely important.”
Which does suggest a Muslim element to the gang; nobody worries about panicking the indigenous English.
Cllr Rajawat continued: “Having conversations around child exploitation, around grooming, are really really important, with our faith leaders, with our community more widely, so I am happy to sit down with you regularly so you are assured, but also a wider conversation around it in faith settings, in community settings, to really bring it to life.” And nobody sits with the Anglican vicar and the Methodist minister to allay our English ‘panic’
After the meeting, Cllr Rajawat told MyLondon the council officer’s previous answer to Cllr Thompson was accurate at the time because the case had been closed by then. We pointed out the question had asked about ‘recent years’. Our reporter also suggested ‘not causing a panic’ could be viewed as ‘keeping things quiet’, but Cllr Rajawat repeated: “It’s about striking a balance.”
My London then recaps the responses of the Mayor of London, which has been followed here at NER for a year or more. Then The mystery of Operation Grandbye
I’m glad they call it a ‘mystery’; I always thought it rather mysterious and I wasn’t alone.
During our FOI probe, we also dug into a December 2017 report by The Independent about an alleged grooming gang operating around a McDonald’s in Stratford, using boys as ‘hooks’ to get the attention of young girls. The article said the youngest arrests included two boys, aged 15 and 16, both on suspicion of robbery, while a 34-year-old man was also arrested on suspicion of rape.
Mayoral records show six months into Operation Grandbye in July 2018, the Mayor’s office answered a question about its progress to a an Assembly Member. The answer described the operation as ‘successful’ with ‘a number of arrests and civil orders’, adding there would be regular meetings about local intel gained from Newham Council and Stratford Shopping Centre.
According to our FOI request, a total of 18 victims were identified; six people were arrested; and three were charged in relation to Operation Grandbye.
When we took our FOI result (given to us by the Met’s information team) to the Met’s press team, along with the name of the detective who was interviewed for the newspaper article, the force did not provide a statement on the outcome of the operation. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also had no record of the outcome, and specialists in the CPS grooming gang team were not aware of the case.
After some persistent questioning of relevant authorities, it is understood a charge of robbery against one defendant was dismissed; another defendant was jailed for two years for ‘applying a corrosive fluid with intent’; and there was no further action against a third defendant.
MyLondon knows the identities of the defendants – aged 15, 21, and 34 at the time – but has chosen not to disclose them as there is no indication anyone was successfully prosecuted for rape or any other sexual offence.
The only other reference we could find to Operation Grandbye came in a 2021 report by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which described it as a response to reports by three underage girls they had been raped by adults they met in a shopping centre. The report said the ‘suspects were identified and arrested for any form of criminality, causing maximum disruption to their activities’.
If you know about what happened in Newham, you can submit information to our form here.
Our best source of information is you, and we guarantee your anonymity. If you know about grooming gangs in Hounslow, or anywhere else in London, you can respond to our form here or message Callum on Signal on +447580255582.
The rest of the article is a recap of the sterling work of Baroness Casey and Professor Alexis Jay with the inevitable dig at the ‘far-right’ and Tommy Robinson.
Asking for data and information about so-called grooming gangs is difficult because it is a term coined by the media; it has been weaponised by the far-right due to a number of Asian and Pakistani men prosecuted in historic cases in northern towns; and it is not one adopted by local authorities, social services, and police forces when they are recording crimes.
Concluding with the recent claim of cover-ups by retired detective Jon Wedger
My London are taking this seriously – better late than never!
