Police forces across England and Wales are failing to arrest individuals who view indecent images of children because they are overwhelmed by demand – with referrals for online child sexual abuse rising by 66% in a single year and some investigators carrying as many as 54 active cases simultaneously, according to a damning new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.
The inspection found that the current police response to online child sexual abuse is “falling below acceptable standards” and that children are being left at risk as a direct consequence of stretched resources. Michelle Skeer, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, described online child sexual abuse as “one of the most serious and fastest-growing crimes facing our society today.”
“Demand is rising at a rate that forces cannot keep pace with using current resources,” she said. “Children are waiting too long to be safeguarded, investigators are carrying unsustainable caseloads, and too many forces lack the technology and training they need to do this work effectively.”
Voluntary interviews instead of arrests – and why that puts children at risk
One of the most serious findings in the report concerns the widespread practice of inviting suspects for voluntary interviews rather than formally arresting them. Forces have adopted this approach primarily because it involves less administrative burden – but inspectors warned it creates significant risks for vulnerable children.
When a suspect attends a voluntary interview and is subsequently released without charge, police cannot impose bail conditions designed to protect potential victims. There is nothing to prevent that person from continuing to access children or indecent images during the period before any further action is taken.
“During our inspections, we found that this approach was often used to manage workloads,” the report stated. “Decisions to use voluntary attendance didn’t always consider the risk that may be posed to victims.”
The inspectorate’s recommendation is unambiguous: all suspects in online child sexual abuse cases should be arrested rather than questioned voluntarily.
The scale of the crisis
The numbers in the report convey a system under serious strain. Referrals for online child sexual abuse increased by 66% between 2023 and 2024 alone – a rise so steep that even a well-resourced specialist unit would have struggled to absorb it. In practice, specialist units are not well-resourced.
Some investigators are juggling as many as 54 active cases simultaneously – a caseload that makes meaningful, thorough investigation of each case effectively impossible. Forensic analysis of mobile phones and other electronic devices can take up to two years in certain force areas, meaning that in the worst cases a suspect identified today might not face charges until 2028 – while the investigation remains open and the risk to children persists throughout.
The report also found that officers frequently lack appropriate technology to examine suspects’ devices when conducting home visits – a basic equipment failure that hampers investigations from the outset. There is currently no nationally accredited training programme for detectives working on online child sexual abuse investigations, resulting in inconsistent standards and capabilities across different constabularies.
The connection to the Southport inquiry
The report arrives days after the Southport inquiry found that the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar “could and should have been prevented” – and identified failures in information sharing, agency coordination and the management of risk posed by a known violent individual as the central causes.
The two reports together paint a picture of child protection systems under severe pressure across multiple dimensions simultaneously. The Southport inquiry found that no agency took ownership of the risk posed by Rudakubana. The HMICFRS report finds that police forces are systematically failing to pursue those who create and consume child sexual abuse material because they do not have the resources to do so.
The Chief Inspector was explicit that police cannot address this crisis alone. She called on the Home Office, National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing to act urgently on the inspectorate’s recommendations.
The government’s response
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The sexual abuse of children online is one of the most disturbing crimes of our time and has a devastating long-term impact on victims. Charges and prosecutions for child sexual abuse are now at their highest ever levels and we will continue to support policing to bring more offenders to justice.”
The spokesperson added that the government would “soon strengthen the law in the Crime and Policing Bill with new offences that target tech-assisted child sexual abuse and improve the management of offenders.”
The government’s response points to prosecutions being at record levels – a figure that may reflect improvements in the justice system’s handling of cases that do make it to court, but which does not address the core finding of the report: that a large and growing number of cases are not being properly investigated in the first place because the police simply do not have the capacity to handle them.
What needs to change
The inspectorate’s recommendations are specific: all suspects should be formally arrested rather than invited to voluntary interview; forensic analysis backlogs must be addressed; officers must be given appropriate technology; and a nationally accredited training programme must be established for investigators working in this area.
Behind each of these recommendations is the same underlying reality – that online child sexual abuse is growing faster than the public institutions designed to prevent it and punish it. The 66% increase in referrals in a single year is not an anomaly. It reflects the structural reality of an online environment in which the production, distribution and consumption of indecent images of children has become technically easier, more encrypted and harder to detect than at any previous point in history.
The children who are being failed by the system described in this report are not hypothetical. They are identifiable, referred, documented – and waiting.
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