TOEX Update on Operation Beaconport
This week marked one year since the publication of Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
Over the past year, the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, which includes the TOEX Programme, has continued to lead work to improve how forces respond to group-based offending through working in partnership with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), and the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP).
Operation Beaconport was set up as a result of the Casey publication and is the national policing response to group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. It will review cases where police forces (across England and Wales) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) made the decision to take no further action against suspects between 1 January 2010 and 31 March 2025 and will run alongside the national public inquiry.
Between October 2025 and January 2026, a series of workshops were held to assist in identifying the relevant data capture points that would assist in the goals of Operation Beaconport. This period proved to be crucial in both understanding some of the variance and nuance of policing data nationally, and in defining the ambitions of the onward Beaconport data capture and analysis.
Following the completion of these workshops, TOEX were commissioned to take the agreed data capture structure, and to deliver an application that would allow all forces to submit information towards the Operation Beaconport requirements.
The build of the Direct Data Entry (DDE) application was commenced in January 2026 with a ‘go live’ date at the start of March 2026.
The TOEX technical team achieved this goal, and police forces across England and Wales began to submit content into Operation Beaconport.
As soon as the DDE element was completed, the TOEX technical team commenced work on the methodology by which the inputted Beaconport data could be reviewed and, where necessary, associated case file data could be requested.
On the 6 and 8 June, following a successful penetration test and Technical Design Authority sign off, briefings with Beaconport review teams across both the NCA and the Hydrant Programme were completed which demonstrated the functionality of the Beaconport application, with the review module imminently being made available to forces.
The next stages for the TOEX technical team are to establish the relevant visualisation and analytic metrics that will best inform both Operation Beaconport and forces around group-based CSE offending whilst maintaining support for the review teams in ensuring the review process runs smoothly.
Click here to read more on the work of policing and Operation Beaconport.