Key takeaways
New child abuse reporting duty starts in 2025
Mandatory disclosure rules aim to strengthen safeguarding measures.
Duty applies to professionals in regulated roles
Teachers, healthcare staff and social workers must report concerns.
Employers should review policies and train staff early
Prepare teams for compliance before the law takes effect.
The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, recently confirmed the government’s intention to introduce a mandatory reporting duty, which will require those working with children to report child sexual abuse.
Mandatory reporting – with criminal sanctions for failure to comply - was one of key recommendations of the October 2022 final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). Over a period of eight years, IICSA found that thousands of victims had been let down by professionals turning a blind eye to abuse and its recommendation that mandatory reporting be introduced was said to ‘form the centrepiece of [its] work’.
Following publication of IICSA’s final report, the former government initially committed to introduce mandatory reporting and issued a call for evidence outlining its proposals. However, in its May 2024 response to the call for evidence, the former government rowed-back on several of its proposals regarding mandatory reporting. In particular, this suggested there would be no criminal sanctions for failure to report and that there would be no duty to report ‘indicators or suspicions of abuse’.
As a result of the outcome of the June 2024 general election, it now falls to the new government to decide how to proceed. On the 6 January 2025, the new Home Secretary announced in parliament that the government intends to legislate to “make it an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions, to fail to report or to cover up child sexual abuse”. It would therefore appear that the new government intends to go back to the drawing board – to reintroduce criminal sanctions - when devising the promised mandatory reporting regime.
The mandatory reporting legislation will form part of the new Crime and Policing Bill, which is due to be laid before Parliament this spring. Might this perhaps involve the government adopting the provisions of the Regulated and Other Activities (Mandatory Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse) private members bill, which had its second reading on 17 January and is now at the committee stage. Further details of that Bill are outlined in a House of Lords Library Briefing Paper. We will report any developments.
