Councils act as recruiting sergeants for county lines, MPs warn

TOWN halls are acting as ‘recruiting sergeants’ for county lines gangs by making thousands of vulnerable children live miles from home.

A damning inquiry by MPs says troubled youngsters are being dumped in unsupervised housing to save costs.

Isolated from their friends, families and even social workers, they risk being recruited to sell heroin and crack cocaine. The report by the allparty parliamentary group for runaway and missing children and adults warns the system for ‘looked-after’ children is at crisis point.

They are often being abandoned by council officials in cheap flats in rundown areas, living alongside adult criminals, paedophiles, drug addicts and gang members.

Most of the 41 police forces that responded to the inquiry said placing children out of their home area increased the risk of them being exploited by criminals.

One youth worker told the MPs: ‘We know that county lines gangs have been sent to areas where young people are predominantly placed “out of area”, to scout new opportunities where they can develop business and recruit new members.’

Two thirds of youngsters in children’s homes now live large distances from their family and friends, up from 46 per cent in 2012.

As a result, record numbers are going missing, often because criminals have ordered them to deliver drugs. The number has risen from 990 in 2015 to 1,990 last year. Almost half of all missing person incidents relate to children vanishing from children’s homes, secure accommodation or semi-independent units. Between April 1, 2017, and March 31 this year, 11,530 children – 11 per cent of all youngsters in care – went missing at some stage.

Separate analysis of children’s services data shows that the number of times youngsters were assessed as vulnerable because they had gone missing almost doubled from 8,850 in 2015 to 16,070 last year.

Over the same period the number of children identified as vulnerable to gangs rose from 3,680 to 8,650, according to analysis by The Guardian.

Part of the problem is a near doubling in the number of youths over the age of 16 being placed in unregulated semi-independent homes.

The Children’s Society has estimated that around 8,400 youths aged 16 and 17 are living in this type of accommodation. The cheap housing, often privately run, is considered ‘off radar’ to the authorities.

The properties are not subject to Ofsted inspections and the police often learn that vulnerable children are living there only following a sudden spike in anti-social behaviour and reports of youths going missing.

MPs found that these premises are ‘often well known to local criminals and are seen as an easy target location for recruitment of new children’.

In some instances, children were found to be living alongside criminals. In one shocking example, a child who had been sexually exploited was placed in the same accommodation as a child sex offender.

The parliamentary inquiry concluded: ‘By placing so many children out of area, councils and government are complicit in exacerbating the trauma of neglected and abused children and of unwittingly providing new recruits for county lines.’ The Daily Mail has highlighted the county lines menace, which is estimated to have enslaved as many as 10,000 children.

The term county lines refers to gangs using mobile phones to sell drugs, often from cities to smaller towns. Ann Coffey, the chairman of the all-party group, said: ‘It is a national scandal that local authorities are unwittingly becoming recruiting sergeants for county lines drugs gangs by sending so many children miles away. It must stop. Children are being placed in grave danger by the very professionals there to protect them.’

The Independent Group for Change MP added: ‘ This accommodation must be regulated and inspected.’