We continue to be grateful to everyone who is offering us so much time, expertise and insight. Many people are trusting us with information, some of it sensitive, and we appreciate all the contributions we’re receiving. The evidence collection process continues into June, while we also start the initial collation and analysis of evidence submitted so far.
Over the last two months, since our last progress update in April, we have been:
- Holding dozens of external stakeholder meetings and interviews. These have included meeting with a broad range of charities, advocacy and scrutiny groups (race equity, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), LGBTQ+ rights, disability rights, youth work, crime and justice groups), as well as individuals working in statutory organisations and formal oversight roles.
- Engaging with youth groups and individuals/organisations advocating for children, to ensure we can hear the perspectives of under 18s.
- Developing Citizen Engagement Forums, making sure that our venues were rooted in their local community and preparing materials for participants, venues and facilitators. We have ensured safeguarding considerations have been worked through and added extra safeguarding capacity and expertise to the team.
- Continuing to meet with a huge array of MPS workforce, making visits and holding interviews based on geography, specialist disciplines, a range of ranks, and the ability to hear from groups who had expressed particular concerns to Baroness Casey.
- Holding announced and unannounced visits to various parts of MPS, again based on geography, function and the greatest cross-section we can in terms of rank, tenure and characteristics. By the Review’s conclusion, we expect to have visited the Met across each of its 12 geographical Basic Command Units (BCUs).
- Meeting with individual victims / survivors of police-perpetrated abuse, including some who are or used to be part of the police workforce themselves. We are particularly grateful for these conversations, which we know can take a significant personal toll on participants.
- Holding an interim evidence review day, considering some of the evidence we have gathered to date, testing our collective views, checking perspectives and identifying gaps which remain in the final evidence base we want to put together.
- Holding Citizen Engagement Forums in NE London, Central London, West London and East London, with planning for South London.
- Connecting with other major policing inquiries and reviews, to ensure we understand their remits and progress.
- Beginning to develop our communications plans for the eventual outputs of the Review. We are wholly conscious of the many reviews/reports about the MPS which have been published over decades, and will do our best to secure meaningful impact, with and for Londoners.
In the interest of hearing from as many Londoners as possible, we have taken decision to extend our public survey to 1st July 2026. While we are really pleased to have heard from more Londoners than those who contributed to the original Baroness Casey review, we want to give people slightly longer to share their views if they would like to.
In the meantime, we have begun to read and analyse responses to our MPS workforce survey which has now closed. We are particularly grateful to 6,439 serving Met police officers and staff who shared their opinions with us, each of which will be read and used to inform our findings and recommendations.
As we move towards July, we are planning our analytical approach to assessing the huge amount of quantitative and qualitative material people have provided for us, which includes significant data and several hundred documents. The process of developing and testing findings will then start.
Our inbox talktous@fairfield-independent-review.org.uk remains open. Though we are moving in the coming weeks from evidence collection to analysis, please still contact us if you have questions, or information you would like to share. For all media enquiries relating to the Fairfield Independent Review, please contact press@crestadvisory.com.