Lasting Support Responds to Southport Inquiry Phase 1 Report

On Monday, the 13th of April, a report into the circumstances surrounding the Southport attack of 29 July 2024 was published by Sir Adrian Fulford, Chair of the Southport Inquiry. Focusing on the events and consequences of the attack, the report examines the multiple systemic failures that led to the deaths of three young girls.

Through our work on the frontlines of safeguarding at Lasting Support, we’ve known what this inquiry has now confirmed across its 763 pages: the attack was not only foreseeable but also avoidable if the correct steps had been taken to ensure that the perpetrator (AR) received adequate interventions from professionals and institutional bodies. 

The report found that there were warning signs of the deterioration of AR’s mental health as well as his increased capacity for violence. Through its extensive analysis of the attack, the report also made recommendations of the following: 

1. Early intervention:

There were a striking number of missed opportunities to intervene. Warning signs were present from 2019. A child with a known escalating risk of violence passed through school, youth justice, social care, police, and Prevent and at no point did the response match the severity of what was unfolding. Early intervention is not a buzzword. It is a life-saving practice. When we see risk in children and young people, we must act, not defer, not close the case, not hand off.

2. Multi-agency working:

Far too often, the case was passed from one public sector agency to another in an inappropriate merry-go-round of referrals, assessments, case-closures and hand-offs. No agency or multi-agency structure accepted responsibility for assessing and managing the grave risk that was posed. The lack of care exhibited is nothing short of failure, one we recognise across many areas of safeguarding, not only in cases of violence, but in harmful practices, domestic abuse, and exploitation. Genuine multi-agency working requires ownership, communication, and accountability. Without those things, it is just a paper exercise.

3. Support for families:

The report also raises difficult questions about families. Politicians have made calls that, due to the immigration status of AR’s parents, this is an issue of migration and not of systemic failure. All children, regardless of ethnic, racial and migrant background, need to be advocated for to ensure they do not fall through the cracks. We must also be careful not to use parental failure to deflect from systemic responsibility. At the same time, this inquiry underscores what we know from our work: families need support, not just monitoring. When parents are struggling, isolated, or overwhelmed, they need access to meaningful, community-based support. Investment in family support is investment in prevention.

At Lasting Support, through programmes like Building Bridges and Sporting Souls, we witness day in and day out what becomes possible when communities, families, and agencies work together with genuine commitment. We provide intervention for young people at risk, as well as their families, ensuring they receive the necessary support by working with our multidisciplinary team focused on digital resilience, wellness, therapeutic practice, and sports-based therapy—that is the model this report calls for. 

We urge the Government to respond to the 67 recommendations with urgency, with resources, and with the voices of frontline organisations at the centre.

The lives of Elsie, Bebe, and Alice deserved better. So do all the children who come after them.

You can read the full report here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69dccdbdd3e08b8871b66618/31.236_HO_Southport_Inquiry_Volume1_WEB.pdf