Southport killer was known to services that failed – as former social worker warns over ‘holes in the system’

Published

7 months ago

January 25, 2025

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When the police arrived at the scene of horror in Southport last summer, the teenager holding the knife was someone they had been called about many times before.

From the age of 13, Axel Rudakubana had been on the radar of police, safeguarding services, mental health teams and Prevent, the counterterrorism programme.

His obsession with mass murder was known about. The risk he posed was clear.

Yet there was nothing to stop him going to a dance class, murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and attempting to murder many more.

The timeline of contact with the authorities reveals Rudakubana had not slipped through the net – he was in the system. It failed.

The public inquiry that will now take place needs to examine why.

‘Limited options for social workers’

Dr Ciaran Murphy, a former social worker and member of the Association of Child Protection Professionals, believes services designed to protect children are now facing more cases where children are themselves the risk.

“That’s an area where we need to evolve,” he said. “There’s an increasing occurrence of referrals being made in which parents are afraid of their children in terms of violence and mental health.”

He said options for social workers are limited. “You’d still be thinking about the child protection plan, you’d still be thinking about a strategy meeting,” he said. “But ultimately, social workers cannot detain children.

“The obvious answers are multi-agency communication, multi-agency work, particularly with the police and programmes like Prevent. But then when you do that, you start to see some of the holes in the system.”

“In extreme cases, they can apply for a secure order for a child in which a child is placed in secure accommodation,” Dr Murphy explained, but he said they are “very difficult to obtain, partly because it’s so costly, partly because it’s so draconian”.

The orders have to be granted by the family courts and only apply to children under the age of 16.

Rudakubana’s multiple contact with police

The police were first alerted to Rudakubana when he took a knife into school in 2019. It led to his exclusion, and referrals to the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

But he returned to the school months later with a knife in his bag and attacked a pupil with a hockey stick. He pleaded guilty to assault and a youth referral order was imposed.

Between 2019 and 2021 he was referred three times to Prevent. The first referral was for researching school shootings during an IT class. Another referral was made when a teacher found he’d been reading about the London Bridge terror attack. However, he was not deemed a terrorism risk.

Between 2019 and 2023 he received mental health care at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust but “stopped engaging” in February of that year.

In 2021, Rudabukana was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Later that year, following reports of incidents at home, he stopped attending school.

In 2022, his mother reported him missing and police found him on a bus carrying a knife. Officers were called by the driver because he was refusing to pay. He was returned home and his mother was given advice on how to secure knives.

Four of the calls to the police about him in the years before the attack were made by his own parents.

‘They often don’t fit into any particular box’

Dr Duncan Harding, a consultant adolescent forensic psychiatrist, said “a case like this just highlights how systems have to be made as robust as possible, to try and pick up people who perhaps are acting in a lone way with extreme ideologies. Perhaps ideologies don’t fit into any particular box”.

“Working with young people, who present with perhaps mental health difficulties, perhaps neurodiversity, criminal behaviours. I’ve worked with many young people who fit into that category, and they often don’t fit into any particular box. What that can mean is that they might fall under the threshold of any one particular service.”

He added: “I think that when something dreadful happens, when something absolutely dreadful happens that shakes society in this way, we have to look at the systems, we have to look at things like thresholds.”

There is consensus that more should have been done to stop Rudakubana.

Finding the cracks in a system that failed will be the task of the public inquiry.

UK

Brianna Ghey’s mother calls for school smartphone ban

Published

1 hour ago

September 3, 2025

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Brianna Ghey's mother calls for school smartphone ban

The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey is calling on the government to introduce a ban on mobile phones in schools – a move she says will not only safeguard children, but also improve their behaviour and engagement in class.

In February 2023, Brianna, 16, was stabbed to death by two 15-year-olds after being lured to a park in Warrington.

In the lead-up to the attack, her killers had spent time on the dark web. At the same time, Brianna was also trapped online, struggling with a phone addiction.

Her mother Esther Ghey’s Phone Free Education campaign is driven by her personal experiences as a parent and the impact Brianna’s phone use had on her education.

“All the arguments that me and Brianna had were down to her phone use,” Esther said.

“But even in school, she had issues and I used to have phone calls from the school saying that Brianna wouldn’t put her phone away.”

Brianna, who was transgender, struggled with an eating disorder and also self-harmed.

Her mother says the constant time she spent online exacerbated those issues, while impacting her behaviour at school, where she had 120 safeguarding logs and 116 behaviour incidents recorded by her teachers.

“It was so difficult as a parent, because I felt in one way that I was failing and then in another way, and this is really difficult for me to speak about, I was so annoyed with Brianna,” she recalled.

“I thought, why can’t you just go to school, get your head down and just focus on your education, because this is important.

“Only now, after two years of being immersed in this world, do I realise that actually, it’s so much harder than that.”

Research by the Children’s Commission has shown that 79% of secondary schools are still allowing pupils to bring their mobile phones into school, and even into classrooms.

How phone ban is working at Brianna’s old school

Esther is campaigning for government guidance on phones to become statutory, with funding also set aside for the equipment to help schools implement the ban, arguing the lack of legislation is “setting children up to fail”.

At Birchwood Community High School in Warrington, where Brianna was a pupil, they introduced a ban on phones last September.

At the beginning of the day, pupils turn off their phones and place them in pouches, which are locked. At the end of the school day, the pouches are then unlocked.

The headteacher, Emma Mills, said introducing these measures has come with several benefits.

“It’s had an impact in all areas of school, and it’s actually had a really positive impact in ways that I didn’t foresee,” said Ms Mills.

“Attendance has improved this year. In terms of behaviour, behaviour has improved. We’ve had no permanent exclusions this year in school, which is actually the first time since I’ve been headteacher in six years, there’s been no permanent exclusion.”

This summer, the school also saw its best-ever GCSE results in the core subjects of Science, maths, and English.

‘They can live without their phones’

For Ms Mills, another significant change has been the atmosphere in the school.

“They’re not as worried, they’re not as distracted,” Ms Mills said.

“They’ve realised that they can live without their phones. Something else we’ve really noticed is that it’s a bit louder in school at breaks and lunch times. It’s because they’re talking more, they’re interacting more, and they’re communicating more.”

The positive impact of a ban at Brianna’s old school has served as encouragement to Esther, who has written an open letter addressed to Sir Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, asking for government support.

High-profile signatories include the actress Kate Winslet, as well as actor and film producer Stephen Graham.

For Esther, who will deliver the letter to 10 Downing Street next month, the campaign is not just Brianna’s legacy, but also creating societal change.

“I think it’s important that we teach young people to live in the real world,” she said.

“It’s going to impact society at one point and I think this small amount of investment in students now will have a massive impact in the future.”

UK

Revealed: Huge rise in protests being dealt with by police

Published

1 hour ago

September 3, 2025

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Revealed: Huge rise in protests being dealt with by police

Police across the UK dealt with more than 3,000 protests over three months this summer – more than three times as many as just two years ago.

There were 3,081 protests this June, July, and August across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council have revealed.

Last summer, when riots were raging across the country following the Southport murders, police dealt with 2,942 protests. In 2023, it was 928.

The summer months this year have been dominated by widespread demonstrations, some against the ban on Palestine Action and others against housing asylum seekers in hotels.

‘Increasing tension’

Gavin Stephens, chairman of the NPCC, said it was clear that there has been “more community tension and more division”, adding that “we all have a responsibility, policing included, to set the tone”.

“Anybody in a leadership position should think about how we can reduce and defuse tensions and not sow division,” Mr Stephens said.

The senior official said protests this year were a “chronic pressure” for police compared to last year’s disorder, which was acute.

“This is not talking about the volume of protest, and this is not a commentary from policing on people’s right to protest peacefully,” he said.

“We absolutely support that in a democracy, but we do know that there is a climate of increasing tension and polarity in what we’re seeing.”

He is convinced communities will be able to reunite and “reset”, and said claims that the UK is on the verge of civil disobedience are “exaggerated”.

It comes as policing leaders are pushing for a major restructuring of forces in England and Wales, hoping to bring more powers to a national level.

They also want to overhaul how funding is calculated for each force.

A government white paper on potential changes to the service is expected to be published in the coming months.

UK

Thames Water rescue plan promises £20.5bn investment

Published

1 hour ago

September 3, 2025

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Thames Water rescue plan promises £20.5bn investment

The group of Thames Water lenders aiming to rescue the company have set out plans for £20.5bn of investment to bolster performance.

The proposals, submitted to the regulator for consideration, include commitments to spending £9.4bn on sewage and water assets over the next five years, up 45% on current levels, to prevent spills and leaks respectively.

Of this, £3.9bn would go towards the worst performing sewage treatment sites following a series of fines against Thames Water, and other major operators, over substandard storm overflow systems.

It said this would be achieved at the 2025-30 bill levels already in place, so no further increases would be needed, but it continued to argue that leniency over poor performance will be needed to effect the turnaround.

The creditors have named their consortium London & Valley Water.

It effectively already owns Thames Water under the terms of a financial restructuring agreed early in the summer but Ofwat is yet to give its verdict on whether the consortium can run the company, averting the prospect of it being placed in a special administration regime.

Thames is on the brink of nationalisation because of the scale of its financial troubles, with debts above £17bn.

Without a deal the consortium, which includes investment heavyweights Elliott Management and BlackRock, would be wiped out.

Ofwat, which is to be scrapped under a shake-up of oversight, is looking at the operational plan separately to its proposed capital structure.

The latter is expected to be revealed later this month.

Sky News revealed on Monday that the consortium was to offer an additional £1bn-plus sweetener in a bid to persuade Ofwat and the government to back the rescue.

Mike McTighe, the chairman designate of London & Valley Water, said: “Over the next 10 years the investment we will channel into Thames Water’s network will make it one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country.

“Our core focus will be on improving performance for customers, maintaining the highest standards of drinking water, reducing pollution and overcoming the many other challenges Thames Water faces.

“This turnaround has the opportunity to transform essential services for 16 million customers, clean up our waterways and rebuild public trust.”

The government has clearly signalled its preference that a market-based solution is secured for Thames Water, though it has lined up a restructuring firm to advise on planning in the event the proposed rescue deal fails.

A major challenge for the consortium is convincing officials that it has the experience and people behind it to meet the demands of running a water company of Thames Water’s size, serving about a quarter of the country’s population.