Rotherham MBC has instigated an independent inquiry into historic child sex exploitation and the failings of the authority's children's services department, it has emerged.

Cllr Roger Stone, leader of Rotherham said the council apologises ‘unreservedly to those young people let down by our safeguarding services' and pledged the new inquiry in light of a withering report by MPs.

The Home Affairs Select Committee stated in June that both Rotherham and Rochdale were ‘inexcusably slow' to realise that children were being sexually abused in their boroughs.

Cllr Stone acknowledged Rotherham's safeguarding services ‘prior to 2009 simply weren't good enough.

‘We must also recognise that there remains a need to convince and reassure the public that real change has been achieved,' said Cllr Stone.

‘To restore public confidence in the safeguarding services that the council provides now and in the future, to show that people have been genuinely held to account and to demonstrate clearly our understanding and appreciation of the devastating consequences of these historic failings,'

Five Rotherham men were jailed in November 2010 for sexual offences against under-aged girls. 

And last week solicitors representing four women involved in the case announced they would sue the council for ‘systemic failures to protect them from sexual abuse by predatory men when they were children'.