More than 200 families whose children attended a north-west London nursery where a paedophile staff member carried out systematic abuse are calling for a formal investigation into how it was allowed to happen — but say they are being passed between agencies unwilling to act.
Vincent Chan, a worker at Bright Horizons nursery in West Hampstead, was jailed last month for 18 years after pleading guilty to 56 sexual offences. He had filmed himself abusing young children in his care and had accumulated a collection of at least 26,000 indecent images, including footage of children being raped. A judge said he had a deep-seated sexual obsession with children.
With Chan’s sentence now handed down, attention among affected families has shifted to the institutions they say failed to prevent the abuse. In a letter addressed to Camden Council, the group states the authority has little credibility with families given what they describe as extraordinary safeguarding failures at the nursery.
The council has declined to lead any investigation, saying it is already participating in an independent local child safeguarding practice review and that conducting its own separate inquiry would create a conflict of interest that could undermine any enforcement action.
Parents say that response raises an unanswered question: if Camden will not investigate and the Health and Safety Executive has not stepped in either, no organisation has been held to account for the institutional failures behind the abuse.
One father, speaking anonymously to protect his children’s identities, said the council’s written responses felt evasive and self-contradictory, and that receiving cold legal correspondence after what his family had been through felt deeply dismissive.
He said the families were not pursuing financial compensation, only accountability, and expressed concern that if safeguarding failures of this scale could go unexamined in a well-resourced central London borough, the picture elsewhere in the country could be worse.
Bright Horizons said it fully supports the safeguarding review and has since commissioned an external expert to audit its practices, while also bringing forward internal training for staff on their safeguarding obligations.
The families have also taken their concerns to government level, meeting Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson earlier this month. Among their calls is a push for CCTV to be made compulsory in nurseries across the UK — a measure ministers are said to be actively considering.
The independent child safeguarding practice review, which Camden Council says will include direct engagement with affected families, remains the primary formal process currently underway.
