The independent inquiry into football’s sexual-abuse scandal is expected to report back to the Football Association that there is no evidence of an institutional cover-up at the top of the sport or of a paedophile ring operating within the game, it can be revealed.

The inquiry, led by Clive Sheldon QC, was launched in December 2016 after Andy Woodward’s interview in the Guardian led to what the FA chairman, Greg Clarke, has described as the biggest crisis in the history of the sport, with the latest police figures showing 300 suspects have been named and 849 alleged victims have come forward.

Sheldon has spent the past 19 months investigating the FA’s perceived failings, from 1970 to 2005, as well as looking at what the clubs knew at the time, what they did about it and the specific allegations relating to Barry Bennell – that Crewe Alexandra and Manchester City were both given warnings about a man now serving 30 years in prison for raping and molesting junior footballers.

Play Video 7:38 Barry Bennell: unmasking of football paedophile who ruined young lives – video explainer

The full report should be delivered to the FA in September and though it is expected to be critical of a number of clubs, detailing widespread failings in the system and highlighting the inadequacies of football’s safeguarding polices, no evidence has been found to indicate there was a high-level cover-up on the part of the authorities in the same way that has happened with scandals involving the Church.

Andy Woodward: ‘It was the softer, weaker boys he targeted’ Read more

The findings are also expected to conclude there is no evidence of a network of paedophiles operating together, despite there being clear links between Bennell, the now deceased Frank Roper and some of the other men who have been charged with sexual offences.

Bennell, described by a judge as “sheer evil” and the “devil incarnate” after being convicted in February of multiple sex offences against 12 boys, from 1979 to 1991, was once close to Roper, another paedophile from the north-west, and the two men regularly used to attend the same junior football tournaments, along with a number of others who have been the subject of police investigations. However, there has been no evidence presented to the inquiry of any victims being shared by differentabusers.

Sheldon and his back-up team, all of whom have had specialist training, have interviewed 35 survivors and another 70 people who were involved in the sport at the relevant time, including a number of high-ranking FA officials. The inquiry team has gained access to 13,000 documents, on average 100 pages each, and around 300 case files from the FA’s archives. The inquiry intends to speak to at least five more survivors in the coming weeks.

As well as Crewe and Manchester City, the inquiry is looking particularly closely at Aston Villa and Leicester City because of the crimes of the late Ted Langford, and Newcastle United’s involvement with George Ormond, now serving 20 years for sexually abusing boys over three decades.

Chelsea are prominently involved because of the complaints against their former chief scout Eddie Heath and the £50,000 hush money they paid to one victim to keep quiet about it. Blackpool, Norwich City, Southampton, Peterborough and Cambridge United are believed to be among the others clubs who have been asked to produce a structured report for the inquiry.

Crewe’s decision to abandon plans for an independent investigation into Bennell, their former youth-team coach, has attracted widespreadcriticism, but the League Two club have promised to cooperate with Sheldon over a matter that seriously threatens the position of John Bowler, the club’s chairman since 1987. None of the people Sheldon has asked to interview, from all the relevant clubs, has refused to meet him, though some have declined on health grounds.

Once the clubs have delivered their own reports to the QC, the next stage of the process will be for Sheldon to write back, as he has to legally under what is known as the Maxwellian process, to give advance warning about what he intends to write about them in his official findings. The clubs will be given four weeks to respond and Sheldon hopes to be in a position by late September to send his full report to the FA, which has promised to publish everything barring any detail that could prejudice current criminal proceedings.

More than 2,800 incidents have been reported to the police since Woodward told this newspaper about the years of abuse he suffered from Bennell in Crewe’s junior set-up in the 1980s. The last available police figures, going back to March, showed 340 clubs had been affected and Bennell’s trial ended with revelations about another 86 of his former players, from Crewe and Manchester City, reporting a man who was described in court as a “child abuser on an industrial scale”.