The daughter of a disgraced politician who was implicated in the Rotherham sex-grooming scandal has been placed in charge of a support service for the town’s abuse victims.

Norsheen Akhtar runs child sexual exploitation (CSE) programmes for Rotherham Rise, a charity that receives most of its funding from the council. Her father, Jahangir Akhtar, resigned as the council’s deputy leader in 2013 after he was implicated in the scandal.

He brokered a deal under which one of his relatives agreed to hand a missing 14-year-old girl to police at a petrol station after receiving an assurance that he would not be prosecuted. The exposure of repeated council failings linked to the girl’s care triggered an inquiry. This found that over 16 years, more than 1,400