Andrew Norfolk

Andrew Mark Norfolk (8 January 1965 – 8 May 2025) was a British journalist and chief investigative reporter for The Times.

After attending Kent College, and Ashville College, Harrogate, both independent schools, Norfolk studied English at Durham University, where he was sports editor of Palatinate, the university newspaper. He also represented the university at field hockey and was a substitute in the 1985 University Athletic Union final against Exeter University. A member of Hild Bede College, Norfolk graduated in 1987. he produced a series of reports that triggered several formal inquiries. He had known about the grooming earlier because Ann Cryer, the MP for Keighley, had publicly raised concerns about the abuse of two girls.

As a result of this work, he won the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism in February 2013; the judges said his stories had "prompted two government-ordered inquiries, a parliamentary inquiry and a new national action plan on child sexual exploitation". In May that year, he shared the Orwell Prize with Tom Bergin of Reuters, and in December 2014 he was named Journalist of the Year by the British Journalism Awards.

In August 2017, The Times published an article by Norfolk headlined "Christian child forced into Muslim foster care" about a foster placement in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The borough council complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which ruled that the story was riddled with inaccuracies. IPSO required The Times to run the ruling in the front page of its print edition and in its online edition. Norfolk afterwards said that with hindsight, he would not write the story again.

In November 2024, Norfolk retired after a 24-year career at The Times.

In January 2025, following further news coverage of the child sexual exploitation scandal, Norfolk said publicly that the root causes of grooming gangs had still not been properly examined and criticised how the issue had been hijacked by the far-right.

Appraisal Upon announcement of his death on 15 May 2025, Keir Starmer, UK Prime Minister, led tributes to Norfolk saying: “I am deeply sorry to hear of Andrew’s death. He wasn’t just an incredibly talented reporter, at The Times and elsewhere, he was driven by the desire to call our attention to injustice and protect the most vulnerable." He had experienced a period of ill health, including feeling exhausted.