As Darra Singh starts work on the new inquiry into the riots, Ken Clarke blames troubled families and a criminal underclass

The head of the official inquiry into last month’s riots, Darra Singh, will quiz council chief executives at next month’s SOLACE conference as he seeks a detailed explanation for the worst civil disobedience to blight Britain for decades.

Mr Singh, a former chief executive at riot-hit Ealing LBC, will address the SOLACE conference in Edinburgh – and will hold separate discussions with delegates, including senior staff from authorities affected by the riots.

He convened a meeting of his inquiry panel – former Lambeth LBC chief Heather Rabbatts, youth expert Simon Marcus and Baroness Sherlock – for the first time on Monday this week, as they planned the detail and scope of their seven-month investigation.

In an exclusive interview with The MJ Mr Singh, current chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, said the panel would prepare a list of areas to visit – and vowed he would focus as much on communities that managed to avoid disturbances.

‘Some 40 local authority areas had some form of disturbance. We’ll be visiting not just the worst-hit areas, but also those which had no disturbances and yet had similar characteristics,’ he explained.

Mr Singh, who led a report into community cohesion for the last government in 2007, was on holiday in Turkey when the rioting began in Tottenham, north London, on 6 August.

He was asked last week to head the official inquiry, and will produce an interim report in November along with a final submission by next March – to be presented to all three major political party leaders.

Mr Singh told The MJ: ‘We’ll be looking at the causes, the motivation of the rioters, why they took place in some areas and not others, and how agencies responded. We’ll be visiting areas, calling for evidence, and talking to agencies and other stakeholders.’

He added that while the inquiry would be based at the Department for Communities and Local Government, his team would operate across Whitehall. Communities secretary Eric Pickles has already warned that a wide range of local authorities and government departments – including the Home Office, work and pensions and education – will play a part in tackling the underlying causes of the rioting and looting that quickly spread from London to cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham.

Asked for his own views on the disturbances, Mr Singh said: ‘I wouldn’t want to pre-empt the findings. There won’t be a single answer and it will be different in different areas. But I will be fascinated to get out on the road and talk to people who were right in the middle of it.’

In contrast to Mr Singh’s balanced approach, Justice secretary Ken Clarke was this week quick to point the finger of blame for the riots at the UK’s ‘broken penal system’.

In an article in The Guardian newspaper, Mr Clarke said the ‘hardcore’ of rioters and looters were known criminals whose behaviour had not been altered by previous punishments.

Almost three quarters of perpetrators aged over 18, he said, had a prior conviction – and he criticised past attempts at preventing re-offending as ‘straightforwardly dreadful’.

Mr Clarke’s views were echoed by London mayor Boris Johnson, who also told MPs on 6 September that London’s Metropolitan Police force – which was heavily criticised for a perceived slow response to the riots – was ‘caught unawares’ by the scale of the disturbances in the capital.

An early analysis of the backgrounds of last month’s rioters, published by the Financial Times and drawing on unpublished court papers detailing charges against 300 suspects, showed that more than a third of alleged perpetrators charged with offences in London live in the poorest fifth of the city’s areas – hinting at the scope of the challenge for affected authorities.

Two-thirds of suspects – the vast majority of which were male - live in neighbourhoods with below average incomes, with only 3% from the wealthiest 20% of areas, the FT found.