A former children’s commissioner will chair the government’s inquiry into grooming gangs.

Baroness Anne Longfield will lead the inquiry, which was derailed in October when four women resigned from its survivors panel and two leading candidates to chair the investigation pulled out.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Baroness Longfield had “devoted her life to children’s rights”, while announcing the appointment in the House of Commons.

The prime minister announced the inquiry for England and Wales in Juneaccepting the recommendation of an audit into the evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse by Baroness Louise Casey.

Baroness Longfield will be joined by panellists Zoe Billingham CBE, a former inspector at HM Constabulary, and Eleanor Kelly CBE, former chief executive of Southwark Council, to lead the inquiry.

Mahmood said Longfield and the two panellists had been recommended by Baroness Casey following “recent engagement with victims” and would meet survivors later this week.

On her appointment, Baroness Longfield said the inquiry “owes it to the victims, survivors and the wider public to identify the truth, address past failings and ensure that children and young people today are protected in a way that others were not”.

The inquiry will comprise a series of targeted local investigations into the group-based child sexual exploitation of girls by grooming gangs, overseen by a national panel.

Mahmood said one of these would be in Oldham, Greater Manchester, with the other locations to be decided.

No area will be able to “resist” a local investigation during the inquiry, she added, which will last three years with a budget of £65m.

The inquiry will also “specifically” consider the backgrounds of offenders, including their ethnicity and religion.