A watchdog will soon publish a report about its investigation into whether West Yorkshire Police officers did all they could to prevent Hamzah Khan being starved to death by his alcoholic mother.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission started a detailed probe in January into how the force handled concerns raised about the neglect of four-year-old Hamzah and five of his siblings.

Hamzah’s mummified body was found in a cot at his home in Heaton, Bradford, in September 2011, almost two years after he died from starvation in December 2009.

Last October his mother, Amanda Hutton, was found guilty of his manslaughter by gross neglect by a Bradford Crown Court jury and jailed for 15 years.

Among the issues which have been investigated by the IPCC is why West Yorkshire Police did not refer details of the case to it after Hamzah’s death was discovered in 2011.

Instead, it was the IPCC which got in touch with the force after reading media reports of people contacting the police over concerns for the boy and his siblings.

The investigation has also examined any contact the police had with the family between Hamzah’s birth and the discovery of his body.

A key part of that probe was the scrutiny of a police visit to Hutton’s house in April 2009, when an officer concluded that Hamzah “appeared to be well”.

Fewer than eight months later he had died of starvation and was subsequently found to be so malnourished throughout his life that he was found in a babygrow designed to fit a baby aged six to nine months.