BRADFORD Council’s leaders have been slammed for their response to a highly critical Ofsted review into local children’s services.

The department’s “inadequate” rating was discussed at a meeting of the full Council last night, when portfolio holder for children and families Councillor Adrian Farley apologised for the department’s shortcomings.

But opposition councillors had harsh words about both his response and the response of the Council’s six strong executive.

One claimed the Council had been withholding details about the perilous position of the department and its staff, and another said leaders were “complacent” about the damning verdict.

Published in October, the report said services had “rapidly deteriorated and services for children in need of protection left children “at risk of serious harm.”

Since the verdict Director of Children’s Services Michael Jameson has stood down from his role, and is being temporarily replaced by an interim strategic director, Gladys Rhodes White.

Cllr Farley said: “I want to start by saying sorry to the whole of the Council and to the children of our district. The Ofsted report was hugely disappointing.

“I cannot stress enough that supporting our young people is an important as it gets to us.”

He said work to turn the department around has included a review of 1,700 children’s case files. He also told the committee that the council would “ensure the voice of the child is at the heart of everything we do.”

Councillor Debbie Davies (Cons, Baildon) said: “It shouldn’t have taken an Ofsted inspection for the Council to realise these issues existed.”

Councillor Simon Cooke (Cons, Bingley Rural) said: “Firstly it seems like the executive thinks this is a consequence of problems somewhere else, and not the executive. Secondly your response seems monumentally complacent.

“The strategic director who is no longer here is the only one who has seemed to take any responsibility.

“You’ve stood here and said the staff in the department are all so brilliant, well why is it going so wrong? We need some accountability.”

Addressing the executive members facing him across the chamber, he said: “You are the ones who own this, you are the people who should take some responsibility for the failure, but you’re not doing it. It is time for you to begin to do that.

“Saying you need to listen to the voice of the children is great, but you need someone to go into that department and stomp around sorting problems out.”

Council Leader Susan Hinchcliffe responded: “The culture in children’s services is not one that will benefit from stomping around in hobnail boots, it is a much more nurturing environment.

“We absolutely take responsibility, we take this very seriously and have put investment and measures in place to improve the service.”

Councillor David Ward (Independent, Bolton and Undercliffe) sits on the Council’s Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee. He pointed out that the committee regularly gets updates on the workloads of children’s social workers and while the Ofsted report painted a bleak picture of the pressures on these staff, the reports to the committee showed no such problems. He said a report to the committee just two months prior to the inspection raised no concerns.

He added: “Case loads of children’s social workers must have been the most reviewed area we as a scrutiny committee have discussed in the past two and a half years. The last report we had in July said there were some stresses, but no real sense of the seriousness of the situation raised by Ofsted just two months later.

“We had social workers come and tell us how wonderful things were. I did say at the time it seems too good to be true, and it turns out it was. As a member of that committee I feel the truth has been hidden.”

Cllr Hinchcliffe said the Council was not blind to the problems in the service before the Ofsted visit, and had tried to improve the service well before the Ofsted result.