Commissioner sent in to help ailing Buckinghamshire County Council's Children Services

The commissioner will assess whether there is sufficiently strong evidence to suggest that long-term sustainable improvement to children’s social care can be achieved should services continue to remain with the council.

That could mean children’s social care services will be removed from local authority control, for a period of time, in order to bring about sustainable improvement, unless there are compelling reasons not to do so.

A county council spokesperson said:“We can confirm that the Department for Education will appoint a commissioner in the next few weeks.“Their task will be to assess the council’s capacity and capability to improve its Children’s Services in a reasonable timeframe.

“They will be required to report to the Department for Education at the end of three months with a recommendation about the future of Children’s Services in Buckinghamshire.

“We have a robust action plan that addresses all the recommendations in the Ofsted report and are working closely with staff to develop and embed this over the coming weeks.”

The report in front of the council’s cabinet says that if the council does not respond in a way deemed appropriate by the DfE, they may advise ministers to take further action.

Warren Whyte, cabinet member for children’s services said: “I look forward to welcoming the commissioner to Buckinghamshire and to demonstrate that our action plan, discussed at Cabinet earlier this week, addresses all the recommendations in the Ofsted report.”