THE COUNCIL have devised an improvement plan in response to a damning Ofsted report which highlighted “serious failures” in its children services.

The council proposes to spend £668,000 to address the issues flagged by Ofsted.

The inspection in March 2015 condemned the council's "over-reliance" on agency staff and said that the service's leadership required improvement.

At a special meeting on Monday 20, councillors were asked to approve an improvement plan, which will see the service rated as "good at the very least" at the next inspection.

Councillor Lynne Doherty, lead member for children services, said: "I believe that this plan will help us move away from inadequate and move into good."

The council has promised to meet expected timescales, implement a policy which prevents delay and ensures that children and young people's care planning is timely and effective.

Councillor Alan Macro, opposition leader, said: "I am pleased to see that £100,000 is to be invested in staff training this year, however it should be noted that the administration reduced the children's services training allocation in this year's budget by £30,000 just a few months ago.

"My colleagues and I on the overview and scrutiny management commission, have been expressing concern about the high proportion of agency staff for a long time.  "The administration took belated action, yet agency staff still make up 77 per cent of senior social workers and 42 per cent of social workers. We need to improve the ratio of permanent staff to agency staff."

Cllr Macro also complained that the improvement plan was only delivered in paper form three days before the meeting, and said that they "had little time to assimilate this report."

In an attempt to retain more staff, the council has splashed out on more than £1 million in a social worker academy, which supports workers and offers longer sabbaticals and bonuses for long service.

Approximately 35,700 children and young people under the age of 18 live in West Berkshire and, in February this year, 176 children were being looked after by the local authority.

This is an increase from the 160 children who were being looked after in March 2014.