Councillors have called on officers to provide more up-to-date reports after a number of month-old figures were presented to elected members at a meeting.

Those who were supposed to scrutinising important statistics which show how the council’s children’s services are performing claimed it was “useless” to have data from September 2018 before them.

Councillor Prue Bray said: “It is absolutely useless to have data from quarter 2 (July-September 2018) when we are halfway through quarter 4.

“We may as well not bother, really.”

Councillor Pauline Helliar-Symons, the executive member for children’s services, echoed Cllr Bray’s criticisms.

She said: “I totally agree and I have been saying this for years. We are working on a new system.

“It is very frustrating.

“I think we need not take too much notice of these figures as they are four months old.”

However, the statistics showed that the council had highlighted six issues it was worried about after stats had moved in a negative direction.

These included a greater turnover of social workers from children’s services, more repeat referrals to children’s social care in the last 12 months, and fewer child protection visits within the targeted 10-day period.

Later in the meeting, officer Jim Levier presented a quality assurance report to councillors which should have been seen by members in Spring – of last year.

He said: “This is a report that should have come before you in April 2018. If you thought the other report was out of date, I’m going to disappoint you.”

The report itself lists the reasons for why it had been so heavily delayed, claiming it was several months late because of changes in the senior management of the children’s services department.

Councillors were presented with the report at a meeting of the children’s services overview and scrutiny committee on Tuesday, January 22.