Reading Borough Council received an inadequate rating from Ofsted and has since been criticised for slow progress

Councillor Jan Gavin was asked if changes were happening quickly enough to prevent children's services being taken away by education watchdogs.

Reading Borough Council's service was branded inadequate following a visit in August and a letter published on March 24 slammed the council for taking 'too long' to make improvements and failing to address the needs of children.

The report reads: "Attempts to implement fundamental improvements required to provide consistently safe and effective services for children and families in Reading are taking too long.

"Too many children who are the subject of 'children in need' plans are not visited within stipulated timescales, well over a third of home visits are overdue and a similar proportion of children have no written plan.

"Performance management arrangements, while improving, have not yet had an impact on improving key areas of performance. The absence of a permanent team manager layer is likely to further impede attempts to implement tight and accountable ownership performance.

"Given the scale and breadth of inadequate practice identified at the inspection, the introduction of a revised internal quality assurance system has been too slow."

Councillor Rob White asked the lead councillor if improvements were happening quickly enough to prevent children's services being taken away from the council.

Cllr Gavin replied: "We accept the position captured in the Ofsted monitoring visit. We agree the improvements required by children's services have been too slow.

"We do though recognise some progress has been made and that Ofsted found there are no children at immediate risk or requiring an urgent response.

"It is reasonable to be disappointed with the pace of previous progress but we should take confidence that this evidence suggests there is a firm foundation on which to gain greater momentum."

It was the second monitoring visit made by Ofsted since the council's services were judged inadequate.

Inspectors did praise a marked improvement in the operational management of missing children since the inspection last year.