GOVERNMENT officials spent £66,000 of taxpayers’ money hiring private consultants to help a North-East council improve its failing children’s services, The Northern Echo can reveal.

• Comment: The public's right to know

London-based Red Quadrant began working with Darlington Borough Council in September after an Ofsted report labelled children’s services provided by the authority as ‘inadequate’ with management failings so bad that children were placed at risk. The partnership will continue until October.

Suzanne Joyner, the newly-appointed director of children and adult services at Darlington Borough Council, pictured below, said the authority would seek to build on improvements already made since the inspection last year.

The Northern Echo:

Ms Joyner said: “Our priority is to build on the work and improvements that are already underway to ensure the best possible start in life for all children and young people across the borough.

“We have a plan in place and are continuing to work closely with the DfE to ensure the improvements required happen.”

Ms Joyner said town hall resources have been ‘realigned’ to enable social workers to focus more on face-to-face work with children and families.

She added: “We have reviewed a number of practices, including quality assurance processes and have regular audits to monitor the standard of our work and ensure continued improvement.

“A training programme to consolidate good practice and improve the skills of our staff is now underway, as well as a new IT system to make recording and tracking of work simpler and less time-consuming, which will be introduced in the coming months.”

Information released following The Northern Echo’s request under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, highlighted the five-figure cost of hiring Red Quadrant. Its brief includes:

• Assessing and reviewing the quality of the improvement plan in response to the “inadequate” Ofsted report;

• Assessing and challenging the purpose, pace and impact of the proposed improvement activity;

• Assessing the council’s ability to deliver sustained improvements;

• Undertaking a review of leadership and governance and providing recommendations for improvement;

• Chairing meetings of the improvement board.

The DfE eventually revealed the cost of hiring Red Quadrant, after initially responding to the FoI request by saying information may be exempt on the grounds of commercial interest.

It asked for more time to consider the FoI request, which was submitted last November and ultimately revealed that the £66,000 had been drawn from its “intervention and improvement programme”.

A DfE spokesman added: “Nothing is more important than the protection of children. The council has been judged as failing by Ofsted and this is clearly not good enough.

“We will not hesitate to take tough action where councils are failing children, with more than 30 securing real improvement as a direct result of our intervention since 2010.”

Dia Chakravarty, political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will want to keep a very close eye on how this grant is spent and whether it has the desired impact in rescuing the council’s failing services.”

Red Quadrant has not responded to our calls.