Rise in complex cases pushes children’s safeguarding into high-risk category

Slough Borough Council’s ability to safeguard children and young people has become ‘high risk’ due to a rise in demand, a report has shown.

A corporate risk report breaks down a local authority’s ability to manage infrastructure and deliver statutory services such as adult social care and temporary accommodation.

The second quarter report for 2025/26 was presented to the Audit and Corporate Governance Committee on Wednesday (November 12).

William Green, the council’s interim risk manager, told councillors that the risks ‘remained stable’.

Slough now has 13 corporate risks, with nine being considered ‘high risks’ and four medium risks. In the first quarter of the year, there were 14 risks.

Mr Green said: “If I look at where we were twelve months ago and where we are now, there is a massive improvement with regard to identifying risks and also managing them.”

But he added that since the last quarter, two areas have ‘deteriorated’: safeguarding children and young people and the council’s ability to dispose of assets from its general fund.

Safeguarding children and young people has become a ‘high risk’ due to an increase in demand from high-cost complex cases, as well as the settlement needed to cover the service being above budget.

Slough has to dispose of assets that are no longer profitable for the borough, to help cover the cost of other departments and generate revenue funding.

But Mr Green said that the council’s asset disposal is ‘behind schedule’.

Other ‘high risk’ areas for the council include a failure to deliver safe temporary accommodation or enough Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) support.

Councillor Subhash Mohindra (Con, Upton) said that the temporary accommodation risk was ‘quite serious in fact’ because the costs of the service keep increasing.

Mr Green said: “This risk has been driven by a loss of company knowledge and resource wise, trying to deal with a large number of people.

“It’s not a position that [officers] are happy with. [Temporary accommodation] is going to remain high until we get to a position where we have the right stock [of housing].”

The report said that Slough’s delivery of adult social care at a market sustainable level has improved, going from red to amber, because of a £2million fund from the council’s savings for controlling risks.

But the overall demands on adult social care are still not being met within the budget. The report said that this remains a ‘high risk’ because of a forecast £6.7million overspend.

Cllr Mark Instone (Lab, Langley Foxborough) said that the report seems to look at corporate risks ‘in isolation’ without comparing Slough to other local authorities.

Cllr Instone said: “Is there any benchmarking against similar local authorities to see perhaps where we stand?”

Mr Green said that at the moment, there is no comparison between Slough and other councils.

But Ian O’Donnell, the council’s executive director of corporate resources, agreed with Cllr Instone and said that this would be ‘very helpful’.

Mr O’Donnell said: “What you would be likely to see [is that] a lot of councils will be facing the same kinds of problems, the overall financial constraints within the sector.”