Council leaders have set a target of two years to improve Gloucestershire’s children’s services to a good standard.
Ofsted inspectors said last month that Gloucestershire County Council has made significant progress since their previous inspection in 2017 when the local authority was judged to be inadequate.
The latest Ofsted report indicates that the county’s children’s services require improvement to be good.
Inspectors say there has been a relentless drive for improvement by both senior leaders and staff but services for children are not consistently good.
Children’s safeguarding and early years cabinet member Stephen Davies (C, Hardwicke and Severn) told the council meeting on May 18 that the objective “remains to get good and beyond.”
He said: “As a result we are developing an improvement plan. We cannot get to good until Ofsted comes back and inspect us again which will probably be in at least two years time.
“We are looking to achieve good when Ofsted should return. This is a two year journey to get to good and we need to build that into the plan.”
He said the Ofsted report shows they need to provide a much more consistent service. And Cllr Colin Hay (LD, All Saints and Oakley) said the council needed to be providing good services.
“We need to know where our ambitions are and I really hope that improvement plan says where we want to be but more importantly how soon we want to get there. What our milestones are to get to good and excellent.
“We need to get to good as soon as we can.”
