Bury Council’s lead for children and young people admits it may be a decade before its services receive a good rating from the education watchdog but says proposals to improve the service are 'ambitious'.

Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Cllr Lucy Smith said it may be 10 to 12 years before Bury Children’s Services are judged as ‘good’ by the government’s education watchdog, Ofsted.

The cabinet met to discuss proposals to restructure children’s services following a report  last year in which it receieved an 'inadequate' rating by Ofsted inspectors. 

The proposals, which were accepted by the cabinet, pledges an additional investment of £2.633m to fund around 57 new full-time equivalent jobs in the department.

Cllr Smith admitted that in line with what had been observed in neighbouring local authorities, she predicts it will be at least 10 years until services fulfil requirements for a 'good' rating. 

She said: “We have to tell the truth about how long it’s going to take to come out of the place where in with children’s services.

“Looking at other authorities you’re talking at least 10-12 years before we’re even touching, or can touch a good, that is just how long it’s going to take to sort some of this.”

She added the proposals were, “a much-needed restructure of our current children’s services in light of the Ofsted report last year and in the guidance of our new independent improvement board.”

“It costs a lot and its ambitious but its what’s needed to be done.”

The proposals set out a transformation of children’s services in two phrases, with the first phase focusing on early years, social work, care leavers and placement sufficiently.

Councillors admitted that filling just shy of 60 required roles within the service, 'wouldn’t happen overnight'.

Conservative leader Cllr Russell Bernstein said: “I think there will always be questions raised about how we’ve allowed the situation to get to where it is, when you see a report that has a restructure of close on 60 people, I’m tempted to say that’s not actually a restructure, it’s actually a re-build and that’s clearly what’s needed.

“Logistically filling 60 posts is going to be very difficult, that’s not something we can do overnight.

He added the council must be “brave enough to make that clear so the communities out there, the people looking towards us can actually understand that.”

Since the publication of Ofsted’s report, the council established an improvement plan and an improvement board that is independently chaired by a Department for Education advisor.

Proposals for phase two of the transformation will follow.