THE MAYOR and Deputy Mayor of Tower Hamlets have welcomed a report issued by Ofsted Inspectors on how the Council and its partners investigate child sexual abuse within families.
Ofsted had previously inspected Children’s Services as a whole, and judged them “outstanding”. This was a “Joint Targeted Area Inspection”, which looks at an area in depth. It doesn’t issue a single word rating, but produces a detailed report on what is being done well and what could be improved. Ofsted inspectors were joined by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and His Majesty’s Inspector of Probation.
Their report praised the Council and partners for ensuring that children are always at the heart of investigations, with “strong communication” between partners. It reads, “Despite the significant challenges in this complex area of practice, practitioners do well in helping to promote children to feel safe and respected. Skilled relational work is often very successful in helping to enable children to express emotional needs without pressure. Staff from across partner agencies show sensitivity to the emotional impact of professional involvement, particularly during initial safeguarding activity.”
The inspection alao revealed some areas where the Council and partners can improve. This includes improving safety assessments and plans and distributing minutes of partnership meetings more quickly. The Council and its partners will now produce an action plan to implement these suggested improvements. This area of work was picked up by newly re-elected Mayor Lutfur Rahman. He said, “We will be working hard to ensure further improvement in the areas where this is needed and I am confident that we will be able to deliver on these soon.”
Deputy Mayor Cllr Maium Talukdar held the cabinet portfolio for Education and Lifelong Learning over the last four years which this inspection was looking at. He thanked staff and partners, whose good work had received “such great praise” from the inspection. He saw this inspection as one part of other inspections which had found good practice by the Council. “This latest partnership inspection is further evidence of our high-quality local practice and builds on the Outstanding rated inspecting local authority children’s services (ILACS) inspection in November 2024, and positive Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) inspection in June 2025,” he said.
The findings into this and other inspections into Children’s Services are in sharp contrast to the Ofsted inspection of Children’s Services under Labour’s John Biggs, carried out in March 2017. This report found the service “inadequate”, and the Government sent in Intervention Advisers to help the Council improve.
●Read more about it: Council celebrates outstanding Ofsted of Children’s Services Government to supervise Biggs’s Children’s Services