Bedford borough social workers are assessing more children than expected for an area of its size, councillors have been told.
Bedford Borough Council’s Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee yesterday (Monday) heard that 186 children were subject to a child protection plan at the end of December 2025.
A report added that 296 children were being looked after by the council at that point.
The committee members were told that the service is experiencing higher demand than anticipated.
Jonathan Churchill, the council’s service director for children’s social care, said: “We’re assessing more children than our demographics would suggest.”
He said high workloads in some teams were making it harder for social workers to carry out preventative work with families.
“[If caseloads] are higher, the workers aren’t able to do the preventive work that prevents a child in need plan from becoming a child protection plan,” he told councillors.
“Then, even worse than that, that child becomes looked after because a crisis has happened and it’s significant and, for instance, parents get arrested, and the police bring the children into their protection.”
A child in need plan can be made if a child requires extra support or if parents are struggling to meet all of their child’s needs.
A Child Protection Plan is made when a child is judged to be at risk of significant harm (a level of harm that affects the health, welfare and development of a child).
Committee chair, cllr James Valentine (Labour/Kempston West), said: “It is quite concerning because it does suggest that optimal decisions are not necessarily being made about those children.”
Cllr Hilde Hendrickx (Liberal Democrats/Riverfield) proposed that the committee recognises the hard work of children’s services and requests that the administration acts with a “sense of urgency” to provide the resources needed to get the department as assessed as “good” (it is currently ranked “requires improvement”).
This was agreed.
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
