SIR Bill Wiggin’s latest tirade against the previous Green/ Independent Council on the state of Herefordshire’s children’s services appears to be ill-directed (Rishi Sunak to discuss Herefordshire children's services, March 20).

The root cause for the current issues pre-date the 2019-2023 Green/Independent administration that Sir Bill Wiggin is so keen to blame at every opportunity.

Previous to that short-lived council, the Conservatives had been in power for over 10 years.

ALSO READ:

Any genuine research would show him that the problems with Herefordshire’s children’s services go back to the previous Conservative government, under the current leader.

In March 2018, Herefordshire Council was criticised by a High Court judge, Mr Justice Keehan, for child care. Back then, the judge said the (Conservative) council had caused “dreadful failures” in the handling of children in its care.

He said he had never before encountered a situation in which a council had “so seriously and serially failed to address the needs of the children in its care, and so seriously misused, and indeed abused” its statutory powers.

What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

The judge said bosses had been too slow to ask family court judges to take control of cases and make long-term decisions about children’s living arrangements. The judge had said the document “made very grim reading”.

The director of children’s services attempted to prevent publication of the local authority’s name. One of the reasons he gave was that that adverse publicity would be damaging to the council.

If Sir Bill is genuinely keen for ITV to make a film on Herefordshire’s children’s services (Talking Point, February 8) I hope he makes sure it covers the situation in 2018 under the Conservative administration.

ANDREW MORAWIECKI

Breinton