Education Secretary Damian Hinds and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government James Brokenshire have written to the leader of Northamptonshire County Council after a "focused" check on provision by Ofsted found significant deterioration in services in the past two years.
Children's services in Northamptonshire were rated as "inadequate" in 2014, but were upgraded to "requires improvement" following Ofsted's most recent full inspection in 2016.
The council had been planning to launch a limited company to run children's services as part of efforts to improve provision, but abandoned the plans in August due to uncertainty around the future of the council prompted by a financial crisis that resulted in emergency spending limits being imposed. The Department for Education had committed £4m towards the cost of the children's services company.
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