Council refutes MP's claims children's services interfered in police investigations

Conservative MP Scott Benton said that efforts of Lancashire police to bring an 11-year-old gang “ringleader” to justice have been “compromised” by Blackpool City Council’s children’s services, which “refuses to criminalise teenagers”.

But the council said it was "completely untrue" to suggest that there had been "any interference” from children's social care in the work of the police to address criminal acts or youth anti-social behaviour.

• Inspections Clinic: Youth offending services

• Qualifications and Training Guide: Youth justice workforce

It added: “To suggest that an 11-year-old is the ringleader of a gang of teenagers is both harmful to individual children and detracts from the very real national issue of county lines, where vulnerable children are exploited.”

Benton, who represents Blackpool South, told MPs in Parliament last week that the 11-year-old boy is responsible for “more than 80 different offences”, including assaulting a female police officer. He described him as the “ringleader” of a gang of teenagers that have committed “hundreds” of crimes and in the Talbot and Brunswick areas of Blackpool in recent weeks.

Blackpool Council said that its youth justice partnership “rightly takes a ‘child first' approach” to antisocial behaviour among children, but this does “not mean that offending is taken lightly”.

It described Benton’s comments as “uninformed” and “unhelpful” and said that there is “strong evidence” of joint working across the town.

“Whilst some serious and impactful issues remain, we have seen a drop in the number of incidents in the specific wards concerned – we will continue to work to further drive down these instances,” the council said.

The council is awaiting details of a partnership award from the government's national £300m Turnaround programme, which includes £60m for schemes to help stop youngsters falling into crime, which was due to be funded in October.