Council chiefs have vowed to complete the turnaround of Calderdale’s previously “failing” children’s services department.

Back in 2010 Children’s Services was slammed as “inadequate” by independent inspectors and Government monitoring was put in place.

Since then council bosses have carried out a massive overhaul of the service, which looks after vulnerable children and youngsters in care and foster homes.

Now the latest Ofsted inspection has lifted Calderdale’s rating to “requires improvement”, effectively a “satisfactory” verdict.

Government monitoring is likely to end later this year but Clr Colin Raistrick, Cabinet member for children’s services, and Stuart Smith, director for children and young people’s services, insist the improvement will continue.

“Historically we have been very poor,” said Clr Raistrick. “But there has been a major culture change and this is a huge step forward.

“Previously we were at the bottom end of ‘inadequate’ and now we are at the top end of ‘requires improvement’. This is a journey and we are going in the right direction.”

Ofsted inspectors gave the council a clean bill of health on all but adoption.

The report said between 2011 and 2014 children waited an average of 742 days from coming into care to being placed for adoption – 114 days longer than the national average.

The report, conducted over four weeks between January and February this year, said there had been a “slight deterioration” with the average wait now 746 days.

New procedures had been put in place but had not had time to take effect.

Clr Raistrick said one or two exceptional cases had skewed the figures but there was no room for complacency.

“We accept the verdict but we are being punished for not cheating when other local authorities may not have played by the same rules,” he said.

Mr Smith said the authority had been praised by inspectors for how it deals with child sexual exploitation.

A system called The Net ensured the council and police were alerted to warning signs such as children being absent from school or going missing from home.

Every morning at 10am there was a meeting between social workers and police to share information.