by political editor Paul Francis

Kent County Council's leader has described as "astonishing" a claim by his former chief executive that warnings over the state of child protection services went unheeded.

Cllr Paul Carter was responding to comments made by Peter Gilroy, in an interview in which suggested he had raised concerns about child protection in a report two years ago which were not addressed.

But the comments have angered Cllr Carter, who retorted that Mr Gilroy himself shouldered some of the responsibility.

The row follows our revelation that some 2,700 potentially vulnerable children had not been assigned a case worker at the height of the crisis in children’s services.

The revelation follows a damning Ofsted report which criticised virtually every area of the department and ordered improvements within a year.

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Although some have since been assessed and dealt with, about 1,000 remain without a social worker.

Cllr Carter said: "How Peter can say ‘Not me Gov’ I find quite astonishing.

"I think that he’s been very economical with the facts. Peter and I had some concerns at the end of 2008-09 and asked for an independent report to be carried out.

"The Safeguarding Children’s Board, with all its professionals on it but no elected members said that fundamentally, children’s services were alright."

Although the reports had flagged up that things were not as good as they could be, they had not indicated exactly how bad they had become, he added.

"I think we put too much trust in our professionals and did not have enough scepticism," said Cllr Carter.

At a full council meeting last week he said there had been a professional cover up over the state of child protection.

In a BBC interview, Mr Gilroy said: "When I raised my concerns, that was in 2009 when we did a report and even then I was starting to worry about a whole range of things that were happening.

"If you look at my report, I was concerned about the competence of senior management; I was concerned about training; I was concerned about the performance data."

Asked who had failed to listen, Mr Gilroy said: "All I can tell you is that the county council, the politicians, supported my concerns and did have 18 months to try to sort some of these things out."