Just over a third of children in care in Medway are actually from the Towns while the rest are from other authorities, according to a report.

Medway Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board has been discussing how children from outside the area add pressure on local services and are at greater risk of anti-social behaviour, drug and alcohol use and poor standards of care and unsuitable accommodation.

Of all the children in care arrangements in Medway, only 182 are from the area while 398 are from other councils and authorities which have relocated them to the Towns.

Children from outside the area are being placed with private, independent organisations in accommodation which the council says is often unsuitable and unregulated. However, they are inexpensive and therefore attractive to other authorities which have children in need of placements but limited funds.

The report showed that 171 of the children from outside of Medway were from London boroughs, while a further 119 children were from areas under the jurisdiction of Kent County Council.

Additionally, another 28 children were the responsibility of Surrey County Council, Thurrock Council, and East Sussex County Council.

The majority of the children are over the age of 10, with 180 between the ages of 16 and 18 and 119 between 10 and 15.

The council also believes there are another 5% of children in care in Medway which the authority has not been notified of based upon local intelligence.

The report identified key areas such as education, mental health services, and hospital services as being under greater pressure because of the increase in the number of outside placements.

It also stated 46% of the children had been noted as having links to or been involved in anti-social behaviour and therefore could put increased pressure on the police.

Medway Council says it acknowledges there can be good reasons for children to be placed in care in another area, such as involvement in County Lines drug dealing and threats caused by family and local communities - however, it believes these are a minority of cases.

James Harman, who is the council’s head of children’s services commissioning, said the increased number of children from outside of Medway posed a number of issues for the authority but it also was not suitable for the children themselves.

He said: “All of those young people are entitled to all the statutory services that come within Medway, so accessing GPs, dentists, school places, social care, all of those sorts of things, so it does have that knock-on impact on our services.

“That poses challenges for us to provide support for those young people but also provides some challenges around the regulatory elements.

“The majority of those 400 young people are within a two to three-square-mile radius in the middle of Medway, in some of our most deprived areas.

“They are with providers that we would not deem as appropriate for our young people, or indeed in streets which we know from some of the evidence from our police colleagues have got other challenges, that might be linked to criminality, might be linked to vulnerable adults.

“However, if we don’t have young people placed in these premises, we have no right to visit, to oversee them, to ask them to move.

“The reason we felt this paper was pertinent was to see how we can better work together to meet some of those challenges, to support some of those young people in a better way, but also work with those other local authorities to make them aware that some of these placements are not safe.”

Councillors say they need to work co-operatively with the authorities which have placed their children in Medway because they believe the other councils see the low price of the accommodation but do not understand the poor quality.

Cllr Tracey Coombs (Lab), portfolio holder for education, said the authority had raised the issue with Kent County Council (KCC) about the quality of accommodation KCC had some of its children staying in and they were then removed but the providers then sought other authorities further afield.

She said: “We are in touch with KCC and they are in agreement with us that these providers are not providing suitable accommodation, the young people are not being properly supervised and looked after, and they remove their young people.

“But these businesses will then go look for another local authority to place their children there.

“This needs lobbying at a higher level to bring in stronger regulation and stronger support for local authorities.”

Deputy council leader Teresa Murray (Lab) criticised authorities using Medway and the low-price accommodation.

She said: “What is blatantly obvious, and not very laudable, is that the placements being provided not only are they unsuitable but they are in the cheapest properties in the most deprived areas - that is a derogation of responsibility towards those young people.

“The other authorities have got their difficulties but they should be doing better than that for their young people.”

However, Cllr Coombs added there were some small providers who were trying to give a good service, but the lack of communication between them, the authorities employing them, and Medway Council was causing problems.

Cllr Coombs continued: “We still have to do what we can for these young people, for our residents, and support these providers to become better providers, to give them better supervision, better training for their staff.

“We had a meeting a few months ago where in one area we had three providers in a small street. Each of the providers said had they known there were going to be three of them in a small street they wouldn’t have bought the houses.

“But there’s no communication, they don’t have to go to planning, there’s no way of them telling what’s already there.”

The Health and Wellbeing Board agreed the report and said it needed to accept these children were placed in Medway and so needed to be managed appropriately, but added it would engage with the authorities sending these children in order to work more co-operatively on the issue.