Members of Powys County Council’s Cabinet were unaware of issues in children’s services before a damning CSSIW report was published almost a year ago.

This is the conclusion of an independent report into children’s services concentrating on an independent audit report of July 2016.

But official opposition leader Cllr James Gibson-Watt believes that there are still “many unanswered” questions.

Council leader Cllr Rosemarie Harris ordered the investigation earlier this year after councillors on all sides of the chamber had called for a post-mortem into how the service got into such a mess.

An audit report produced by consultants Peopletoo in July 2016 looked at a sample of eight cases as part of the investigation.

They highlighted serious concerns about the management of cases and the care the children and young people were receiving.

The independent review, which finished last month, was headed by Nigel Brinn, Powys County Council’s director of environment.

This latest report concentrates on the Peopletoo report asking the question who knew what and when.

The report says the Peopletoo report was submitted directly to the strategic director, the head of service and the interim head of service on 20 July, 2016.

A series of meetings took place with senior departmental officers in July and August.

Notes from these show that the report and what action to take was discussed, but there was no reference to the work after August 2016.

Mr Brinn said: “The change of personnel in children’s services is considerable to the extent that no-one in their senior management team meeting of 9 August is still employed by the council, neither are any of the chief officers who were directly involved.”

Cllr Harris said: “It does exonerate the Cabinet that we knew nothing of [the Peopletoo] report before then.

“The audit report is for operational management, they are done all the time so an audit check would not normally be expected to get into the political arena.”

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition tomorrow