Social services in Powys no longer needs an internal board to monitor its performance because of improvements in its standards.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s cabinet meeting on Tuesday, July 6, councillors agreed changes to how the council will continue to improve its services.

A year ago the Welsh Government said it would hand over monitoring of social services and education to the council after it was satisfied with improvements seen after critical inspection reports in 2017 and 2019.

Now the council has said it is to stand down its own internal monitoring system for the social services, because it is satisfied with the level of improvement it has delivered.

Council chief executive Dr Caroline Turner said: “Any improvement arrangement should be until improvements are embedded and able to return to rely on our business as usual arrangements.

“That is the position we have reached with social services. Care Inspectorate Wales were content when they had the last improvement conference in October that we no longer needed enhanced monitoring.

“We did maintain our improvement arrangements for a few months, but we are now confident that the arrangements in the service are sufficiently robust not to need an additional layer of meetings and reports."

However, the improvement board for education is to be strengthened ahead of a crunch conference with education watchdog Estyn, in November.

Dr Turner explained that there had been improvements in the management of school funding, a new strategy to improve Additional Learning Needs (ALN) as well as stronger support for schools.

Headteachers representing secondary, primary, special school or pupil referral units would be added to the board, as would the chairman of the council's learning and skills scrutiny committee, Cllr Pete Roberts.

Dr Turner said: “This will drive even greater focus to maintain the educational improvement and should certainly put us in a good place for our next improvement conference with Estyn in November."

Dr Turner added that there had been “good improvements” with housing and a “sharper focus” will be given to highways transport and recycling, with boards remaining in place for these services.

Dr Turner added: “Scrutiny have a key role in monitoring performance and improvement, we are working with scrutiny chairs on how to strengthen it in Powys.”

Council leader, Cllr Rosemarie Harris, said that the council is now “very much on top of improvements.”