Council receives lowest possible rating for adult safeguarding

Liberal Democrat councillors have issued a scathing response to the Care Quality Commission’s report on adult social care in Warrington, condemning ‘indefensible’ failures in adult safeguarding services. As the council receives the lowest possible rating for safeguarding, our committee members claim they were not given the full picture.

The commission exposed systemic failings, including the automatic closure of safeguarding alerts, failure to track referrals, and a senior leadership team unaware of these risks until national inspectors intervened. Although the council claims to have reviewed 1300 cases with ‘no harm’ found, the commission was clear that the safeguarding system itself was structurally unsafe.

This is a failure of leadership and governance. When vulnerable residents are being failed this badly, and the council’s own systems don’t even spot it, something is deeply broken.

We also criticised the failure of the Protecting the Most Vulnerable policy committee to challenge or even discuss these serious issues. A review of the committee’s most recent agenda shows no dedicated item on safeguarding failures despite the timing of the CQC inspection, only a brief high-level reference to adult social care performance, with no mention of referral triage or alert closures and a forward plan that made no provision for scrutiny of the crisis.

Cllr Sharon Harris, Lib Dem member of the Protecting the Most Vulnerable committee, said: Since joining the committee in 2024, reports that have been presented have been generally positive, celebrating the good work that goes on in Warrington, so it comes as a great surprise to read this report which paints a completely different picture. This makes me question the transparency and accuracy of the information presented in committee meetings, effectively making challenge and scrutiny almost impossible.

Cllr Laura Booth, the other Lib Dem member of the same committee, added: As a committee member, I was never given the full picture. Safeguarding was on the April agenda, and a verbal report was given to the committee by the Director of Social Care. That we didn’t get the full picture is a failure of transparency and political leadership. We can’t protect the vulnerable if information is being withheld or filtered.

Cllr Graham Gowland, Lib Dem spokesperson for Community, Culture & Leisure, commented: This report is a wake-up call for the whole Council. Protecting vulnerable adults must be our absolute priority, and we need urgent reforms to ensure oversight and accountability at every level.

We are now calling for an urgent independent review into scrutiny and governance failures and full transparency on how and why the safeguarding system collapsed. The Council’s claim that 1300 cases show no harm is cold comfort when the entire system was found to be unsafe. It shouldn’t take an inspection to reveal all this. It’s time for change and Warrington deserves accountability, not cover-up.