West Sussex CC will keep control of its children's services for at least another year following improvements, the Department for Education (DfE) has said.

The council was ordered last year to place its ‘inadequate' children's services into a separate trust following a damning Ofsted review.

But the DfE has now issued a new statutory direction that said this move will be ‘paused' for at least a year after the council made enough progress in improving services.

Children's minister Vicky Ford warned: ‘It is clear that there is still much work to do to address the weaknesses identified in 2019, and bring the standard of service up to the quality that children and families in West Sussex deserve.'