Cheshire East's children's department doesn't have enough cash to fund the improvement plan to bring its services up to standard – and doesn't know where the money is going to come from.

That was the stark warning from the head of adult services to councillors last night.

The council was issued with an improvement notice after its children's services was rated inadequate by Ofsted earlier this year.

The full council agreed the improvement plan put forward by officers at its meeting in July.

But at last night's (Monday) meeting of the children and families committee it became apparent some of the £2m earmarked for the plan had to be used elsewhere.

Conservative group leader Janet Clowes said that, at a previous meeting, her colleague Cllr Jos Saunders had identified that some of that money was only available because it had not been spent on care placements.

Cllr Clowes said: "However we notice in this set of payments today that those care placement costs have risen again.

"Can you please tell us how that will impact on the monies that are now available?"

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Helen Charlesworth-May, executive director of adults, said: "We recognise that there is a financial gap in terms of what we were expecting to spend versus what we are now spending.

"We don't have an answer to that problem yet – that will need to be a council-wide solution, given the priority for improvement in children's services and given the extent of investment we are going to have to make."

Mrs Charlesworth May, who was standing in at the meeting because Cheshire East currently does not have an executive director of children's services, added: "We are working through, what does that look like?

"And in addition, we are working through, how does that align with the MTFS [budget] process?

"But at this moment in time, we don't have an answer as to where the money will come from to fund that."

Conservative councillors have continually questioned whether the allocated £2m – when children's services did have the money – was going to be enough.

At full council in July, Cllr Clowes said the Department for Education had identified that where a council has an inadequate rating it can cost anything from £5m to £15m to solve the problem.