BROMLEY Council has been fined £500 and ordered to pay another £8,000 after a damning report into the way social services handled a complaint.

The £500 will go to a couple whose four children were taken into care in August 1993.

And the extra £8,000 will have to be spent on the "social and educational development" of the four youngsters.

The penalties were ordered by the local government ombudsman in a report released last week.

It found maladministration causing injustice to the couple and their children.

The youngsters were taken into care following a court order in 1993.

The family had been known to the council for 10 years due to fears about the children's upbringing and non-attendance at school.

But the couple listed eight complaints about the council's actions after the children were taken into care, including:

lThe delay in giving them access to records

lFailure to take into account the children's wishes to stay with their parents

lFailure to plan and care for the children and

lInadequate contact between children and parents.

Ombudsman Edward Osmotherly said in the report: "That pain (of a court order to put the children into care) was added to by the council's failure to keep them properly informed about the children, the failure to deal properly with the question of counselling and support for the parents and the inadequacies in the investigation of their complaint."

Assistant director at Bromley social services Geoff Wilkinson said: "Any matters requiring this department's attention will be actioned once the report has received full consideration."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.