Interim Chief Executive's handover report heavily critical of Tory led County Council

6.14.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 27th Jul 2009

The outgoing Interim Chief Executive of Surrey County Council, Mr Michael Frater, has issued a damning hand-over report to his successor about this Tory-led council. His report describes the council as arrogant, bureaucratic, lacking in vision, direction and strategy, obsessed with itself, inefficient and unsophisticated, with a culture of blame and bullying plus a lack of leadership - and in denial about its own shortcomings.

Last year the Audit Commission downgraded Surrey County Council from three stars to one star out of a possible four, after critical reports by education inspector OFSTED into children's services and from care inspectors CSCI into adults social care. However, Mr Frater stated that it was "delusional and misleading" to suggest that the only problems were in social services. "This is a whole system failure, which has first become evident in children's and adult services because of the extent of inspection and regulation that these services experience", he said.

The leader of the Liberal Democrat group Cllr Hazel Watson said: "This damning report is an accurate assessment of the state of the council. Clearly, Surrey council tax payers money is being wasted on costly bureaucracy. It shows that the under the leadership of the Conservative administration, the county council has lost its way and forgotten that it is there to provide services for Surrey residents."