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Failing to read files before strategy meetings or supervision sessions was common practice and was condoned by senior management, key members of the North Tottenham investigation and assessment team told the inquiry last week.

Team manager Angella Mairs (currently suspended) and former senior practitioner turned practice manager Rose Kozinos, who resigned in June, admitted to the inquiry chairperson that they had regularly breached Haringey's child protection guidelines on case recording by not reading files.

But they insisted that senior managers were aware that guidelines were not followed in practice and that this was a consequence of insufficient resources.

"We did not read files before we went into supervision sessions," said Kozinos. "This was something endorsed by senior management."

Kozinos added that to go into strategy meetings with only a vague briefing or less was not unusual, but agreed with Laming that this was "not a very effective system".

Kozinos chaired both strategy meetings relating to Victoria's case. She and Mairs each had one supervision session with Victoria's social worker Lisa Arthurworrey. Neither of them read Victoria's file at any time before the eight-year-old's death.

Haringey's guidelines were also flaunted in relation to where strategy meetings were held and who was eligible to chair them, and in terms of agreeing time scales for actions and discussing the need for reviews.

Kozinos accepted that it was contrary to guidelines to fail to discuss a review and for a senior practitioner to chair strategy meetings, but again added that both were "standard practice". Similarly she admitted that, as with Victoria's case, strategy meetings "did not always happen in the hospital" when the child concerned was a patient.

When shown Haringey's area child protection committee handbook, Kozinos admitted that she had "never seen it before". Mairs confessed that she and her team were "not that familiar" with the handbook, despite its intended purpose as a tool for child care professionals.

Mairs rejected allegations by Arthurworrey that she had removed pages from Victoria's file after her death. She told the inquiry that she had never denied closing the case so there would have been "no reason and no purpose" to act in such a way. "I would never do something like that. I do not accept it whatsoever," she said.

Mairs also denied that she had directed Arthurworrey to prepare a provisional closing summary "without proper reference to the case file and before an adequate assessment of Victoria's needs could be carried out".