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Council chief executives should intervene personally when services are at risk of not reaching acceptable standards, according to the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Mangers in response to Lord Laming's report, writes Amy Taylor.

Solace believes the role of council chief executives includes responsibility to put systems and resources in place to ensure that all services are maintained at an acceptable standard and they should intervene if necessary.

This view supports Lord Laming's criticisms of Gurbux Singh, chief executive of Haringey council when Victoria Climbie's case was being handled by the authority, for feeling "able to distance himself from these failures".

Solace also believes chief executives are responsible for ensuring that they have the "right people in the right places" to provide high quality services, and it is acceptable that they should be held accountable with others for performance in all of these areas.

This further echoes Laming's criticisms of Singh in his report: "As chief executive, Mr Singh carried overall responsibility for the way in which the council operated and performed. If there was a gap between local policies and practice it was exactly his job to know about it, to keep his members informed and to take timely and corrective action."

A key point made in the report is that councils did not take action against managers while frontline workers were disciplined or even dismissed. The two most senior social workers at the time of Victoria's death, director of social services Mary Richardson and her assistant Carol Wilson, have stayed in their new jobs as director of Hackney and Waltham Forest social services respectively.

Health secretary Alan Milburn backed up Laming's criticism of "the breathtaking unwillingness of some of the most senior people in these agencies to accept that they were in any way accountable for these failures".