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Manchester Council has confirmed it has no intention of establishing a children's trust, despite the key role set out for trusts in the children's green paper Every Child Matters.

Manchester was "not planning to join up in a formal way at this point" said Pauline Newman, the council's director of children, families and social care.

"At this stage, what we are doing is implementing a series of changes to the way we work with our partners which don't require us to become a children's trust," she said.


But children's minister Margaret Hodge told a London conference on rethinking children's services this week that every local authority would be expected to establish a children's trust - preferably by 2006 - but that it would be "wrong" to legislate on the issue at the moment.

"We will expect all of you to have children's trusts in place, I hope as early as 2006, although we recognise that you want some flexibility around dates," Hodge said.

Manchester Council has set itself a deadline of March 2005 for establishing teams that bring together a range of professionals from education, health and social services.


Newman said the aim was to focus on establishing these multi-agency teams "rather than focus on making organisations formally join together", although there may be "an element of formal joining up", such as pooled budgets and protocols.

She said the council had made it clear in its response to the green paper that it wanted local flexibility and to be able to carry on with its current developments.

Association of Directors of Social Services president Andrew Cozens said that directors had consistently called for local flexibility.