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The new legal duty on agencies to co-operate may be unenforceable, a leading social services lawyer has warned.

Chris Webb-Jenkins, a partner at Midlands law firm Browne Jacobson, questioned whether "a duty to co-operate means very much in legal terms" when he addressed a child protection conference last week.

He said that, if an agency rejected a council's instruction, he was uncertain whether it could be forced to co-operate under the notion of duty.

The Children Act 2004 requires agencies, including youth offending teams, the police and primary care trusts, to co-operate to improve children's well-being.


A Department for Education and Skills spokesperson said: "It would not have been appropriate, nor do we think it necessary, to give local authorities the power to give directions to other statutory bodies.

"But where local agreement cannot be reached and services are failing to meet children's needs, the act includes powers for government to intervene in education and children's social care services. Agencies also have powers to intervene in non-local authority services for children."

Chris Waterman, director of the Confederation of Education and Children's Services Managers, said he hoped the new inspection regime would rein in schools concerned only about academic results.


"Hopefully, some schools will soon be on special measures for not being inclusive," he said.

The five outcomes the government wants agencies, including schools, to achieve for children are: staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and economic well-being. The new school inspection process comes into effect in September.

Waterman said he would be interested in seeing the Ofsted report of an inspection of a grammar school where 99.9 per cent of pupils were doing well academically but where there were no child protection procedures in place.

"That will be the acid test on them [Ofsted] measuring schools on the outcomes," he said.