A review of Warwickshire County Council's performance in the three months from April admits several areas had been affected by Covid-19 and would take a while to improve.

Cllr Kam Kaur (Con, Bilton and Hillside), the portfolio holder for customer and transformation, explained that 12 of the key business measures (KBMs) were not on target, while another nine could not be assessed largely due to the impact of the coronavirus.

Speaking at this week's cabinet meeting, she highlighted six areas of concern including the number of children in care.

A report before the meeting explained that a number of programmes will help to reduce the numbers including increasing family group conferences, improving support to special guardians and increasing support to families.

The report added that these were due to start during 2020/21.

Cllr Jeff Morgan (Con, Bulkington and Whitestone), the portfolio holder for children's services, added: "On the number of children in care it is true that we are above the target but the important thing for me is to make sure that we have the right children in care.

"It is useful to have a target but I don't think I would want to be hung, drawn and quartered on that alone. We have seen no increase in the number of children coming into care, what seems to be happening at the moment is that they seem to be stuck and not coming out the other end which is partly a Covid thing with delays in court orders.

"There are reasons for this and I'm not terribly worried that we are a bit above target."

One of the other areas of concern was the number of sick days taken by staff and cabinet members were told that this was unlikely to improve in the short term due to Covid-19 and organisational changes.

The report outlined that the rolling average was now 10.27 days per year, down from a peak of 10.99 in April but the main reasons remained the same with absence for stress and mental health related issues accounting for more than 30 per cent of the total days lost.

The split between long-term and short-term sickness absence had also changed with an increase in the former.