Andrew Carter returns to Bromley as Director of Children, Education and Families. He inherits an outstanding Ofsted rating and a £57.6m schools deficit.

Bromley Council has appointed Andrew Carter as its permanent Director of Children, Education and Families. The council announced it on 16 September, and said the appointment follows an earlier recruitment exercise and the planned retirement of the current director (London Borough of Bromley).

Mr Carter is returning to the borough where he began his career in 1994. The council says he has held senior roles overseeing children and education services at a number of local authorities. It does not name the retiring director or give Mr Carter a start date.

Councillor Jonathan Andrews, the executive councillor for children, education and families, said he was “delighted to formally welcome Andrew back home to our Borough”, and pointed to “a range of legislative changes announced by Government, including in Children’s Social Care, and the SEND Reform plans and wider SEND matters”.

Mr Carter said he was “delighted to be returning to Bromley and the opportunity to collaborate with elected members, children, families, partners and colleagues, to continually improve outcomes, and enable all children to thrive”.

What he is taking on: the best inspection record in the borough’s history

The council’s release says children’s services were “judged to be outstanding in the most recent Ofsted inspection”. The outstanding judgement is real, and it is unusual. The description is not quite right, and the fuller record is more interesting than the release makes it.

Ofsted inspected Bromley’s children’s services from 13 to 17 November 2023 and published its report on 12 January 2024. It graded the council outstanding on all four judgements and outstanding overall (Ofsted, inspection of Bromley local authority children’s services):

  • the impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families
  • the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection
  • the experiences and progress of children in care
  • the experiences and progress of care leavers

“Children in the London Borough of Bromley receive exceptionally strong services,” the report opens. It left one thing to improve: continuing to strengthen practice for children whose risks are rising towards the pre-proceedings stage of the public law outline.

Seven years earlier the same service was rated the opposite. Ofsted inspected Bromley from 11 April to 5 May 2016 and judged children’s services inadequate across the board, including leadership, management and governance (Ofsted, 2016 report). Six monitoring visits followed between 2017 and 2018. By the November 2018 inspection the council was good overall, with leadership already outstanding (Ofsted, 2018 report).

Timeline of Bromley children's services inspections: April to May 2016 inadequate in all areas; November 2018 good overall with leadership outstanding; November 2023 outstanding in all four judgements and overall; September 2024 youth justice service rated outstanding by HM Inspectorate of Probation; January 2025 joint targeted area inspection, ungraded, six areas to improve
Graphic by Bromley Online, from Ofsted and HM Inspectorate of Probation reports.

The most recent inspection was in 2025, and it is ungraded

The latest Ofsted activity in Bromley is not the 2023 inspection. A joint targeted area inspection ran from 20 to 24 January 2025, carried out by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. Its letter was published on 13 March 2025 (Ofsted JTAI letter).

A JTAI looks at how agencies work together and does not carry a grade. This one found Bromley’s safeguarding partnership “well established and effective” and said professionals “work persistently together”. It also listed six things that need to improve:

  • children’s consistent access to child protection and specialist sexual harm medicals
  • social work capacity in the council’s emergency duty team, and health staff involvement in out-of-hours strategy meetings
  • police child protection investigation team capacity to attend strategy meetings
  • the process for notifications to schools under the police-led Operation Encompass
  • communication so the right professionals receive the correct reports and decisions after referrals, strategy meetings and investigations
  • participation by staff across all agencies in multi-agency safeguarding training

The letter was addressed to Richard Baldwin as Bromley’s Director of Children’s Services.

Separately, the borough’s youth justice service was rated outstanding by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation after fieldwork in September 2024, published on 7 January 2025. Martin Jones, the Chief Inspector of Probation, said staff “know and understand their children well, and are firmly focused on helping each child to succeed”. The inspectorate made one recommendation: better training for staff on Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (HM Inspectorate of Probation).

And the money

The appointment was announced the same week as the council’s first budget check of the financial year, which went to the Executive on 16 September. Children, Education and Families is forecasting the largest overspend of any portfolio: £1,782,000 on a £98.7m budget, driven by children’s social care, special educational needs placements and social worker staffing.

Behind it sits a much bigger number. The Dedicated Schools Grant, the ring-fenced money that pays for schools and high needs provision, is projected to reach a deficit of £57,563,000 by 31 March 2027. That money cannot be moved to or from the rest of the council’s budget, and officers are working on a recovery plan with the Department for Education (Budget Monitoring 2026/27, report FSD26052). We covered that report in full in Bromley Council’s £4.6m overspend.

So the new director arrives at a service rated among the best in the country, running £1.8m over budget, and sitting on top of a schools and high needs deficit heading for £57.6m.

What it means for you

  • Nothing changes day to day for families using children’s social care, schools admissions or SEND support while the handover happens. The council has not published a start date.
  • If you are waiting on an education, health and care plan, the statutory timelines have not moved. Our piece on the Ombudsman payout over a Bromley EHC plan delay sets out what the council is required to do and what happens when it does not.
  • Local SEND information moved to a new website this month: see Bromley’s new SEND Local Offer site.
  • The JTAI’s six improvement points are the things to watch. They fall on the whole safeguarding partnership, including the police and health services, not on the council alone.

Sources