WIRRAL Council’s leadership last night apologised and promised decisive action following a damning report into how the authority has been run.

Council leader Steve Foulkes admitted the authority had allowed a catalogue of failings to continue and the chief executive said the issues highlighted were “the most significant challenge facing the council”.

Cllr Foulkes also announced he would withdraw from a trip to China, scheduled to begin this weekend, for a series of meetings to sign up investors for the Wirral Waters International Trade Centre.

The report was commissioned in the light of whistleblowing allegations from former social services employee Martin Morton.

It was carried out by Anna Klonowski Associates at an estimated cost of around £250,000.

Cllr Foulkes said as the investigation proceeded “it became more and more evident that the problems were much wider and that there were serious weaknesses in the way we manage and run the council”.

Describing the council as inward and insular, the report says: “Over time, residents and service users’ needs and rights have become submerged beneath an increasingly complex set of bureaucratic machinations.

“These machinations have had a corrosive impact on the basic levels of trust that need to exist between a council, its members, staff, residents and users.”