The proportion of children in England and Wales subject to care proceedings who are having to wait more than a year to have their case resolved has increased more than 17-fold in the last seven years, a watchdog has found.
The average duration of proceedings brought by local authorities to protect a child from harm (known as public law cases) was 36 weeks last year, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). In 2014 the government set a time limit of 26 weeks but it has never been met.
