Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart and Coun Mike BawdenONE of the country's top councillors is to mentor the leader of Swindon Council.

And other members of the authority will also be twinned with mentors at the highly-rated Kent County Council in a bid to help Swindon improve.

Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the leader of Kent Council and chairman of the Local Government Association will be on hand to offer advice and guidance to Coun Mike Bawden and his team.

The mentoring arrangement comes as a £3.6million deal to rescue Swindon's failing social services department was finally signed with Kent.

The three-year partnership aims to improve the social services department from a zero-rated service to a two-star department by the end of the contract.

Kent's social services is rated with the top three-star status and the council as a whole is graded "excellent" while Swindon is "weak".

Coun Bawden is delighted that Sir Bruce-Lockhart has agreed to help Swindon.

"The leader of Kent County Council has agreed to be my mentor," Coun Bawden said.

"If I have a problem I can go to him to talk it through. We need people to turn to.

"There is a real relationship developing between the administration at Kent and the administration in Swindon and between the officer teams in Kent and Swindon.

"They are totally committed to helping us and we are totally committed that it will help.

"We are determined that we are going to drive Swindon up the batting order in terms of its performance."

Swindon's other cabinet members and the chief executive have all been paired up with their counterparts in Kent.

The arrangement emerged as Kent started to help Swindon with its social services department.

Work, which includes help with financial management, recruitment and child protection services, started in October last year but the final contract has only just been signed.

Now the contract is official, Swindon will receive £1m from the Government to fund the partnership.

The council will contribute the other £2.6million to the scheme.

Coun Bawden said: "It's no secret that 18 months ago we had real problems with the way our social services department was run.

"Since then we have made enormous progress and have addressed a huge number of the problems, for which I thank the staff.

"There is still much to do and the pace of change was not fast enough, therefore we decided we needed to do something radical to improve our capacity to accelerate the rate of improvement.

"The deal with Kent County Council will provide that solution."

Coun Ian Dobie, the lead member for social services, added: "If we need help, where better to turn than

to a council that is rated by the Government as excellent and has the top three-star grading for its social services?"

Sir Bruce-Lockhart, who visited Swindon to sign the social services deal, said: "We are delighted to be able to help Swindon. I am sure it is going to be a productive partnership."

Isabel Field