SWINDON Council was last night told to provide concrete plans on how to rescue its floundering social services department.

An action plan was submitted by the council following last month's scathing report into the department.

But it was bounced back by the Government with the message that councillors must try harder to focus on key issues underlined in the report.

Officers rushed to complete the latest version of its action plan in time for last night's meeting of the council's scrutiny committee meeting.

At the meeting, councillors were told by the Social Service Inspectorate's Imelda Richardson that its plan was an improvement but needed to provide more specifics.

She told them: "We need to see sharper details in terms of the provision of key points.

"It is no good having a blank against a box labelled resources. More precision needs to be shown, especially in terms of time scale.

"We also need to see how this can be integrated into the business plan of this directorate."

Difficulties in recruiting staff, outdated information technology systems and lack of financial resources were all brought up by committee members as contributing to the problem.

The council has been set a deadline of July 16 to finalise its document before it can be approved by the Social Services Inspectorate and the Audit Commission.

And it will have to do it without the leadership of the department director Marie Seaton, who is taking her annual leave over this crucial period.

The three main priorities inspectors have urged the council to focus on are:

Improving corporate governance and demonstrating leadership.

Overall coherence and sustainability for adult services.

Creating a learning culture at the council.

There are also 35 other areas outlined as secondary priorities.

The review of social services uncovered major weaknesses in the department and judged prospects for improvement to be poor.

And inspectors want to see significant improvements by November or it will intervene further.

It followed an earlier attack of standards by a Government review which gave Swindon social services a zero star rating for failing to deliver services to the most vulnerable in society.