THE leader of Surrey County Council has this week admitted "things went badly wrong" after reading a damning report by the council's interim chief executive.

Michael Frates' report fires a series of broadsides at the county council, accusing it of a failure of leadership, having inadequately trained staff, and a culture of bullying.

Admitting the council had failings, Dr Andrew Povey has committed his team, and taxpayers' money, to widespread reforms to remedy the criticisms levied by the previous regime.

Speaking about the report released on July 14, he told the Mirror: "It makes tough and uncomfortable reading. But the public should be confident a new team is in place."

Admitting some bullying had taken place, he suggested most of the problems stemmed from a lack of training at management level, adding that if more money was needed it would be made available.

He said: "If the new chief executive tells me he needs £500,000 for training, I'm not going to say no. There has been some evidence of bullying. It's a delicate balancing act between being a tough manager and a bully."

The training and development budget at Surrey County Council represents 0.4 per cent of the total budget, a figure Mr Frates suggested was five times lower than many organisations would expect to adequately train staff.

And Dr Povey admitted people had moved on from the council after failings were exposed by an Ofsted review.

He said: "The review of children's services threw up things that were badly wrong.

"Some officers suppressed very serious information. They are no longer working for the council."

But Dr Povey now hopes people will look forward to the future rather than back at the council's past mistakes, which resulted in the Audit Commission awarding Surrey, once a four-star authority, just one star at the start of the year.

He said: "The message I want to give is one of reassurance. The report was looking back, mainly.

"I want to be judged in due course on whether we are a world class or the leading authority in the country, I want David Cameron to be coming to us for advice."

A copy of the report of the interim chief executive to the cabinet is available on the Surrey County Council website.