Social services in Luton have been given a 'thumbs up' from Government inspectors.

A report by the Social Services Inspectorate said they were impressed by the number of improvements made to services in the past three years since the council became a unitary authority.

The report highlights "a genuine and commendable" commitment to improving services and strengthening links between the health service and other agencies.

Inspectors pointed to "impressive" improvements in the standards and procedures of its children and family services and the "commendable" use of independent investigators to look at complaints.

The report said: "Overall, social services had made very good progress in achieving quality improvements to services in terms of cost and efficiency in all service areas and were to be congratulated on this."

Councillor Zulfqar Ahmed, executive member for social inclusion, said: "We are very pleased with this report, particularly as we only took over responsibility for local social services in 1997.

"There are, of course, still some areas where we need to make improvements but we are working hard on developing and improving quality services which are focused on the service users."