Children's services at the council which failed to prevent Daniel Pelka's murder have been criticised for not improving quickly enough.

An Ofsted report, published yesterday after a three-week inspection earlier this year, found Coventry City Council children's services to be "inadequate overall."

Inspectors concluded that the department's management, leadership and governance were inadequate.

The Department for Education (DfE) said that while it recognised that the council had made improvements since the publication of a damning serious case review last year, the pace of change was still too slow.

Measures already carried out by the council were "simply not good enough" it said.

The DfE stated that it was considering what "further actions" would improve the situation, but did not specify what this might entail.

Four-year-old Daniel died of a head injury in March 2012 after a campaign of abuse by his mother Magdelena Luczak and his stepfather Mariusz Krezolek, both of whom were jailed for a minimum of 30 years for his murder.

The report was also damning in its assessment of the work of the Coventry Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB), saying it was "not demonstrating it has effective arrangements in place to discharge its statutory duties."

LSCB chairwoman Amy Weir said she was "disappointed" with the inspection's conclusion but accepted that more still needed to be done, particularly in terms of strengthening the way agencies worked together on keeping youngsters safe.

Ofsted said caseloads for social workers were too high and that the council had already had time to tackle the problem because a separate review by the Local Government Association identified the issue in March last year.

Coventry City Council said: "The report published today found that case loads for social workers are too high.

"Although social work teams have been increased, a dramatic increase in workloads - 46 per cent over the last two years - mean that case loads remain too high."