Children waiting to be placed in foster care are being sent to other counties because of a huge delay in background checks into prospective carers, Croydon's social services has revealed.

Some foster children have been sent to Essex, Sussex, Surrey and Kent because the backlog of checks carried out by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) has resulted in a shortage of registered carers in the borough.

In some cases applicants have been waiting up to seven months for the CRB to carry out the necessary checks despite there being a shortage of carers in Croydon.

And placing children outside the borough can cost Croydon Council's social services double the usual £350-a-week per child.

Steve Liddicott, divisional director of children's services in Croydon, said: "Our fostering team is currently working with around 30 applicants who wish to become foster carers. And we were expecting that they would have been considered for application during September and October.

"In fact very few of them have been considered for application because they have not had back their checks from the CRB. The shortest period of time some of our applicants have waited is from three to four months and this goes up to seven months."

A spokesman for the CRB said: "On average the CRB is turning around 90 per cent of its cases within four weeks and this has been the case since June 2003."