A council has lashed out after inspectors criticised its work with young offenders.

Brighton and Hove City Council said Inspectorate of Probation results “incorrectly distort” the risk posed by young criminals being managed by the city's youth offending team.

The inspectors - who rated the team's work below average in all areas - said their methods are “tried and tested”.

Youth offending teams are made up of council and health workers and probation and police officers, and are responsible for assessing young offenders and finding programmes to try to steer them away from crime.

In Brighton and Hove it works with more than 350 young people and their families referred by police and the courts.

Four of those are managed using rules for the most dangerous offenders living in the community.

The inspectorate's report, published this week, analysed a selection of cases to see if its work was being done properly.

The inspectors found work to reduce the risk of harm posed by offenders to the public was only done well enough in 55% of cases it looked at - compared with a national average of 63%.

Work to safeguard the young person's welfare and to prevent them reoffending in future was also found to be below average in quality.

Assistant chief inspector Julie Fox said: “Overall, we consider this a mixed set of findings with risk of harm to others requiring particular attention.

“We anticipate that implementing the recommendations in this report will make a significant contribution to the improvement of practice.”

A statement from the council hit back, saying its service provided “positive and creative outlets” for young people and “groundbreaking services” for families.

It said the results of the inspection “penalise” the council for not screening for urban problems like gun and knife crime found on a greater scale in areas like London.

He said: “This report uses results that incorrectly distort the risk of harm to the public in Brighton and Hove.

“The inspection has highlighted areas of practice which need improvement and we are currently working on our improvement plan which will include: identifying the most effective ways to prevent clients offending, improving our analysis of risk and ensuring young clients are more involved in drawing up intervention plans.”

Mrs Fox said: “We do not assess the 'Risk of Harm to the public in Brighton and Hove'.

“What we do, is assess how well work to minimise the risk of harm to the public was carried out.

“We look at a representative sample of youth offending cases and ask general questions in relation to nationally accepted expectations about how to assess and manage the Risk of Harm to others'.”