NEARLY 550 children in care in the region are living more than 20 miles from home – despite Government pledges to tackle the problem.

And there may be many more, because council chiefs say they do not know the circumstances of a further 250 children in its care, a watchdog has revealed.

Now the National Audit Office (NAO) has questioned whether ministers are failing in their promises to “improve placement stability”, partly by getting children closer to home.

Its report has raised the alarm over 43 per cent of all children’s homes being in the North West or West Midlands, with relatively few in the North-East and North Yorkshire.

It concluded: “The department [for education] is aware of the mismatch, but does not play a role in managing the market.”

The statistics show that by far the largest proportion of children placed more than 20 miles away from home are in the care of North Yorkshire County Council (165).

That proportion of 34 per cent is exceeded, across England, only by Cumbria (41 per cent), Lincolnshire (35 per cent), Cambridgeshire (37 per cent) and Suffolk (36 per cent).

In this region, the authorities with the next highest figures are Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland (both 16 per cent), followed by York (14 per cent) and Newcastle (ten per cent).

However, across the North-East and North Yorkshire, the majority of children in care are being fostered (3,315) rather than living in homes (545), the figures show.

They are revealed as part of an NAO inquiry that warns children in care do less well in school than their peers and are more likely to experience problems in later life.

Only 15 per cent achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, including maths and English, in 2012-13, compared with 58 per cent of children not in care.

Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, which shadows the NAO, said ministers were unable to point to improvements.

Across England, the proportion of children placed more than 20 miles from home in 2012-13 is the same as in every year since 2009.

She added: “It is disappointing that the department for education cannot show that it has met its objectives to improve the quality of care and the stability of placements for children.”

But Edward Timpson, the children’s minister, attacked the report as “fundamentally flawed”, insisting that, since 2010, children in care were doing better at school, with absences down.

He said: “I will always be the first to say that more needs to be done, but this report ignores the very real progress that has been made in transforming the life chances of children in care.”