THREE asylum-seeking children under the care of Thurrock Council are missing, a committee of councillors was due to be told.

In a report to the now-cancelled hidden and extreme harms prevention committee the council's strategic lead for looked after children and aftercare was due to tell councillors that the authority currently has 28 asylum-seeking children on its books – but it has lost track of three others.

News that Thurrock Council can't keep track of the children put in its care is nothing new.

In June this year Thurrock Nub News reported that two years after the problem of missing children in the borough made national headlines, in the first three months of the year there had been 105 reports of the council losing track of its young wards.

Thursday's scheduled meeting of the hidden and extreme harms prevention committee has been cancelled as a mark of respect to murdered MP Sir David Amess.

Ms Khosla's report details the origins of the children in care, from countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Sudan and Syria.

They are mostly male and aged between 15 and 17. Due to a lack of foster carers in the borough some have to be placed outside the borough.

She also details the cost to the council. Some the young people are placed in supported accommodation outside the borough, at a cost of between £800 and £1,000 a week, for which the council receives Government funding.

Cllr Barry Johnson, the portfolio holder for education and children's social care, spoke to the BBC's Local Democracy Reporting Service about the issue and fact that Thurrock, with four ports in the borough, could have more problems that some other authorities but he tried to put a positive slant on the situation.

He said: "It's not so much of a problem for us because we have been running this for as long as I can remember.

"Fostering is always a big problem and we do sometimes have to go outside the borough. Sometimes this is for the child's safety.

"It has to be a well-oiled mechanism because we have up to four ports so we could otherwise be seriously over-run. When children do go missing we try very hard to find them. Sometimes they are found by police forces elsewhere and returned."

Mr Johnson added: "All of these children are so traumatised when they arrive.

"We have a duty of care to look after them and we take that very seriously."

The report to councillors added: "Human exploitation and modern slavery are alarmingly widespread issues in today's society.

"Thousands are exploited each year for cheap or unpaid labour, sexual abuse or domestic servitude, which can have a devastating impact on physical and mental wellbeing.

"Modern slavery is where people are controlled and become entrapped making our clothes, serving our food, picking our crops, working in factories, harvesting drugs or working in houses as cooks, cleaners or nannies."

The full report to the committee can be read via this link