Here is the council's response in full:

The transformation from one star to three stars took just three years. An unprecedented achievement given the level of deprivation in the borough.

The council is among one in seven local authorities to achieve three star rating in London and one in 20 nationally.

The performance rating, assessed by the commission, concluded that the council has excellent prospects for the future in both adult and children categories.

Multicultural population

The judgement indicates how well the borough's social services department has performed in the past year.

The commission draws its evidence from inspections, reviews and monitoring to assess a council's performance.

Tower Hamlets Social Services provides care, support and assistance to a large proportion of a thriving multicultural population of nearly 200,000 people.

More than a third of the population is Bangladeshi and 6% is of African/Caribbean descent.

The diverse social care needs of the community provide a challenge that Tower Hamlets Council, working with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and Locality Health and Social Care Partnership Boards, have been responding to with improving services for local people.

Cllr Sirajul Islam, Lead Member for Social Services, said: "The turnaround in Social Services is part of a wider picture about serving our community well and having a real passion for public service excellence.

"The three stars underline the wonderful work our Social Services team is doing in meeting the needs of the people of Tower Hamlets.

"If we can do it, with our high levels of deprivation, there is no reason why others cannot do it too."

'Rational focus'

Ian Wilson, Corporate Director, Social Services added: "When I first came here, staff told me that we did well considering it was Tower Hamlets.

"They were experiencing all of the difficulties of a borough associated with high levels of deprivation, with no sense of the positives.

"They felt they were up against it so that getting even the simplest things right felt like a big achievement.

"By creating a more rational focus on performance in the areas that matter, resourcing this brilliantly, and training and developing staff, many of whom are local residents, we have been able to change both the feel of the place and the starting assumptions of how good performance should be for every service user, every day."