Birmingham City Council bosses have come under fire after failing to hit two-thirds of their annual performance targets.
The end-of-year performance report showed the Labour-run local authority is struggling to perform in areas like children's social care, education and cleanliness sparking criticism from opponents.
Conservative group leader Coun Robert Alden (Erdington) said: "We have a worsening situation in social services and in schools, litter on the streets and rubbish sent to landfill is higher. This is not the direction of travel we should have."
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He pointed out that recycling rates, after years of improvements, were tailing off while the percentage of waste sent to landfill had doubled.
Social worker caseloads had also increased and the number of children leaving school with five top GCSEs was at 59 per cent below the national average.
Lib Dem leader Coun Paul Tilsley (Sheldon) said he was disturbed by the poor performance on clean streets and graffiti, saying: "Street cleaning is important, it encourages people to invest in the city and be happy in the city."
Labour cabinet members defended the performance saying they had set tougher targets than their Tory-Lib Dem predecessors.
A rise in landfill was blamed on a shut down at the incinerator and the poor performance on children's services as a result of the fallout from the departure of the previous strategic director last summer.
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Council deputy leader Ian Ward (Lab, Shard End) described the results as 'disappointing' but argued they had set challenging targets in all areas and would always struggle to improve performance at the same time as having to make cuts of more than £100m a year.
"Unless the Government changes tack, it is going to be increasingly difficult for us to achieve these targets while the resources have been massively reduced," he said.
He also pointed out there had been significant progress on driving down sickness absence rates among council staff, reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on the roads and building affordable homes.
He added that a further 14 measures were close to target or improved in the last year.
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