Lawyers have welcomed the prime minister’s proposal for legislation to speed up the adoption process, but warned that changes could lead to increased legal challenges. An action plan due to be launched yesterday will require local authorities to find adoptive parents within three months, or to place children on the national register.

The new rules will prevent local authorities delaying adoptions while they search for parents that match a child’s ethnicity. Legislation will also make it easier for prospective adopters to foster a child while the court considers the case for adoption, a practice called concurrent planning.

Welcoming the move, Naomi Angell, co-chair of the Law Society’s family law committee, said the whole process, which can take two years to complete, needs to improve. But she said the proposals could increase the number of legal challenges where local authorities do not follow guidance on ethnicity or where concurrent planning leads birth parents to believe that the court proceedings were weighted from the outset in favour of adoption.

The head of the adoption and permanent families service at children’s charity Coram, Jeanne Kaniuk, said it had not received any challenges to adoptions following concurrent planning. While birth mothers and their solicitors are often anxious about concurrent planning at the outset, they are supported to help improve parenting skills throughout it, with supervised contact several times a week.