Children in Hackney wait the longest in England to get adopted — an average of two years and nine months.
Another London borough, Merton, has the second longest time at two years and eight months with Liverpool third at two-and-a-half years.
Nationally children in care in England are forced to wait an average of 20 months to move in with adoptive parents, according to new figures.
Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said the first local authority scorecards were a “trigger for urgent, detailed discussions” to speed up the adoption process.
It is part of an action plan which includes proposals to reduce the length of the approval process for would-be adopters to six months.
But council leaders and children’s services professionals condemned the scorecards and warned they have the potential to cause “unnecessary and avoidable concern in communities where there shouldn’t be any”.
The figures show that 80 local authorities met the interim thresholds of 21 months from entering care to adoption and matching a child to a family within seven months of a court order.
But 72 councils did not meet one or both of these thresholds, which will be lowered to 14 months and four months respectively within four years.
Mr Loughton said: “Hundreds of children are being let down by unacceptable delays right across the country and throughout the adoption process. Every month a child waits to be placed there is less chance of finding a permanent, stable and loving home. This cannot go on.
“There has been some real progress, with local authorities beginning to bear down on adoption delays and helping in the redesign of a faster but still-thorough adopter assessment process. But these statistics illustrate all too starkly the magnitude of the challenge which we face.
“I make no apology for shining a light on the system to hold local areas to account.”
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He said the scorecards were “not the be-all and end-all” but said more areas needed to strike a better balance between quality placements and the risk of long-term damage to children by leaving them with uncertain futures.
But the Local Government Association, Association of Directors of Children’s Services and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives released a joint statement which said: “The adoption scorecards have the potential to cause unnecessary and avoidable concern in communities where there shouldn’t be any, and may put prospective adopters off.
“Children waiting for adoption will not benefit from government struggling to get its act together.”
