County council chief executive Richard Shaw has admitted that almost half of his authority's claims about its performance in one year were inaccurate.

In a written report to Oxfordshire County Council's ruling executive, Dr Shaw writes that there were "inaccuracies in 43 per cent of our returns" made to the Audit Commission.

Dr Shaw's report, outlining the performance of the Tory/Liberal Democrat-run council in the past financial year, also reveals that a "significant number" of Best Value targets were missed and the Audit Commission was sceptical about 28 per cent of the Oxfordshire authority's achievement predictions.

Dr Shaw added: "While we are proud of our achievements, we are well aware of outstanding shortcomings and have plans to address them."

The news follows the district auditor refusing to sign off the council's accounts in the Social and Health Care budget, £11m not properly accounted for in the same directorate, £1m lost to bad debts and £1m found in a mystery account the council did not know existed.

A team of specialists has been brought in from the private sector to sort out the financial problems.

The original cost of this rescue operation was £250,000. However, it was soon discovered that another member had to be recruited to the team, bumping up the cost to £311,000.

Now the executive say that four new financial officers will have to be hired in permanent posts at a further annual additional cost of £104,000.

Council leader Keith Mitchell said: "These are appointments that should have been made years ago. We have now got the errors and uncertainties down to 14 per cent and we're on target for that to be zero by the time of the next audit, I'm told, putting right the irregularities in our audit trail."