Number of infants put up for adoption drops by half because councils are misrepresenting guidance from the courts Recent official figures showed record rise in youngsters being adopted But experts fear the numbers being put forward have halved in past year Blame decrease on fears over High Court judgement which highlighted concerns with speedy adoptions The number of children being put up for adoption has fallen dramatically because social services are misinterpreting judicial guidance, it has been claimed. Despite recent official figures which showed a record rise in youngsters being successfully adopted, experts fear the numbers being put forward have almost halved over the past year. They blame the decrease - some 47 per cent, according to umbrella group the Adoption Leadership Board (ALB) - on fears over a High Court judgement from last year which highlighted concerns with too speedy adoptions. Recent figures showed a record rise in children being successfully adopted, but experts fear numbers have halved in the past year. Edward Timpson, the Children and Families Minister, said last night: "The last year has seen a record high in the number of adoptions - this means thousands more of our most vulnerable children are finding the loving and permanent homes they need. However, we've also seen a decrease in the number of children placed for adoption, because of a misinterpretation of the law following a number of significant judgements by the courts. The new guidance published today by the Adoption Leadership Board will help make clear the law around the correct interpretation of these complex cases and ensure the right decisions are being made each and every time. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said a campaign for more adoption was starting to bear fruit Official figures published in September showed the number of children completing the adoption process in England had increased by 25 per cent to a record 5,000 in a single year. The news was celebrated by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan as proof that a campaign for more adoption by her predecessor in the role, Michael Gove, who was himself adopted, was starting to bear fruit. But last night, the ALB described what it said was a 47 per cent fall in children being put forward for adoption by local authorities as "alarming." They said they were concerned that gains made in successfully placing children with new families were now at risk of being "reversed." Its chairman, former Barnardo's boss Sir Martin Narey, now the Government's adoption tsar, issued emergency guidance to social services insisting that the law on adoptions had not changed despite a High Court judgment issued a year ago which highlighted concerns about the drive to speed up adoption. Figures from the ALB showed the number of local authority decisions that a child should be adopted fell from 1,830 in the three months to September last year to 960 in the three months to June, a drop of 47 per cent. According to the board, the fall is in part an over-reaction to remarks by Sir James Munby, the President of the High Court Family Division, who attacked the "anodyne and empty" arguments for enforced adoption presented at family courts, and accused social workers of paying lip service to the law, which says a child should be separated from its parents only in the most serious cases. He said in September: "Sloppy practice must stop. It is simply unacceptable in a forensic context where the issues are so grave and the stakes, for both child and parent, so high. He also criticised the "recurrent inadequacy of the analysis and reasoning" used to support adoption and said four appeals in the last ten days of July alone had raised concerns. Applications for court orders allowing a child to be placed for adoption have fallen by more than a third One "lamentable" case at Brent council in north London failed because of poor social work evidence and weak reasoning by a judge, he said. Sir James, sitting in London's Court of Appeal, was speaking as he rejected an appeal into the adoption of two children in Essex. He said "lurking behind" the case were "serious concerns and misgivings" about how family courts approach the issue of adoption. Hugh Thornberry, a member of the ALBd and chief executive of the charity Adoption UK, told the Daily Telegraph last night: "What we are concerned about [is] that we will see a reversal of the progress that was being made. What we are seeing here... is what we believe to be an over-reaction and a misunderstanding of Appeal Court judgments; we are trying to do everything we can to address that.