The non-profit company in charge of Kingston’s children’s services has launched an internal investigation into a “communication lapse” that led to employees reporting council staff members to police, sparking a child abduction scare.

Earlier this month, Achieving for Children (AfC), which manages both Kingston and Richmond’s children services, alerted schools to a man asking school students to get into a van to discuss youth activities.

It later emerged the van, spotted outside Richard Challoner School in Old Malden, was on official council business.

Children who got into the van told the Surrey Comet they saw a television screen and a CCTV system.

The gaffe drew heavy criticism from Challoner’s deputy headteacher Sean Binns, who said the decision to invite students into a van “goes against all the safeguarding and child protection protocols and advice they would have been given”.

A spokeswoman from Richard Challoner said this week the school had received a “full and comprehensive” apology and had been told that such activities had been suspended pending an internal investigation.

A spokesman from AfC said: “We have begun an internal investigation into the communications lapse that resulted in this incident.

“So far no action has been taken against any staff.

“However, new communications processes have already been put in place to ensure, as far as possible, there is no repetition.

“More measures may come from the result of the ongoing investigation.”

Achieving for Children launched last year, at a cost of £1.5m, as a social enterprise jointly-owned by Richmond and Kingston councils.

The merger had been in the pipeline for three years, but was accelerated in the wake of Kingston Council’s child safeguarding procedures being rated inadeqate two years in a row, in 2012 and 2013.