THE heartbroken great-grandfather of murdered toddler Star Hobson has said the social services system needs to be "overhauled" in the wake of the trial into her death.

David Fawcett has said "things need to change" after five social services referrals - including one from his partner Annetta Smith - were made regarding Star, but all came to nought.

Savannah Brockhill, 28, the girlfriend of Star's mother Frankie Smith, was jailed for life on Wednesday for killing Star on September 22, 2020.

Frankie Smith, 20, was jailed for eight years after being found guilty of allowing the death of her daughter.

Following their sentencing, David Fawcett told the Telegraph & Argus of his disappointment in social services for their failure to act, and in particular Annetta's referral being labelled malicious.

Annetta called social services after hearing from other family members that Star had been "slam choked", and they were concerned physical abuse on Smith by Brockhill - the after effects they had seen in bruises on Smith - was being transferred to her baby daughter.

However, he believes Brockhill manipulated social workers, claiming he and Annetta made the call as they disapproved of Smith being in a same-sex relationship.

Mr Fawcett said: “We were most disappointed that social services didn’t come to see us, come tell us they’d been to see Star and she was fine, but there was nothing.

“If they’d come to us first we’d have gone with them and got the siblings to tell them what had been happening.

“Instead, Savannah took over the situation, she was in control, so everybody just sat there. She just put Star on her knee and said, ‘Look she’s fine’.

“She made it out then that our call was malicious, saying we didn’t like their relationship which was ridiculous, they’d been together for six months. If we were bothered we’d have mentioned it a lot earlier."

After the referral was made and social services paid a visit no action was taken, but David and Annetta were never spoken to about it.

He added: “Then when Jordan [Hobson, Star's dad] made his complaint in June we were thinking, ‘what’s going on, nothing seems to be getting done about it’.”

Annetta's referral was the second of five calls made to social services regarding fears for Star's welfare.

A safeguarding review triggered by Star's case is set to be published by Bradford Council next month.

Bradford Council has apologised for "letting Star down" and said there are "lessons to be learned" after "warning signs were missed".

Mr Fawcett said that social services needs to change to prevent further similar tragedies.

He added: “It all needs overhauling, these things keep happening. There’s a spate of cases; Arthur and Star. It needs looking at.

“I just can’t understand why they never came to see us, we never heard a thing. All we heard was the case was closed and it was ‘malicious gossip’, we just couldn’t understand it.”