Waltham Forest Council has said that the former leaders of Whitefield School did not tell it that incidents in the school's "calming rooms" were being filmed.
Whitefield School in Walthamstow teaches children with complex needs. At least 38 children there were abused by staff between 2014 and 2017 in windowless, padded rooms known as "calming rooms".
The school's behaviour policy for 2016-17 said that every incident in a calming room had to be recorded, with the footage encrypted and kept on memory sticks.
Council officers visited the school in January 2017. They believed the cameras were only "a real-time observation tool" and that no footage was kept. The Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review found that the council's understanding "relied largely on information provided by the school".
A council spokesperson said: "School management from that time bears full responsibility for what took place. They did not disclose relevant information including the historical behaviour policy."
The footage came to light only in 2021, when the school's new management found recordings on a USB drive and told the police straight away.
At an extraordinary council meeting on 20 October, Green councillor Liz Biggs said: "It's hard to ignore the nagging feeling that perhaps if the CCTV recordings of alleged abuse were discovered earlier, criminal charges may have been brought."
Conservative councillor Catherine Saumarez called the meeting a "rubber-stamping" exercise. She said her questions about accountability "were ignored and deflected".
For the families involved, the questions go on. Parents have recently raised new concerns about the use of seclusion rooms at the school and about injuries to pupils. One mother took her autistic son out of the school after he came home with bruises. She believes they were caused by neglect or harm by staff.
