Officials in local and central government continued to squabble over responsibility for child refugees after councillors said lone children in Calais have suffered from a failure in national leadership.
Following a visit to the 'Jungle' refugee camp, councillors said it had fallen to local authorities to "step up" after a lack of leadership from party leaders.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to accept unaccompanied child refugees who have family ties in the UK after an amendment by Labour peer Lord Dubs piled pressure on the government.
But it is thought more than 100 unaccompanied children remain in the Calais 'Jungle' camp despite being eligible for UK asylum.
Stephen Cowan, Labour leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, blamed the government and his own party leader Jeremy Corbyn for not taking charge.
"Yvette Cooper (chair of Labour's refugee taskforce) is doing an amazing job," he said. "Lord Dubs is a friend of mine who has shown leadership, but it's not coming from the front bench on the mainstream parties."
But the government said local authorities needed to agree to care for lone child refugees and added funding had been provided.
Responsibility falls on local councils to care for unaccompanied children by providing schooling, foster care, university fees and housing. They receive funding from central government for this and a Home Office spokeswoman said local authorities such as Hammersmith and Fulham "must be willing to offer support to all unaccompanied children in need regardless of how they arrive in the UK."
Councillors said there were issues identifying eligible children in the Calais camp and promised to help French authorities with this process.
Representatives from the Local Government Assosiation (LGA) met with French counterparts during their visit to Calais and offered support to help register and process unaccompanied children.
David Simmonds from the LGA said: "It feels like goodwill has been missing from this process for a while... I imagine France, and the mayor in particular, are a bit fed-up being criticised by people in other countries and what local government is good at is finding practical solutions, so that's what we're going to do."
