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A girl of five has been taken into care because she weighed more than 10 stone, it was revealed yesterday.

The girl is one of the heaviest of her age ever recorded in the UK and at her peak weight of 10st 10lbs, was more than three times the typical weight for a girl of five.

Yesterday experts criticised the failure to identify the youngster’s problem earlier and said the authorities should do more to monitor obesity in pre-school years.

Details of the case were revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request, but the local authority refused to reveal more information for fear of identifying the child. It is not known whether any adults had been arrested over her care.

The child, from Newport, South Wales, was taken into care in August last year because she weighed 10st 5lbs.

Her weight increased to 10st 10lbs two months later, but dropped to below 8st this September.

Earlier this year it was revealed that more than 900 children, including 101 under-fives, had been admitted to hospital because of obesity in the past three years.

Tam Fry, of the Child Growth Foundation, said the Newport case highlighted the need for proper weight monitoring before children started primary school.

He added: ‘We are failing our children hugely by not monitoring their growth from a very early age. About 25 per cent of our primary school entrants are seriously overweight.’

Commenting on the Newport case, he said he found it ‘a(chǎn)bsolutely astounding’ the problem wasn’t picked up earlier. Mr Fry added: ‘She would have been out and about and all over the place.

Nursery school teachers will have seen her, probably she has been taken to the doctors several times, therefore the surgery staff and the doctor will have seen her.

‘It just throws up a whole problem of people wishing not to mention weight in case it upsets the parents or upsets the child.’

Mr Fry added: ‘This is the tip of the iceberg. There will be an enormous amount of children overweight, possibly dangerously overweight, where even the parents don’t recognise it.’

Joanna Nicolas, a child protection consultant, said the Newport case was among the most extreme she had heard of in her 18-year career.

‘I have never come across a five-year-old who weighs 10st,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t somebody do something sooner rather than picking it up at this stage?’

Politicians in Newport called for answers about how the girl was allowed to get so fat.

Conservative councillor Tom Suller said: ‘It’s a sad sign of the times. It’s really terrible that a child can end up this way.

‘There are a lot of obese parents out there and their children are ending up exactly the same way.

‘There are other children in this sort of state – it’s a ticking time bomb. A lot of people just think, “I’ll get a KFC tonight and McDonald’s tomorrow”. They don’t consider the consequences.’

A Newport Council spokesman said: ‘The wellbeing of children and young people is of paramount importance and at the heart of all the work that is done by our children’s services department.

‘It would be inappropriate to comment further on this case in the best interests of the chil