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The five-year-old girl at the centre of a foster care row sparked by a complaint from her mother that she had been placed with a Muslim family, was from a Muslim background, it has been reported.

The girl's mother had complained her daughter should not have been placed with devout Muslim foster parents as she was a Christian.

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However, court documents show that the five-year-old's grandparents were from a non-practising Muslim background, the Telegraph reported.

A court order published on Wednesday (30 August) has outlined how the child had been taken into care in March after police intervention due to the mother's troubled life which is said to include substance abuse.

Tower Hamlets council denied claims that the foster family that took care of the child did not speak English.

A court-appointed guardian had found in June that the child was well looked after by the foster carer. The order also showed how the council applied for the child to be placed with her grandparents following six months with foster parents, a move backed by the judge.

"Documents including the assessment of the maternal grandparents state that they are of a Muslim background but are non practising. The child's mother says they are of Christian heritage."

Tower Hamlets Council, which has criticised media reporting of the case said the court order, which Judge Khatun Sapnara ruled be published, showed "that we always had the child's best interests at heart".

The judge will now decide whether to allow the child to be placed with her grandmother, understood to be from outside the UK, for the long term.

Debbie Jones, director of Children's Services at Tower Hamlets, said: "Our foster carers are qualified people from different backgrounds, with vast experience of looking after children.

"They represent the diverse make-up of our borough which is a place where people of all backgrounds get on with one another."

Meanwhile, Sir Martin Narey, the Government's official adviser on fostering told The Telegraph he will publish a fostering report outlining how ethnicity and religion were a "secondary issue" and that "skin colour and religion do not matter in 2017.