Birmingham city council has become embroiled in a feud with the Government’s integration tsar after its equality chief challenged a school for stopping a 4-year-old girl from wearing an Islamic veil at school.

Dame Louise Casey has written to the Labour-run council to condemn the actions of equality chief Waseem Zaffar, who attempted to overturn a decision made by the head of St Clare’s Catholic School in Handsworth Wood.

According to local media reports, Mr Zaffar told the school that its uniform code, which banned young children from wearing headwear, was in breach of the Equalities Act.

However, Dame Louise said his actions had been “grossly unfair and undue”, and that the incident had made her question whether “sufficient lessons” had been learnt from the Trojan Horse scandal.