Terrible experience with both adoption and fostering - poor support

My partner and I were approved to adopt in 2017 through a local council. Were weeks away from adopting twins when our SW decided it should not go ahead. She stated that the childrens council were not telling the full story about the children and alarm bells were ringing because the childrens council were offering to pay for the process. However, we were close to the foster carers who we got on great with and had had the children since they were 6 weeks old, 4 and half at the time we were to adopt them, and she knew of no major issues with the children and said there was nothing to hide. We also agreed that the children and the foster carers could stay in touch because they were the only family the children knew and could not bare the idea of taking them away from the children. The council would not back down, and wanted us to adopt a child from the next town who was from a renowned bad family. We said no as it was too dangerous given the fact we live on the bus route to the next town and there was every chance the birth parents could pass the house and see the child playing in the garden and even turn up at our door. After sometime we deregistered with the council as we felt there was no trust and no support and were of course devastated that we could not bring the children up and could not see us adopting anyone else at that point. After several years, we have decided to foster and went through an agency. However we were given a devastating blow today when we were told they could not continue with our application because the council had given us a bad reference. Because we had deregistered it looked bad for us. We explained that it was our choice to deregister and not the choice of the council, nor had we done anything wrong. I have emailed the agency to express our feelings and the council asking for a copy of the reference and asking who the hell gave the reference because the team leader had left in 2018 and the likely hood that the person who gave the reference did not know us or was linked to our case at the time. I await their reply and will post back with their reply. Anyone else gone through this????