SENIOR Thurrock Council officers were left red-faced last night after the latest bureaucratic bungle that meant the authority's cabinet meeting was cancelled moments before it was due to begin.

Over the past 18 months as the council has had to adapt to the problems of Covid-19 and, in recent weeks, issues caused by a flood in the council offices, a number of meetings have been cancelled, abandoned or muddled through in part chaos.

Last night's meeting contained a number of key agenda items including contract procurement, animal welfare and - somewhat ironically - the council's communications strategy which had already been deferred because of failings in its compilation.

However, with councillors poised to begin dealing with the agenda it was pointed out to council leader Cllr Rob Gledhill, by Nub News editor Neil Speight that the meeting had not been convened in accordance with local government guidelines and was taking place in a venue not notified to members of the public who had the right to attend.

Therefore, any decisions reached might not be legal and could be open to dispute.

The meeting had been switched from the council chamber in the civic offices to the nearby Beehive Community Resource Centre.

Cllr Gledhill immediately went into private consultation with council CEO Lyn Carpenter and its legal and monitoring officer and assistant director Ian Hunt.

The conclusion of the two officers, who earn more than £200,000 and £100,000 a year annually and whose responsibility is to ensure fair, accurate and legal governance, was that the council had blundered.

A further brief meeting, behind closed doors, with cabinet members followed before Cllr Gledhill announced the meeting was not legal and had to be called off.

A statement today (Thursday, 14 October) from the council says: "An administrative error in listing the venue meant that the Cabinet meeting scheduled for 13 October 2021 could not go ahead as it would not have been lawful.

"All items on the agenda will be dealt with in accordance with Thurrock Council's constitution. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Mr Speight said: "The continued incompetence of this administration and its senior officer cohort who stagger from ineptitude to embarrassment with increasing regularity is of grave concern.

"These people, who can't convene a simple meeting legally even though I had alerted the communication team to the lack of information in the public domain 24 hours earlier, are responsible for running up a billion pound debt, the botched A13 project, the Stanford station debacle and god knows how many other cock-ups including paying unsavoury consultants tens of millions of taxpayers' cash.

"I took no joy in pointing out this latest blunder and I apologise that by running shotgun on procedure it meant councillors wasted their evening but in these troubled times at Thurrock Council I felt it important to make the salient point that the administration of this council is simply not good enough."