AFTER a number of technical issues with the broadcast for both councillors inside the meeting - and viewers attempting to watch via the council's You Tube channel - Thurrock Council's monthly meeting was adjourned after just 30 minutes in this evening.

After a 25 minute delay, the council's chief executive Lyn Carpenter then took centre stage and announced the meeting would be formally adjourned to a later date.

She apologised to members and said: "We are looking to reset the meeting on 21 July and we will move the following meeting to the 28th July."

Members in the meeting, switched to the Thameside Theatre because of Covid concerns, were perplexed as Mayor Cllr Sue Shinnick repeatedly struggled to hear members and make herself heard, the theatre was so dark TV cameras were struggling to pick out the faces of members and - when he was called on to deliver a report, - council leader Cllr Rob Gledhill appeared to be attempting an impersonation of Norman Collier!

eventually, after several interruptions Cllr John kent called for the meeting to be adjourned to try and fix the problems both for councillors and You Tube viewers. Cllr Gledhill acknowledged he had been getting messages from people attempting to watch the meeting, saying it wasn't working.

The debacle was an embarrassing throwback to last November's meeting which the authority attempted to hold digitally and which was eventually abandoned as the equipment simply wasn't working.