HISTORIC reports to borough councillors on the progress of the regeneration of Stanford-le-Hope rail station were "utter tripe marinated in garbage", a councillor has claimed.

At last night's (Thursday, 28 September) extraordinary meeting of Thurrock Council's planning, transport and regeneration overview and scrutiny committee councillors did not spare their criticism of the botched project - having been told they need to find more than £5 million more for a budget that is already bust widen open.

Despite pledges that it would not cost more than £20 million for the station and transport interchange project, it will now cost at least £35 million in total to complete.

The council, along with UK Power Networks, South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP), c2c, Network Rail and DP World have been working on the project.

To date approximately £13,460,000 has been spent out of a budget of £29milliom, with the council being the largest financial contributor to the project, having spent £17.2million.

The scheme has been dogged by delays and mismanagement but in a "warts and all" report to the committee on Thursday, Mark Bradbury, Thurrock Council's director of place, endeavoured to reassure councillors the scheme was back on track.

Mr Bradbury said the report was "not pretty" and an indictment of the way the council had managed regeneration projects in the past.

Asked by Conservative Cllr Jacqui Maney whether it was "fair to say that the old station was demolished prematurely?" Mr Bradbury responded simply: "Yes".

Alex Anderson

Another Conservative, Cllr Alex Anderson, thanked Mr Bradbury for his frank report. He said: "In the past our reports have been utter tripe marinated in garbage. Just absolute nonsense.

"What we've done in Stanford is we've walked in to a house, smashed it to pieces, built a couple of glorified sheds and said 'we'll build you something better at some point in the future'. That's not good enough so we need to make sure that we get this right."

Labour Cllr Lee Watson said the money should have been "locked in" before the old station was demolished.

She added: "There is no choice but to do this so I just want to be confident that the business plan is robust, we will get through that business plan, they will not say that's not good enough.

"You've got to get this over the line. There is no choice on this."

Councillors heard a planning application for the interchange will be submitted by mid-October and a business plan will be submitted to the South East Local Enterprise Partnership in November to secure funding.