A THURROCK independent councillor declined to support the nominations for returning officers for next year's planned Essex Mayoral elections because it is not known how much they will cost.

At a meeting of this week's Thurrock Council general services committee members were asked to support the appointment of Southend Council's chief executive Colin Ansell as returning officer for the election, planned in May.

They were also asked to rubber-stamp the appointment of current Thurrock Council CEO Dr David Smith as returning officer for the borough polling stations.

Both posts come with a fee.

At the meeting, Neil Speight, Independent councillor for Stanford-le-Hope West asked how much the services of the monitoring officer and a deputy would cost Thurrock but Thurrock's Legal and Monitoring director, Dan Fenwick, was unable to provide the answer, saying those costs were not yet known.

Cllr Speight said: "The returning officer will be paid fees that will be funded by the constituent authorities jointly so the residents of Thurrock will be paying contributory to those fees.

"Would you walk into a shop and buy something without knowing what it was going to cost? This is what you're asking us to do. There should be a statutory set of fees for these things, they should be known. When are we going to start to have accountability with the public purse? I am fed up with being asked to sign blank cheques."

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Speight added: "When I became a councillor in 2023 there was a lot of training and briefing about how the previous administration and councillors had not checked, not scrutinised things and had blindly signing things off.

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"We were advised this was unacceptable. Yet here we are, two years on and the top officers are saying they don't know costings but want us to approve costs."

The other members of the committee, Labour councillors Lynn Worrall, Lee Watson and Val Morris-Cook and Conservative George Coxshall, all voted for the proposal.