THE plan for an underpass in Grays town centre, previously flagged up as the lynchpin for the town's regeneration, has only just been properly costed it has emerged, with its price tag rising to £46 million.

That news appears to be the death knell for the ambitious project proposed by the Conservative administration.

And members of the current Tory group have lambasted what has gone before.

A recommendation to scrap the project was noted by members of the Thurrock Council's planning, transport and regeneration overview and scrutiny committee - and a final decision will now have to be made by the cabinet.

At this week's committee meeeting the underpass scheme was described as "too ambitious, far too technical" and officers said it would no longer stand up to scrutiny in terms of value for money. A report to the committee recommended dropping the scheme despite a rise in the number of "near misses" at the crossing.

Councillors, who were asked to agree a recommendation to drop the scheme before more money was lost from the cash-strapped council coffers, heard that apart from £10.8million which is part of South East Local Enterprise Partnership Grant and £700,000 from Network Rail, all of the money for the underpass would have to come from the council.

Mark Bradbury, Thurrock Council's director of place told councillors it was "the first time the scheme had been costed".

He added: "The project doesn't have viable benefits and should have been nipped in the bud. There is no use throwing good money after bad."

Committee chairman, Cllr Luke Spillman, said: "When you think of the actual proposed project, what we're actually doing and then you look at a figure of £46million.

"You can do all the analysis you want over value for money but from a layman's point of view it just screams out - £46million to change a level crossing to an underpass that was pretty much undesirable anyway. I'm in complete agreement, it should cease immediately."

Fellow Conservative Cllr Alex Anderson said: "This project is a really good example of some of the absolute jokers that used to come to this committee and some of the reports they used to give us. Back in mid 2021 we had a report on this come to the committee and in it that report one of the recommendations was to ask us to approve a cost plan that didn't exist. There was no cost plan in the report."

Lee Watson, Labour councillor for West Thurrock and South Stifford, added: "This report angers me. In 2021 this report came the day before cabinet to the committee with no cost and half-baked where they couldn't even tell us what they were proposing to do. We asked for the report to come back and it never saw the light of day at the committee but it was agreed

Councillors heard £6million had already been spent on the project, the bulk of which was taken up with fees for the scheme and land purchase.