THURROCK'S Labour Group has condemned the Tory council for wanting to spend £800,000 on consultants to tell them how to balance the budget.

And it has highlighting conflicting statements from Conservative portfolio holder Cllr Graham Snell.

Speaking at a recent cabinet meeting Cllr Snell, councillor responsible for finance, human resources and payroll, defended a bid to bring in management consultants from Price Waterhouse Cooper, saying they were needed because of a lack of financial expertise within the council but Labour said it was a bad move for the debt-laden council.

This week, Cllr John Kent, leader of the Labour Group, says his group will continue to oppose the decision and said: "Thurrock's ruling Conservative group has racked up a debt of one and a half billion pounds, squandered hundreds of millions of pounds on failed investments and, effectively, bankrupted the council.

"As a result the council is spending 40 per cent of its budget on servicing debt and has to find an eye-watering £75 million pounds of budget savings.

"As ever, Thurrock Tories are all over the place on the council finances. The finance portfolio holder was, on October 5, boasting he had found almost all the savings needed to set next year's budget and had found £7 million for the year after.

"Six days later, he is arguing we need to pay management consultants £800,000 to find £5 million of cuts for next year – which is it?

"The Conservatives have overseen the biggest financial crash of any UK council. As a result we are having to pay the £6 million costs of government intervention, we are paying commissioners thousands of pounds a day and that's still not enough. Now the Tories want to give management consultants £800,000 to tell them how to set a budget."

Mr Kent said his group would fight the plan.

At the cabinet meeting last week, Mr Snell said: "We've got a very poorly resourced finance team which have been working absolute miracles and we need the assistance to make further savings going forward from that.

"We've got advice on our previous investments, our asset sales programme. We need advice. We don't have that expertise within the council.

"It's a case of making sure our savings programme is robust now rather than we get a couple of years down the line, we don't bring in the expertise and we start to struggle.

"It's an £800,000 one-off spend to save £5million every year for the next few years. I think that's a good spend."

However, that appears in stark contrast to his staements to the O&S committee when he was adamant that saving had been identified already fopr the next financial year (23-24) and the council was already 'well on the way' to finding savings as far ahead as 25-26.

You can watch his statement after questioning from Labour's Cllr Lynn Worrall on the above video, statement which were endorsed by the council's recently appointed senior finance officer Steven Mair.

A further rift between the Labour group, or at least one of its senior members, came later in the overview and scrutiny meeting on 5 October referenced by Cllr Kent when Cllr Val Morris-Cook spoke of how she was irriatated and uncomfortable to have former Cllr leader Rob Gledhill sitting on the overview and scrutiny committee when he was the councillor who led the borough into its parlous financial position.

Cllr Gledhill defended his position on the committee and said Labour had not objected when it was announced.

You can view the exchange between the two on the above link.