BOROUGH MP Jackie Doyle-Price has made a public statement denouncing the activities of Thurrock Council which have brought the authority to the brink of financial collapse and into disrepute.

Her criticisms are targeted largely at the council's senior officer cohort - and by default the Chief Executive Lyn Carpenter. The two have differed on a number of previous occasions, most notably when Ms Doyle-Price damned the authority for a lack of due diligence over regeneration plans for Purfleet and for totally abdicating responsibility for planning enforcement which has led to, among other blights on the borough, the sprawling Buckles Lane traveller encampment in South Ockendon.

Sparing councillors, including her partner Cllr Mark Coxshall who is now the authority's Conservative leader, Ms Doyle-Price plants the sins of the past firmly at the door of officers - even through over the past few years prominent Conservative councillors, including Cllr Coxshall, have declined to answer questions themselves. They have repeatedly defended the council against its critics, rebutted attempted engagement with the wider media and - to paraphrase - defended what now turns out to be indefensible.

However, there is no doubting the Thurrock MP's candour as she attacks unnamed officers, though with the caveat: "Most of our officers live in Thurrock and want to do the best they can. They too are being let down by a poor culture."

In her comments, released on social media, Ms Doyle-Price says: "As a Thurrock Council taxpayer and resident, I am as angry as anyone at the financial risks taken by Thurrock Council. I am pleased the Government has intervened to call time on this and I look forward to the conclusions of the best value inspection and the investigations into financial management.

"Whatever happens next there must be a reset in the standards of behaviour at Thurrock Council.

"Ultimately councillors and members of parliament are elected by the public to represent them. Officers are accountable to the public through their elected representatives.,

"I have started to feel increasingly that there is a culture abroad at Thurrock that views members – and by extension-the public – as an inconvenience to be managed. And the public has to take what they are given – a culture of 'that will do' rather than a culture of excellence. Challenge goes ignored or dismissed. We hear about 'commercial confidentiality' when we bring questions about finance. We even see lack of honesty.

In August 2020 Ms Doyle-Price was highly critical of Thurrock Council and its practices and made her views known in a public letter to then leader Cllr Rob Gledhill.

"The failure to be truthful about the mistakes made with the new council chamber being a case in point.

"It really isn't good enough. Public bodies must behave openly at all times. To do otherwise is to treat the public with contempt.

"I am sad to say that contempt has extended to me as your Member of Parliament. Having secured monies for Thurrock Council to deliver such things as the Grays underpass, Purfleet regeneration, A13 widening and of course the Grays and Tilbury town boards I have been frustrated by the lack of delivery against these projects.

"In 2016 I advised the Chief Executive I had no confidence that Purfleet would be delivered. We still have no completed houses six years later. There has been no progress made with the underpass. It is no wonder that people become cynical about the promises made by political leaders.

"Most of our officers live in Thurrock and want to do the best they can. They too are being let down by a poor culture. If Thurrock is to survive it needs leadership based on accountability to the public it serves.

"Sadly, that has been rather absent in recent years."

Ms Doyle-Price's comment about 'leadership' inevitably prompts questions about what is happening to Ms Carpenter.

Since an announcement by the council on Friday, 16 September that she is 'taking a period of leave' not a word has been said in public. She continues to draw her salary package of more than £200,000 a year.

Thurrock Nub News understands she, her barrister and legal advisors, are locked in battle with the council's own legal team over the terms of a settlement. It is believed she has offered to resign - but only if a substantial financial package can be agreed and other placatory terms agreed.

Senior councillors within the Conservative group have expressed the opinion to Nub News that it will be 'a disgrace' if she leaves the authority with any financial reward - having presided over its financial demise and managed a serious of shockingly overrun and budget busting projects.

They include the A13 widening, Stanford rail station's botched redevelopment and the building of the council's new civic office extension which is already the subject of ridicule for a series of design and construction failures. Its cost also remains unknown - another of the secrets so carefully guarded by the administration that Ms Doyle-Price has taken the sharp edge of her tongue to.

Nor too, has there been any official word on the status and future of the council's senior finance director, Sean Clark, hailed as the saviour of the authority's finances when he brought the 'borrow-to-invest' strategy into being several years ago.

A series of behind-closed-doors meetings of the council's general services committee, have discussed both senior officers - but all debate has been kept secret, though it is know that Labour senior Labour councillors John Kent and Lynn Worrall have not taken part because they say their view on the fallibility and fault of the duo is already a matter of public record and it would be inappropriate for them to be a part of a 'jury' hearing evidence.

Cllr Kent, the Labour group leader, has also expressed his surprise at Ms Doyle-Price's comments today.

He says: "I am stunned to read Jackie Doyle-Price's comments on the Conservatives' mismanagement of the council's finances. She complains of a lack of honesty, a lack of openness, a lack of delivery and a culture of contempt.

"Where has she been for the past six years - six years where her partner has been a member of the council's cabinet and is now leader?

"It's a bit rich for her to speak up now when the Tory financial catastrophe has left Thurrock on the brink."

Nub News editor Neil Speight has been a fierce critic of the council's obession with secrecy.

Thurrock Nub News editor Neil Speight has also been a long-standing critic of Thurrock Council's policy of secrecy. Twice Ms Carpenter ordered her officers and communications team not to answer questions from him, Nub News or the Thurrock Independent newspaper for which he previously worked. Twice Ms Carpenter and her communications team made complaints against Mr Speight to the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

On both occasions it roundly rejected a claim by the council that Mr Speight was not justified when he claimed it was an authority where "bullying, malpractice, negligence and nepotism" thrived.

And the bans were eventual rescinded in the wake of widespread criticism of Thurrock Council by the wider media including the newspaper industry's over-arching organisation the News Meda Association.

Today Mr Speight said: "I welcome Ms Doyle-Price's comments and cannot disagree with a single word of them. However, she chooses to point the finger away from her own political and domestic doorstep.

"To give him credit Cllr Coxshall is now trying to do his best to patch up a foundering authority and at least acknowledges the errors of the secretive past. The proof of the pudding will be what happens next but, to be frank, the lack of contrition from many members of the Conservative administration - from councillors who openly condemned myself and Cllr Kent for asking the very questions that it is now recognised they should have been asking - does not give me a great deal of optimism.

"It would have been nice, for example, if councillors who stood up in the chamber and damned me by name for exposing what is now seen to e the truth haven't have the courtesy, integrity or guts to apologise. Ms Doyle-Price talks about a lack of honesty - there is clearly a deep-seated lack of integrity among some of the elected members too."