DESPITE a litany of highly publicised failures including the £40 million overspend on the A13 widening project, the £30 million pound budget-busting Stanford rail station project, a borrowing deficit of more than a billion pounds, highly contentious links with controversial property investment figures, a hugely flawed civic offices extension project and leading a long-running blitz on the freedom of the press and democracy, Thurrock Council's chief executive Lyn Carpenter has been shortlisted for a top public service award as one of three nominees for 'Public Sector Pioneer of the Year'.

An organisation known by the acronym UKREiiF - which stands for the UK's Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum – is to hold an awards evening at the Royal Armouries in Leeds next month to 'bring together over 600 leading names from across the public and private sector for an evening to celebrate the best in class within the UK's real estate, property, investment and infrastructure sectors'.

The evening, part of a three-day event for which tickets cost up to £2,000 a head, includes the presentation of awards to 'shortlisted individuals, organisations and projects which have been selected by the UKREiiF Advisory Group'.

Among them is Ms Carpenter who is expected to attend the event which runs from Tuesday, 17 May to Thursday, 19 May.

UKREiiF is promoting the event saying: "The UK needs a platform for the public sector to showcase the scale of development progress and profile future investment opportunities to investors, developers and occupiers from around the globe that is based right here in the UK – this event does just that.

"In addition we're focused on several key themes: the UK's Net Zero Target, Social Value and Inclusive Growth, The Future of Real Estate, Building Better Communities and a focus on inward investment."

Speaking of the shortlist for the awards night, the chief executive of UKREiiF, Keith Griffiths, said: "We have been incredibly surprised by the high number of submissions for these awards and it's been really difficult in most cases to cut these down to the shortlist."

It appears, to critics of the council, somewhat ironic that Thurrock's CEO is being recognised for innovative planning by an organisation that is focussed on 'building better communities' while under her six year tenure at the council it has failed to formulate and redraft its own Local Plan - which was effectively out of date in 2016 - has missed its government-set housing build targets by thousands and has a council home waiting list of around 7,000 residents.