THURROCK Council's portfolio holder for finance has mounted a robust defence of the ruling Conservative group's decision to spend £800,000 on bringing in experts to advise it on how to slash £18.2 million from upcoming budgets as it seeks to claw back cash by cutting public services. 

Thurrock Nub News previewed a night of difficult decisions facing the council's cabinet.

At Wednesday's (11 October) cabinet meeting Cllr Graham Snell responded to questioning by independent member Cllr Neil Speight who condemned the decision-making process and suggested that the ruling group were not being truthful about their intentions and were misleading the public.

Cllr Snell rebutted that allegation and went on the front foot and denied the council had any ulterior motives as they set about trying to balance the authority's cataclysmic financial position.

The council needs to slash tens of millions from its budgets over the next five years.

Cllr Speight said the portfolio holder had been disingenuous in his public statements and had previously said the council was in control of its destiny but had now retracted its position and was unnecessarily calling in hugely expensive third-party consultants to mask its failings.

However, speaking at the meeting, Cllr Snell said: "We are well on the way to finding the £18.2million but it's an ongoing project.

"We have got a very poorly resourced finance team which has been working absolute miracles to do what they have done already.

"And we need the assistance to make further savings going forward from there.

"So it's not going to be the case that we are just magicing these things out of thin air.

"We've got advice on our previous investments, our assets held programme. We need the advice, we don't have that expertise within the council so by bringing the expertise in not only do we find ways of making the savings that we need to make that we didn't identify ourselves, but the knowledge these guys are bringing with them, we are learning from that the entire time.

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

"It's an £800,000 one off spend to save around £5 million ever year occurring for the next few years.

"I think that's a good spend, it's coming from a transformation fund that we have got in place which is £12 million so it's not money that has been identified previously.

"The fund is there to use for just this kind of thing.

"We need the council to recover and we need the best help we can get to enable us to do that."