COMMENT – by Thurrock Nub News Editor Neil Speight

TOTAL incompetence or a willful attempt to deceive the public!

Those are the stark choices left to this editor to judge Thurrock Council's senior officer cohort in the wake of events surrounding parking permits in Stanford-le-Hope in recent days.

At the weekend Thurrock Nub News exclusively reported on the issuing of fines by the authority to a local resident because the council-created date stamp on her parking tickets had been bleached out by the sun.

It was a bad judgement call by a parking enforcement officer massively endorsed by a senior officer when the resident challenged the fine.

In a letter dated 16 September he wrote to Moira Wilcox and said: ""Having carefully considered your informal challenge I have decided on this occasion not to cancel the penalty charge notice because it was correctly issued."

Note the words 'carefully considered' indicating he had spent time reviewing and considering the situation in the wake of all the facts at his disposal. On 16 September!

Despite the intervention of local councillors alerted by this story breaking on local social media and through direct contact from myself, ward councillors immediately asked the parking department to reconsider and to look at the problem of sun-bleached tickets.

The council itself remained tight-lipped and though – on Monday they contacted Ms Wilcox to tell her the fine had been revoked in the wake of councillors' intervention (no mention of our intervention and the subsequent publicity) - did not respond to Nub News until yesterday.

When they came up with a load of bunkum – endorsed by council leader Cllr Rob Gledhill.

The statement said: "The parking enforcement team reviewed their permitting process in August having identified an issue with information on the permit fading. As a result additional measures were implemented from 1 September to address this issue and ensure that fines were not issued to residents who may be displaying a valid faded permit that had not yet been upgraded to the new and improved ink solution. In accordance with the council's policy to be fair and reasonable, any penalty charge notices wrongly issued under these circumstances will be cancelled on appeal.

Cllr Rob Gledhill, Leader of Thurrock Council, said: "A number of local Stanford and Corringham ward councillors raised this issue over the weekend after it had been brought to their attention.

"The cause of the issue had already been identified, a resolution has been found and implemented and all parking penalty charge notices issued in error as a result of this will be cancelled.

"I would like to apologise to any residents affected by this issue and would urge any residents who may have received a parking notice for this to appeal to the council through the website."

I immediately contacted the council and pointed out that if the council were on top of this problem in August and were changing policy, how was it that TWO of the enforcement officers did not know about it? I suggested it was gross incompetence or – even worse – a willful attempt to distort the truth and put out a placatory press statement that was, in fact, a lie.

The council came back with: "The leader was clear in his statement, anyone who has been issued a ticket under these circumstances should contact the council. Admin errors do occasionally occur but are also rectified when they are brought to our attention as we saw in this case. This penalty notice has been withdrawn and the resident updated, the same will apply to any other residents who have been issued tickets in similar circumstances.

Again I challenged this, pointing out the timing anomaly and suggesting that, as it was clearly the council's fault, surely it was obligated to contact all the people who have been unfairly fined, apologise personally and give them their money back.

The council came back with: "The enquiry has already been dealt with. The leader has made it very clear in his response that anyone who has been issued a ticket under these circumstances should contact the council and the ticket will be revoked. We will not be responding further."

I have attempted to contact Cllr Gledhill personally. He is aware of my enquiries and my questions - but he has declined to respond personally.

I leave it to readers to make your own judgement call.

Does the council tell lies – or is it just incompetent beyond belief and dismissive and contemptuous of the residents of this borough it is supposed to serve?

I will finish by adding one more thing.

Time and time again in recent months I have written negative stories about this council.

Yet it employs more than 2,000 people, most who do a great and unrecognised good job.

I have repeatedly asked the council for more 'good news stories' about its teams and its performance. They blithely ignore the requests.

So I turn to the people of the borough.

I am sure many of you know of council staff doing a great job – or services that make a real and positive difference to the local community. Please email me those stories at [email protected] and I will be delighted to publish them

The workers of the council deserve more than to be classified in the same bracket as the uncaring, unconcerned, overpaid and blindly disinterested senior cohort of officers – and some councillors who act as the officers' lapdogs!