Forming the gateway to Essex for commuters on the M25 from Kent, Thurrock sits on the border of London, nestled next to Basildon and sharing the north bank of the Thames with Basildon, Castle Point, and Southend on Sea.
It is famous for being a film location, with scenes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman Begins and even Who Framed Roger Rabbit having been shot there. Despite its fame, however, it is also the location of infamy.
Last year the council was forced to declare bankruptcy in all but name, and a number of senior staff resigned or were suspended, prior to resigning. The council was forced to borrow over £600m from the Government, and has lost the power to appoint or dismiss staff. A new ‘managing director commissioner’, Dr Dave Smith, the former chief executive at Sunderland City Council, is now working with Essex County Council to oversee Thurrock.
Which brings us to the local council elections on 4 May 2023. On this day, elections for one third of the council will take place.
Thurrock Council has traditionally been a Labour council but it has had Conservative leaders for over 70% of the last decade. Labour Councillor John Kent led the council between May 2010 and May 2016. Then Conservative Councillor Rob Gledhill took over and remained in post until September 2022, when the debt scandal was revealed. He was replaced by his deputy, Mark Coxshall, who had previously championed the very investment strategy that led to the crisis in the first place.
Broken trust
There are sixteen wards being contested in Thurrock, with the following parties and individuals being represented:
- The Conservative party, 16 candidates
- The Labour party, 16 candidates
- Thurrock Independents party, 6 candidates
- Independents, 4 candidates
- Reform UK party, 3 candidates
- The Greens and UKIP, 1 candidate each.
So how will the electorate react? This is their first opportunity to register a vote since the Council was forced to bring in a 9.99% council tax rate, almost double the usual maximum.
The person leading the Conservatives from this far-from-advantageous position is Councillor Mark Coxshall. He and a number of other Conservative councillors held positions of authority at the time key decisions were made, yet he told Thurrock Nub News he was confident of success and that the local Conservative ‘election machine’ would steer local Tory candidates to victory.
It should be noted that that the editor of Thurrock Nub news is now standing as an Independent candidate in the Stanford-Le-Hope West ward. He had previously stood as a UKIP candidate.
The Thurrock Independents, formed in 2018, are a spin-off from UKIP, and together with Reform UK, could split the right-wing vote.
Will the local party pull it off?
With services cut and locations such as the Thameside Theatre sold off, it is not difficult to find people unhappy with the status quo.
Speaking to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in late March of this year, Sam Byrne, who set up the Save your Thameside campaign, echoed a common sentiment: why should the residents pay for the mistakes of the council? “The people of Thurrock are proud, strong, hard-working people and everybody’s on their knees at the moment,” she said. “To be hit with a bigger rise on anything to do with your day-to-day living is going to have a massive effect on a lot of people. So no, I don’t think it’s right.”
The last year has brought disarray to Thurrock and focused attention on the political and managerial decisions that allowed things to spiral out of control. Perhaps the next few weeks will see some consequences for those that agreed to, oversaw, and then allowed, the crisis to occur; or perhaps the vast ‘election machines’ will prove too powerful and drown out the voices of those in despair.
Only time will tell.
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