The council ran up a £500m deficit after gambling hundreds of millions of pounds on risky commercial investments and declared effective bankruptcy in December.

Anyone spot any familiar themes in the official findings? – Owl

Thurrock Council Best Value Inspection Report (extract from “Our Findings”)

“Our inspection has found that Thurrock Council has experienced repeated failures both in the delivery of its investment strategy, and in the delivery of major infrastructure and regeneration projects. These failures have resulted in the loss of substantial sums of public money. When initially faced with these failures, members and senior officers within the Council have attempted to conceal bad news and avoid public scrutiny.

This pattern of failure, and the nature of the Council’s response, has been enabled by dereliction in political and managerial leadership, inadequate governance arrangements and serious weaknesses in internal control. 

The Council’s lack of openness and transparency has given rise to a culture of insularity and complacency. Internal challenge has been discouraged, and external criticism and challenge have been routinely dismissed. This has undermined the Council’s ability to learn from others and from its own previous mistakes. It has placed the Council in a state of ‘unconscious incompetence’ and has undermined its ability to secure continuous improvement. Thurrock Council has, therefore, failed to meet the ‘Best Value Duty’ placed on all local authorities. 

Urgent change is required. The scale of the financial challenge now facing the Council means it is inevitable that, in addition to making extensive efficiency savings, the Council will have to undertake a significant and rapid reduction in the scope of local services. Many services, which have been relatively well funded over the past decade may, as a consequence, be equipped to do little more than the statutory minimum for the foreseeable future. Leading this transformation will be a hugely difficult task, not least because the Council does not have a good record in delivering major projects. This transformation will need to be effectively managed at both the corporate and service level if the Council is to avoid serious operational failures.“