The long running farce that’s the ‘re-development’ of the railway station at Stanford-le-Hope just keeps going on. These are the latest revelations about the amount of money that’s been spent so far by Thurrock Council on CONsultants: ‘Mind-blowing’ decisions. Council’s £11 million consultancy spend on botched Stanford rail station project perplexes councillor – but the money keeps on flowing! Rather than us re-hashing the detailed reporting in this piece from Thurrock Nub News, we recommend that you give it a thorough read.

All we have to say is that this is symptomatic of a council that has lost it’s grip and is now rudderless. We have a failure of due diligence. We have a failure of the monitoring of senior officers by ruling group councillors. We have a lack of transparency from the council towards station staff and passengers who’ve had to endure working in and using a demolition site and various ‘temporary’ structures since February 2019.

What we’re still waiting for is a station with a bus interchange, a taxi pick up and drop off point, a car pick up and drop off point, and a car park. We’re also still waiting for an explanation as to why perfectly serviceable structures were demolished without properly costed plans ready to go for a replacement. Lastly, staff and passengers are still waiting for a full apology from Thurrock Council for this debacle.

We’ve got a serious case of ‘institutional rot’ at Thurrock Council. It’s not just Thurrock Council – there are many local authorities up and down the country who have bad cases of ‘institutional rot’. At what point do residents say, ‘we’ve had enough, it’s time for fundamental change’?

At some point soon, we’ll be taking a deeper look at the phenomena of ‘institutional rot’ on our sister blog, The Estuary Stirrer.