On Tuesday 5 October, there was a meeting of Thurrock Council’s Planning, Transport and Regeneration Overview & Scrutiny Committee. Opposition Labour councillors on the committee attempted to instigate a Local Government Peer Review into the overdue and over budget A13 widening project. As with a previous attempt to do this back in February, the ruling group Tory councillors who hold the majority on the committee voted to block the move. This is how it was covered by Thurrock Nub News: Latest bid for independent review of A13 widening project is blocked.

This is our previous post which briefly looked at Thurrock Council’s dismal record when it comes to accountability to the residents: Transparency? Accountability? Answers? Anyone? We say briefly because to be honest, to do justice to this dismal record and what it means for residents in the borough could well fill a book at this rate! However, we are considering writing a longer piece for our sister blog, The Stirrer.

As we have said more times than we care to remember over the years, all of this is symptomatic of how broken and unfit for purpose our system of local (and national) governance is. Councillors and officers need a sharp reminder that it’s us residents who pay their expenses and salaries and in return, we expect transparency, accountability and honesty. We do not accept the evasiveness and almost total lack of transparency that we’re currently being subjected to.

The above graphic which expresses how we feel about the situation with the A13, is available as a downloadable and printable A4 poster from here. Have fun and don’t get caught!