ARE you coming to Thurrock Council cabinet? was the question.
Not often that we are asked if we are coming or indeed if we are filming but we took the bait as we thought that there might be the massed ranks from a number of voluntary sector groups storming the ramparts of Thurrock Council.
When we turned up, the only people in the gallery were the key leaders of a number of voluntary groups.
However, we were also led to expect that the chief exec of Thurrock Council for Voluntary Services, Kristina Jackson would be making a speech.
Now, we weren’t expecting: "Three score years and ten" or "Blood, tears, toil and sweat" or indeed" I have a dream" however, there were a number of eyebrows raised when Ms Jackson spoke for just under 50 seconds.
Some might look at the body language of some people in the gallery. So that might be the reason we ask the same question that Johnny Rotten asked all those years ago….
Later we received a reply from Ms Jackson
She said:
"Our intention at the Cabinet Meeting on Wednesday was to demonstrate the importance senior members of Voluntary and Community organisations in Thurrock placed on the proposed cuts to the sector. It would have been easy to play the emotional card and have great numbers of people who could potentially be affected by the proposed cuts invade the meeting but that was never our intention.
"The voluntary and community sector, through Thurrock CVS wanted to show their willingness to work with Thurrock Council in a professional manner to ensure that the full implications of any cuts were understood and the cumulative effect was recognised. We have never denied that Thurrock Council has to make huge savings across all of their spending areas including the Voluntary & Community Sector. Our concern was that the proposals needed to be looked at holistically and not driven by individual department savings.
"I had a detailed statement to present to Cabinet on the night asking for cabinet to establish a member led group working with representatives from the voluntary sector to look at perhaps unidentified consequences of the proposed cuts and to see if together we could help offer different solutions.
"With Cllr Kent’s additional recommendation, proposing the formation of a joint “cross-cutting” group with the chairs of all the overview and scrutiny committees which came prior to my invitation to speak, there was no need for me to present the statement as we had already achieved our objective and it’s not my intention for unnecessary grandstanding, but to create an ethos in which the voluntary sector and council can get through this difficult period with the cuts. It’s far better that we showed our support for the proposal of a cross-cutting overview & scrutiny committee and our willingness to work with statutory partners in any way we could, while ensuring any hard decisions were made with the full knowledge of their potential impacts on both the Voluntary & Community Sector, Thurrock residents and Thurrock Council.
Kristina Jackson
Chief Executive Officer – Thurrock CVS
