THE LEADER of the Thurrock Conservatives has applauded the decision to return to a full time chief executive.
Conservative Leader, Councillor Rob Gledhill said "Sharing back room services like procurement, street mapping and insurance is a sensible thing to do with other councils or with the private sector to save residents money.
"However having directors and senior managers driving up and down the A13 only wastes time and money; means decisions are delayed and the value of those highly paid staff is lost. Whilst directors are not here, in Thurrock, the borough will not move forward at the pace it needs to. I am sure this same issue was raised in the recent peer review undertaken at Barking and Dagenham and it would back up Thurrock Conservatives calls to bring this management merger to an end.
"I would thank the Labour Leader of Barking and Dagenham for not only listening to the concerns Thurrock Conservatives, Thurrock residents, a peer review and clearly the thoughts of his own leadership, but for also taking action on them.
"Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Thurrock Labour and who ignored calls for the management merger to come to an end to help Thurrock improve, avoided calls for a similar review here and were only looking for quick savings.
"Thurrock needs to improve faster and it is clear that that the whole of management merger will need to be urgently reviewed. Unfortunately Thurrock Labour leadership have been dodging this decision for two years now so are clearly not up to the job!"
