NEXT year’s Essex mayor elections are likely to be overseen by a Southend Council’s chief executive reports the Local Democracy Reporter.
It is proposed Colin Ansell be appointed as returning officer for the election of Mayor of a Combined County Authority for Greater Essex, scheduled for May 2026.
The appointment was agreed by Thurrock Council’s general services committee on Wednesday, with other councils within the proposed new authority area set to follow suit.
The mayoral election, local government reorganisation which will see up to five new unitary authorities across Essex and plans for devolution of powers, with existing councils are already running up costs ahead of the changes.
Councils have awarded contracts worth £3.4m since the start of the year as part of local government reorganisation.
Contracts for consultancy, preparing business cases and engaging with residents have been signed by 24 councils, according to published data from public procurement experts Tussell.
At the meeting, Neil Speight, Independent councillor for Stanford-le-Hope West asked how much the services of the monitoring officer and a deputy would cost Thurrock but an officer present was unable to provide the answer, saying those costs were not yet known.
Mr Speight said: “The returning officer will be paid fees that will be funded by the constituent authorities jointly so the residents of Thurrock will be paying contributory to those fees so I think it’s a real matter of interest to those to those parties.
“Would you walk into a shop and buy something without knowing what it was going to cost. This is what you’re asking us to do. There should be a statutory set of fees for these things they should be known. When are we going to start to have accountability with the public purse?”
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Speight added: “When I became a councillor in 2023 there was a lot of training and briefing about how the previous administration and councillors had not checked, not scrutinised things and had blindly signing things off.
We were advised this was unacceptable. Yet here we are, two years on and the top officers are saying they don’t know costings but want us to approve costs.”
