Typical incompetence,wasteful and corrupt labour council.

Hasn't it been in special measures whilst the cons were in charge?

Ah the far left stalwart is straight in with the whaterboutery.  And wrong.

Councils, all councils, should never have so much power they can get into such debt.  They should be curtailed in what they can spend the tax payers money on.  And it should be a short list.

They could, but mine is attempting to put another layer in - just after they merged to stop such a thing.  Liberals of course.

Just more snouts in the trough and treble gold plated pensions all round.

"frankly I don't see a need for local authorities anyway. Just another layer of useless busybodies to emopty the bins. Most councils could be run with a dozen competent managers."

As you know, Tora, that is my preferred option. There should be the Westminster Parliament and that's it. No devolved "governments"; no county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan district councils, and definitely no parish councils.

All the functions of those bodies can be undertaken by executives (paid at sensible levels) acting under the authority, direction  and supervision of the Westminster government.

There is no need to have an elected authority to be responsible for emptying the bins, changing streetlight bulbs and fixing the pavements and potholes (and that should be about the extent of their responsibiliies anyway). There is certainly no way any local authority should have the ability to run up ten-figure debts.

Of course there will be the usual howls of "lack of democracy" etc. but all local democracy does is imposes addiional costs on the taxpayer and resuls in conflict with national government. 

It's a complete waste of money and time. The example of Thurrock (and plenty of others, of various political persuasions are available) is testament to that.

Wasn't it Thurrock Council who lost their money investing in solar forms and were scammed?

"Wasn't it Thurrock Council who lost their money investing in solar forms and were scammed?"

Thurrock, along with Warrington and Newham councils, provided the finance to purchase a solar farm in Swindon. This was marketed by Rockfire Capital, a company owned by Liam Kavanagh.

Over the next two years, Thurrock helped Kavanagh to buy 53 more solar farms across the UK. As part of these deals, hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money was poured into bonds issued by his companies. The interest payments Thurrock received from these loans were then used to bolster the Conservative-run council’s budget.

Thurrock borrowed £1bn from more than 150 other local authorities, and the short-term loans – many only a month in length – meant the council was perpetually borrowing from one council to repay another.

When the brown stuff hit the air conditioning, councils were advised to stop lending to Thurrock, and so their business model collapsed. Thurrock then had to seek emergency permission to take out almost £850m from a Treasury-run lending body, this time at far higher interest rates.

There was also a series of secretive top-ups made by Thurrock after the solar farms had been bought. These deals were struck after undisclosed meetings between Kavanagh and Sean Clark, the council’s chief finance officer, at a five-star Mayfair hotel.

Between November 2018 and January 2020 the council handed over an additional £130m relating to 32 of the solar farms. That money is currently unaccounted for. During this period Kavanagh bought a country estate, a private jet and a fleet of supercars. Kavanagh’s companies owe Thurrock around £700m. 

Needless to say, he denies any wrongdoing. But the nub of this is the fact that a fairly small local authority had he ability to write multi-million pound cheques to finance schemes that had nothing to do with their core responsibilities, and over a hundred other councils across the country were lending them money for similar reasons.

It’s about time that residents, financing these authorities under threat of prosecution if they don’t, were put out of their misery. And the best way to do that is to wind those authorities up.

This is what came upnwhen I googled 'Tory councilscthat have gone bust'.

'Several Conservative (Tory) run councils in the UK have faced financial difficulties, with some issuing Section 114 notices, effectively declaring themselves bankrupt. These include Northamptonshire, Croydon, Slough, Thurrock, Woking, and Birmingham. While not all have formally declared bankruptcy, many are struggling with significant financial challenges.'

As regards abolishing local government. Do you seriously expect your bin collections and street lighting to be organised by someone in Westminster?

If your answer is of course not, they'd obviously subcontract someone in the area to do that stuff.. Guess what, that's what local government is.