Clash over council cash and risk of bankruptcy

Southend-on-Sea City Council has had to make £14m of savings over the past year

The leader of Southend-on-Sea City Council has warned that effective bankruptcy is "the biggest threat" facing the authority.

Conservative Tony Cox said having to issue a section 114 notice like Thurrock and Birmingham was "the single biggest risk we have to the council".

Opposition parties have accused the Conservatives of "political propaganda" ahead of local elections on 2 May.

Labour's Daniel Cowan said it was "a good bit of election spin to say the council is going to go bust. We are nowhere near that - we have very healthy reserves”.

But Mr Cox said that "if you don’t take measures to treat your risk, it will happen. It would be a catastrophic event if it did”.

The Liberal Democrats argued that Southend "is not near that situation".

And the leader of the Independent group of councillors told the BBC that “unlike many other councils, we are very stable” and said it was “just pure party political propaganda” by the Tories.

Mr Cowan, the council's current opposition leader, said Southend "could be staring down the barrel of one of those notices in five or six years' time, but it's not imminent".

In 2020-21 Southend was the 13th-most financially resilient unitary authority. The latest index puts the council in 37th place out of 58.

Conservative group leader Tony Cox said "the number one threat" was having to declare effective bankruptcy

Southend Conservatives are “pledging to get the finances under control”, and Mr Cox said he had started to do that over the past year. The Tories have been running the council as a minority administration since May 2023.

Earlier this year, plans for £14m of savings were amended by opposition groups, who reduced car parking charges across most of the city by 11% and extended chargeable hours.

Labour, the Lib Dems and the Independents got together to force through changes to save a dementia service that was set to be cut.

Those three groups had been running the council in a coalition for four years until last May.

The Conservatives campaigned on maintaining weekly bin collections last year but were unable to implement that policy when they took power.

"We would have loved to have kept it," Mr Cox told the BBC, adding that when they entered office they were "hamstrung" by the waste-contract renewal process already under way.

He said the Conservatives "would deliver value-for-money services" and added: "We still keep delivering services because at this stage no services have ceased despite the financial pressures.”

Labour's Daniel Cowan accused the Conservatives of "spin" over the bankruptcy threat

Labour said the Conservatives had made "unfunded promises" on bin collections and were “told about it from the beginning”.

The party is pledging "a free bulky waste collection service" in this election campaign to prevent fly-tipping, with fortnightly kerb-side collections.

Mr Cowan told the BBC that "local government funding is fundamentally broken" and he hoped his party would "restore some of the revenue support grant that we have lost".

Southend is receiving £7.59m from the government for 2024-25 to help fund services. In 2010, the council received £79m to support corporate services and received millions for children's and social care.

Southend Liberal Democrat group leader Paul Collins said Westminster needed to do more to help councils with care and children's services.

"Government have got to take this back" after "pushing it" on councils like Southend "for a number of years", he said.

About two-thirds of council tax is spent on these two core services.

Lib Dem leader Paul Collins said the government had been putting greater pressure on councils such as Southend's for years

Independent leader Martin Terry said his group would work to get the council to better promote the Southend Pass, which he said allowed people to park their cars for up to 15 hours a day in multiple areas.

The Greens are pledging to "thermally upgrade" council buildings to save money on energy and increase "tree canopy cover" and "reduce toxic air pollution".