News

Council launches new Annual Report of performance as Leader notes progress in improvement journey, despite challenges looming large

25 July 2025

Thurrock Council’s Cabinet approved a new Annual Report of council performance at its meeting on Wednesday 22 July. The first such report produced in years, it sits alongside the new Corporate Plan as a suite of documents which improve transparency and challenge into the council’s work as it works hard to improve services to residents.

Setting out key highlights from the last year which demonstrate strengthened community cohesion and pride in the borough, the Report can be read alongside the Council’s Quarter Four and Outturn Report for 2024/25 which assess performance against a range of values, including where performance is not at the level required. The Report also sets out the proportion of spending on services, with a fifth of council money used to fund the increasing demand for adult social care, with children’s services demand requiring similar (18%) funding need.

Key performance highlights include:

  • Thurrock Council’s Children’s Social Care and Early Help services were awarded an ‘Outstanding’ rating by the regulator Ofsted
  • Thurrock Cares, the campaign to support residents with the spiralling cost of living, has directly supported over 4,600 local residents with financial support totalling three quarters of a million pounds
  • A new programme of Public Question Time events and comprehensive community engagement and events to enable residents to hold local council leaders to account
  • The Council has successfully recovered hundreds of millions of pounds from the historic investment failures – with further action to be taken. The Council achieved £19million of savings across the authority
  • 2024 saw 2,315 local children access books for learning as part of the Thurrock Summer Reading Challenge
  • A new Thurrock Plan for Culture was launched, as well as the re-opening of Coalhouse Fort.

The Leader of the Council, Cllr Lynn Worrall, comments: “I am proud to launch this new Annual Report, which means residents and stakeholders can easily see for themselves how we are doing as we navigate our challenging journey towards sustained improvement.

“There is much that is positive in the Report – and I especially want to highlight the substantial programme of resident engagement which the council has embarked on to hear residents’ voices and hold me and my colleagues to account.

“However, it is important to note that while we are making the steps forward we need, the council is still reliant on exceptional financial support from the government to meet a balanced budget. Our debt must be addressed with firm actions.

“Last week, the minister for local government agreed with me that the commissioners sent in to oversee Thurrock Council’s services should remain in place. We are certainly not fully back on our feet and we cannot be complacent for a second. We have come a long way – but we have to re-double our efforts to build residents’ trust in the council.”

The report is available to read here

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