Members of Cabinet heard on Wednesday night how the council had successfully delivered savings of £100m since 2010 whilst limiting the impact on its services to residents.

Presenting the 2016/17 financial outturn report, councillor for Finance, Shane Hebb explained after the meeting: “Thurrock has lived within its means and prospered along the way.

“We exceeded a good number of expectations. We decided to spend more in our clean and green services and Thurrock has never looked so good – although there is much, much more to do.

“We instigated a cross-party Council Spending Review, and started bottom-up reviews of services over three years.

"We move onto self-sufficient ambitions as we enter 2017/18 and this cabinet commits to learning from any lessons of last year.

He described the council’s self-sufficient ambitions for the future and added: “I have deep-dived with my teams into what it would take for this Local Authority to become truly self-sufficient – that is to say, future proofed from government income reductions – to not rely on 1p from the Treasury.

"We have also reviewed the general fund reserves and put in place actions to increase these over the next three years to improve the council’s financial stability.

“Officers have been working solidly on this and this will be a key theme in the forthcoming 12 months as we move to deliver another £20m by 2020.”

For more on the council’s finances, go to thurrock.gov.uk/accounts

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