THE Tory leader claims Labour have proved they misled the public in the row over outsourcing the borough’s leisure facilities.

The Conservative budget proposal to save £20,000 by packaging up the borough’s leisure services into a charitable trust was immediately branded “privatisation” by the ruling Labour group after it was voted through in March.

Before the local elections, Labour urged residents to sign petitions and join Facebook groups to “save” Grays Beach from privatisation, but months later, a council document revealed there is no plan to outsource the facility at all.

A petition update in the latest full council meeting agenda said a response had been sent to the residents who signed a petition to save Grays Beach.

It said: “ Response sent 26 May 2011 confirming that the council is not currently considering the outsourcing of any part of Grays Beach.”

The leader of the Tories, cllr Phil Anderson, said this proves that Labour “deliberately misled the public” in the run up to the elections.

He said: “This shows that Labour knew all along that a sell-off of Grays beach was never on the cards.

“They deliberately misled the public for naked political gain, and caused a lot of fear and anxiety in the process.

“Now they have had to admit that it was all just spin and smear. I hope that people will remember this next time they see negative campaigning by Thurrock Labour in the run-up to an election.”

The Gazette ran a story about Labour’s “scaremongering” over this issue on April 1.

We reported how Labour councillors Val Morris-Cook and Martin Healey had attended a residents meeting in Grays and urged them to sign petitions and join Facebook campaigns to save the beach.

Speaking after that meeting, cllr Morris-Cook said: “The decision is not down to the Labour cabinet. It was the leader of the Conservative group who specified Grays Beach, the theatre and the museum should be outsourced in his speech.”

Next, we tried to pin down the leader of the council, John Kent, on whether Labour had the choice to outsource Grays Beach or not.

All he would say at the time was: “Frankly there aren’t many other leisure facilities that would lend themselves to outsourcing.”

The Conservatives maintained that nowhere in their proposal did it mention Grays Beach, and it was up to Labour how they came up with the £20,000 saving.

At the latest meeting of the full council on Wednesday, cllr Anderson asked Labour’s cabinet member for leisure, Lynn Worrall if she would admit her party had misled the public.

She replied: “We never intended to privatise Grays Beach, it was your intention to do this, so no.”