Council leadership slammed over ferry response

From the archive, first published Sunday 15th Apr 2007.

A leading councillor has ripped into Thurrock Council's hierarchy over its failure to come up with an effective solution to the problem of Tilbury's missing ferry.

Since Wednesday, April 4 commuters who use the Thames crossing from Tilbury to Gravesend have been marooned and forced to turn to a four bus replacement service' offered up by Thurrock Council.

Normally borough residents who work in Gravesend can make use of the Duchess M ferry, but she is in dry dock for repairs and her replacement, the Princess Pocahontas sprang a rather big leak ending up with four feet of water in her engine room.

She was also towed off for repairs and her owners, the Lower Thames and Medway Steam Packet Company who receive a subsidy of £170,000 a year to run the service from Thurrock and Kent County Councils haven't come up with a third vessel.

Thurrock Council's contingency plan is for commuters to take three regular service buses to Bluewater shopping centre, from where Thurrock Council have contracted a bus from operators Ensign to run a shuttle to and from the dock.

Councillor Carl Morris, the Labour group chairman, former council deputy leader and agent to MP Andrew Mackinlay has called on the council to run a direct bus service from one wharf to the other.

Mr Mackinlay has also called on the council to take direct action and ridiculed them for the failure to respond quickly but both their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Councillor Morris took his plea directly to the council's recently appoint chief executive Angie Ridgwell and asked her to intervene but she merely sent back the council's stock press release .

The Gazette has also tried to prise a response from the council but its transport chief, James Duncan - who the Gazette recently revealed is paid £610 a day - has also failed to respond to our questions.

Councillor Carl Morris said: "This situation typifies all that's wrong with Thurrock Council; there is management of sorts, but no leadership. A vacuum exists where political leadership used to be.

"This is a council where officers fail to act until prompted to do so. When they do, common sense and the interests of the people they are supposed serve are ignored when nonsensical decisions are made.

"The Tory Councillors who run this rotten Council are merely consultees after the fact and have become ciphers for officers they're supposed to be leading, because they don't know what they're doing.

"The interests and convenience of the people who matter in all this, those who use this ferry every day to commute to and from work, have been completely ignored by the Officers and Tory Councillors who run the Council.

"The Council leader and his inept sidekicks had the chance to belatedly put things right. They could have approved my request to provide the proper ferry to ferry replacement bus a service that should have been put in first place.

"Of course they blew it and proved once again that they couldn't give a toss".

Thurrock Council leader councillor Terry Hipsey acknowledges that some commuters are having problems and in the latest statement from the council, a spokesman does offer commuters the possibility of being reimbursed.

Only last month he made headlines when he slammed the council's own lack of innovation and response, ineffective management and highlighted the poor performance of senior officers.

However, he also says that the Labour group are creating political mischief over the ferry issue and are "making amountain out of a molehill."

Editorial comment A right royal mess

Details of the replacement bus links can be found here.