Category: McGURRAN, Aidan (fmr. Labour cllr for Pitsea SE)

Thursday was an exceptionally good night for the Conservatives (much better than 2016). We held the five seats we were defending (Billericay East, Billericay West, Burstead, Crouch and Wickford North) and, in addition, won five more (Laindon Park, two seats in Pitsea South-East, Wickford Castledon and Wickford Park). UKIP, who were the second largest party…

Regular readers will recall that I was vehemently opposed to the 2014 application to build a solar farm covering over 26 hectares on Green Belt land off Outwood Farm Road in Billericay. This was granted permission by the Planning Committee, despite an officer recommendation to refuse and opposition from Billericay Town Council, Chelmsford City Council…

Last night was the first meeting of the new Regeneration & Environment Committee – one of the four new service committees brought in by the Labour-led Coalition under their new Committee System, which replaced the Leader and Cabinet model. It is chaired by Cllr Alan Ball (WI, Wickford Castledon). The meeting was an embarrassing farce…

Firstly, an apology. I never wrote up the last meeting of Full Council, which I think is a first. I decided to wait for the audio recording to go on the website, as it makes it much easier for me to do the write-up but, low and behold, the Council’s audio-recording system failed again and,…

Apologies that is has taken me over a week to pen this blog about the budget-setting meeting of Full Council on Thursday 11th February but I have had a lot on. The meeting was preceded by an extraordinary meeting of the Council to vote on a proposal from the Deputy Mayor – Cllr Danny Lawrence…

As I come to write up last Thursday’s meeting of Full Council, I would just ask readers to bear with me, as this was a mammoth SEVEN-HOUR meeting that went on until two o’clock in the morning. The meeting started at 7pm, earlier than usual, with a special Extraordinary Meeting to consider two nominations for…

As regular readers will know, I do not generally write up meetings of Basildon Council’s Planning Committee, but last week’s meeting held on Tuesday 30th June turned out to be an unusually controversial affair. Firstly, a bit of background on the new enlarged committee, which now has ten members: four Tories – Cllrs Carole Morris…

So, thought I’d write-up the Basildon Council Annual Meeting held on Thursday. These are normally quite civil, set-piece affairs, where we elect our Mayor and Deputy Mayor for the municipal year and also pass the winning party’s Order Paper, enabling them to form an Administration. The Order Paper confirms the Leader and Deputy Leader of…

It is now officially Polling Day and chronic insomnia allows me this opportunity to make some election night predictions and speak briefly about the elections before us – not just the General Election to Parliament but also our own local borough council elections. Every politician says at every election that it is “the most important…

I don’t generally write up Planning Committee meetings but, as Tuesday night’s one has proved controversial and I’ve been getting lots of questions about it – both via e-mail and directed to me on social media – I thought it’d be simpler and easier to write it up for my website.  So here goes. For…