The Tory group have once again chosen Terry Cutmore to lead them, and so he is still Leader of the Council. Keith Hudson is still deputy leader.
Terry Cutmore has picked his eight-member cabinet for this year – and its the same eight councillors as last year So we still have the peculiar situation that Rayleigh, our largest town, doesn’t have a councillor who can even speak or ask a question at cabinet meetings.
Joan Mockford (Tory), as expected, is the new Chairman of the council. Her main charity for this year will be cancer research. The new Vice-Chairman is Cllr Barbara Wilkins. (Tory)
To be fair, the Tories didn’t try to hog everything for themselves. Chris Lumley (Lib Dem) was able to join the board of the housing association, where he joins Cllrs Michael Hoy (Green) , Jo McPherson (Tory) and Angela Hale (Tory). Chris Black was able to get on the local highways panel, and June Lumley (Lib Dem) was re-elected as Chair of the Review Committee.
The new microphones in the council chamber don’t seem to be working very well. Hopefully, they can be tweaked a bit….
Chris, may not be a problem with the microphones if you can’t speak in the first place….