​Mersea Life April 2025
Dr Martin Parsons
Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet
This month it’s been a bit like that well known supermarket offer ‘two-for-the-price-of-one’ – we had two council meetings!
First was the annual budget setting meeting, which is the most political meeting of the year, so I will try to be as factual and balanced as possible!
The council is what is called a ‘minority-administration’, which means that although one party –the Lib-Dems - leads the council, they don’t have an overall majority and are not in a formal coalition with any other party.  The council currently consists of 19 Conservatives, 14 Lib-Dems, 14 Labour, 3 Greens and 1 independent. So, the council’s budget meeting shows who is supporting who - and at what price!
The Lib-Dems proposed their budget. Both Conservatives and Labour then proposed budget amendments, all of which have to be costed in advance by the council’s finance officer to ensure the council sets a balanced budget.
The Conservatives proposed 3 budget amendments including one to re-allocate £100,000 from the council’s “sustainability” (i.e. climate change) budget and use it for sea defence. This and all the other Conservative amendments were voted down – although one brave Lib-Dem councillor representing Wivenhoe did defy the whip and vote for the sea defence amendment.
Labour proposed their budget amendment, which was immediately accepted by the Lib-Dems.
However, before that was voted on, the Greens who didn’t propose any budget amendments of their own raised some concerns about the Labour budget amendment! They pointed out that part of what had just been agreed between Labour and the Lib-Dems involved taking £100,000 from the council’s reserves and giving it to a community project in Greenstead –a ward represented by 3 Labour councillors, one of whose husband ran the project. It was a fair point particularly given the amount of money involved. But as the Labour councillor concerned had already declared a personal interest – although not saying what it was - and left the council chamber, there was no actual breach of the rules.
I did say this was the most political meeting of the year!
The second council meeting was to approve the leader of the Council, Councillor David King, negotiating with other councils in Essex as to what to suggest to the government as to how many councils there should be in Essex. Unlike the budget this was an almost entirely non-party political discussion (it does happen!).