THURROCK Council has saved almost £500,000 on top management posts compared with 2010 through working with other local authorities.

The authority is sharing management posts with at least seven authorities including Barking and Dagenham, who shared the cost of the chief executive, and Southend, who pay half the cost of the public health director.

A report at tomorrow’s meeting of the council says senior management changes will see the authority save £455,676 a year and £907,076 a year across the public sector as a whole, compared with 2010.

The council is also looking at ways to share joint working opportunities for planning and building control with Brentwood Council.

Councillor John Kent says the council is taking the steps as it has to cut around £33 million from its budget in the three years starting from April 2015.

Mr Kent, Thurrock Council Leader, said: “I have said before and I will no doubt say again that Thurrock will look to work with any other organisation if there is a benefit for Thurrock people.

“Thurrock is recognised as running excellent services and if the opportunity arises to work with others and share management costs we will always consider them.”

“I think people have to realise that as time goes on and council budgets continue to shrink, we are going to see more and more shared senior managers and shared services.

“We are going to have to pay less for services and the best way of making sure the actual service received by local people is hit as little as possible is to share managers.

“We want to maintain services tailored for Thurrock people and to provide the best service locally we have to look at different ways of managing them.

“It is the job of councillors themselves to ensure local people are receiving the best possible service, whether that is in social care or street cleaning and that is why discussions like that at Wednesday’s meeting are so very important; and why it is imperative the focus is on the service provided and not where the management is.”