An extraordinary Southend Council meeting on devolution is listed for 18 November, after the 21 October consent vote was called off. No agenda yet.

Updated 4 November: the council’s calendar now lists an “Extraordinary (Devolution)” Council meeting on Wednesday 18 November at 6.30pm (meeting page). The agenda has not been published, and the page says it will appear in the week before. The calendar also lists a separate extraordinary Council on 17 November and another on 26 November, with no business stated.

Updated 26 October: both meetings were called off. The extraordinary Council meeting on 21 October is marked “cancelled” under Council Procedure Rule 3.27 of the constitution, and the Cabinet meeting is marked “postponed” with the note “This meeting is to be rescheduled for a later date” (Council meeting page; Cabinet meeting page). No new date was listed on 26 October, and the council has not published a reason. The next Cabinet is on 16 November. Southend’s consent is still needed before the regulations can go to Parliament. The rest of this article describes what was proposed.

Southend councillors were due on 21 October to say yes, for the second time, to a new mayoral authority covering the whole of Greater Essex. If all three councils agree, the government plans to put the law creating it before Parliament in November.

The body would be called the Greater Essex Combined County Authority. Its members would come from Essex County Council, Southend-on-Sea City Council and Thurrock Council. The council report expects it to exist in early 2027 (Cabinet report, 21 October 2026).

What nobody can say yet is when Greater Essex votes for its first mayor. That date is for the Secretary of State to decide, the council said (Southend-on-Sea City Council, 19 October).

The two meetings that were called off

Two extraordinary meetings were set for the Civic Centre on 21 October:

  • Full Council at 6.30pm. It was asked to consider the Cabinet report and make any recommendations to Cabinet it sees fit (Council agenda).
  • Cabinet at 8.20pm. It takes the decision. Consent is an executive decision, so it sits with Cabinet rather than the full council (Cabinet agenda).

Cabinet was recommended to reaffirm its consent to the new authority. It was also asked to let the chief executive agree any minor drafting changes before the regulations go to Parliament.

Why it is back on the table

Cabinet first gave consent on 15 September 2025. The ground has moved twice since.

On 4 December 2025 the government pushed the first mayoral elections for new authorities like this one from May 2026 to 2028. Council leaders then decided to revisit their consent after the May 2026 elections, the report says.

On 7 September 2026 the minister paused local government reorganisation, and the shadow council elections planned for May 2027 were cancelled. We reported that at the time, in Southend council merger withdrawn.

Two days later, on 9 September, the leaders of the three councils wrote to the minister. They asked for devolution to go ahead and for the first mayoral election to be brought forward to May 2027. The government has since sent revised draft regulations for the councils to agree.

The money, and the catch

The council’s headline is £1.2 billion. That is the total of a 30-year investment fund for Greater Essex. The report puts the figures like this:

Funding line Amount Condition
Investment fund £41.5m a year for 30 years Full amount only once a mayor is elected
Investment fund before a mayor One third of the annual sum 2026/27 and 2027/28
Capacity funding £7.5m over three years To set the authority up
Adult skills £28.5m a year Access to the budget
Strategic transport About £100m a year Access to the budget

One third of £41.5 million is about £13.8 million a year, our calculation. The report says the investment fund would be split equally between capital and revenue spending.

The report also says all of these figures “will need to be confirmed by the Government”, along with when the money is paid. It warns that the government “has not committed to holding the current offer open indefinitely”.

What Southend gets, and what it keeps

The draft regulations cannot be published until they are laid in Parliament. The council’s summary of them says the authority’s members would be:

  • two councillors from Southend-on-Sea City Council
  • two from Thurrock Council
  • three from Essex County Council

Until a mayor is elected, a chair and vice chair would be chosen from those members. Decisions would need at least four of them plus the chair or vice chair present (summary of the draft regulations).

Southend stays the highways authority for its own roads. Transport powers, including the local transport plan, would at first be shared between the new body and the three councils, and later held by the mayor alone.

If the mayor’s costs are not covered by the authority’s own money, including any precept, the three councils must meet them. By default they would split those costs by population, unless they agree otherwise.

The alternative

The report sets out one other option: refuse consent. All three councils have to agree, so a refusal from Southend alone would stop the authority being created for now.

Officers recommend against it. The report says the government expects every area in England to have a strategic authority by 2028. Saying no, it argues, would cost Southend its influence over how and when that happens.

What it means for you

  • Your council does not change. Bins, council tax, schools and social care stay with Southend-on-Sea City Council. The council says the new body “would not replace any local councils”.
  • There is no mayoral election date. Southend’s leaders want May 2027. The government’s last stated position was 2028, and the date is the Secretary of State’s call.
  • The new body could add a precept. The draft regulations refer to one as part of the authority’s resources. Nothing in the 21 October papers sets an amount.
  • Buses and transport planning are the first powers to move. The council is also consulting now on its own Local Transport Plan, covered in our story on the new 62A and 62B buses.
  • The decision has not been taken. It moves to a later Cabinet meeting, with no date yet. We will report it when it is listed.

Sources