To continue with collaborative opportunities with the Council’s partners.
Contribute £20k to the North Essex Councils.
North Essex Councils (NEC) is a partnership of councils in North Essex, including Braintree District Council, Chelmsford City Council, Colchester City Council, Epping Forest District Council, Essex County Council, Harlow District Council, Maldon District Council, Tendring District Council, and Uttlesford District Council.
The aim of the NEC is to work together collaboratively on issues such as housing, infrastructure and economic development.
The Council contributed £20,000 on a trial basis in 2023/4. That supported the development of North Essex Councils as a collaborative group, and work has continued in 2024/5, including the recruitment of a Director to support NEC. The Director has supported the development a themed approach to joint working, with workstreams on economic growth, climate change and housing. In 2025 councils became part of the Devolution Priority Programme, with plans developing for Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation. This has enabled, for example, the Economic workstream, to run a series of workshops to develop draft proposals for a high-level economic plan for North Essex, which has the potential to feed into proposals within the new Mayoral Combined Authority as it develops during 2025/6.
As a result, it is proposed to provide £20,000 for 2024/5 to support the work of North Essex Councils.
Allocate £20k to the Joint Health Post
The Head of Place Partnership for Tendring is employed by the North East Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) to develop the Place approach for the district of Tendring. The post operates within the North East Essex Alliance, which is a collective of government, healthcare and voluntary organisations, who work together to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities have an increasing focus on Place.
The Post is employed by the ICB, focused on Tendring District, and will work closely with Tendring District Council.
Health and Wellbeing is very important to the Council. The Council is out to consultation on a Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which sets out the importance of public health, and the role of the Council in promoting the wider determinants of health through many of its services, such as housing, planning, benefits, sport and leisure and economic growth. We are also spending funding from the health system, for example on the health homes for Jaywick programme.
This post will support the joint working between the Council and the health system, both on the Council’s aspirations set out in the draft Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and health partners approach to public health, focused on targeting activity and services within places (the ‘place approach’).
The ICB has agreed to provide full backstop funding for this post, which has been filled subject to standard Human Resource checks. The Council has been asked, as a partner, to make a contribution to the costs of the post, given the works on the shared public health agenda with the District Council.

To allocate £20k to each of the North Essex Councils Collaborative Activities and Joint Health Post with Health Partners as agreed on the 15th November 2024 Cabinet Meeting as set out in the Financial Performance Report 2024/25 – General Update at the end of September 2024.

Option 1 - To not fund these initiatives and miss the opportunities of working with partners and being able to shape the future of the district.
Option 2 -
Option 3 -