Call for emergency meeting to discuss ‘serious concern’ at Cornwall Council

There has been a call for an emergency meeting at Cornwall Council after ‘serious concern’ was raised following the resignation of three senior officers within a week which also saw questions asked about the local authority’s finances.

Cllr Sean Smith, Cornwall councillor for St Cleer and Menheniot and Reform UK group whip, is calling for the emergency meeting of Cornwall Council at Lys Kernow (County Hall) in Truro. The demand follows the recent resignations of chief executive Kate Kennally, chief operating and finance officer Annabel Scholes and service director Rachael Rothero.

Cllr Smith said: “Three senior departures announced this month are cause for serious concern. We are not claiming they are linked. We want clear answers about leadership, financial safeguards and the protection of service. The Liberal Democrat and Independent administration must bring all councillors together for a full public briefing. Residents deserve to hear the facts and the questions being asked on their behalf.”

The Reform UK councillor wants as much as can be lawfully shared about the departures explained in the proposed meeting. He also wants the council’s full financial position to be published in a “clear report”.

Cllr Smith added: “The people of Cornwall deserve straight answers. In September, staff were warned of an £11 million in-year budget deficit and tighter spending controls.” He also mentioned the news as reported by us last week that the council’s borrowing stood at £1.571 billion as of March 31, 2026, placing Cornwall seventh among English councils by total debt.

“We need to see the current safeguards and know that qualified officers are in place to protect public money.”

He said: “Chief officer matters have been considered in private by the chief officers employment committee. A committee member has publicly confirmed signing a confidentiality agreement. I respect the need to protect personal employment information. The council must still explain its decisions, financial commitments and leadership arrangements as fully as the law allows.

“I also want a clear answer: does the council still assess the risk of a Section 114 notice as low and what evidence supports that judgement?”
A Section 114 notice is a formal report issued by a UK local authority when the council expects its expenditure to exceed its available income, making it impossible to set or maintain a balanced budget – an effective bankruptcy.

Andrea Lovett, Reform UK’s Cornwall county organiser, added: “The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have left Cornwall Council with a debt already at £1.57 billion and heading for over £2 billion. Cornish taxpayers are now funding interest payments of around £159,000 every single day.
“While those parties have spent their time attacking Reform, they have neglected the basics: controlling spending and protecting services. They have forgotten they answer to the people who pay the bills. The mess is theirs, the debt is ours and the excuses must end. Reform will make sure they answer for every penny.”

Cornwall Council’s Lib Dem leader Cllr Leigh Frost reacted to the third resignation on Friday (October 16). He told us: “I can’t pretend that it’s no problem at all.

“However, we’ve had Andy Keeling come in as the interim deputy chief executive and he’s doing a really good job, so we’ve got that leadership in place, which is really important. The organisation doesn’t stand or fall on one person. It takes a bigger team to deliver and that team is there. They’re good at what they do and I have every faith in the work that they do.

“Whilst it is a pretty hefty bump in the road, it is only a bump.”

Regarding concerns about the state of the council’s finances, he added: “I took the position of leader with eyes wide open that local government has been chronically underfunded for years. We had the fairer funding review last year and the initial report in June 2025 finally recognised coastal and rural remoteness and put plus-£70m in our funding settlement from Government.”

He added that ‘political hijinks’ by a number of urban councils led to the rural and coastal remoteness element being removed. “So we went from being plus-£70m to minus-£50m. We actually came out of a fairer funding review £3m worse off than if they just did nothing at all.

“Inflation goes up and we’ve got a guy across the Atlantic stopping trading routes that causes massive problems for the rest of us. We’re not immune to that – we’ve got vans on the road and Cormac have got vans on the road. If your fuel goes up 50p a litre, we’ve got to pay that like anyone else.”

He added that despite all that, “it’s not dire straits”.

“There are 44 councils in the country that are already functionally bankrupt. There are loads of councils getting exceptional financial support, which isn’t a good thing as it’s counter-intuitive because you have to pay it back. It’s not a place you want to be in and I don’t think we are in that place.

“You could say, if you don’t get things right now is there a danger of heading there? Of course there is because local government is not funded properly. We are doing the things that we need to do. Our Quarter 2 report [an overview of the council’s performance in the second part of the financial year], which is due soon, shows we are moving in the right direction.”

He added: “The thing is with Cornwall we are on an evolution journey, particularly with the strategic authority status. We’ll be a hybrid – the only place in the country that is a both a local authority and a strategic authority.

“It’s the right time to say, we’ve been doing this for a long time, is it still the right way to be doing it? The most dangerous sentence in the English language is ‘we’ve always done it this way’. I’m very much of the opinion we need to change and adapt.”

A meeting was held at No 10 North in Manchester today to discuss the finer details of single strategic authority status and what powers and funding that will give Cornwall. Cllr Frost was due to take part remotely, while Cornwall’s MP were expected to be present alongside devolution minister Sally Jameson and senior Government officials.