The businessman whose shady deals contributed to bankrupting an Essex council has been warned he is "far from off the hook." However, the council has admitted that the scandal could cost the public £200m.
As revealed at the start of our six-year investigation, Thurrock council poured £1bn into a series of secretive and disastrous business ventures between 2016 and 2020. Many of the deals involved Liam Kavanagh, who pocketed tens of millions and spent it on a life of luxury.
The subsequent collapse of many of those deals left the council in dire financial straits and under government orders to withdraw from all its investments to recover as much cash as possible.
In a report on the progress of those efforts, published at the end of January, the council said it has so far recovered £661m and hopes this figure will eventually rise to £800m. That’s still £200m short of its initial outlay – although Thurrock hopes to recoup some of that money through its fraud claim against Kavanagh and his company Rockfire Capital.
In a public meeting last month, the council’s cabinet member for finance, Valerie Morris-Cook, warned: “Let me be very clear here, Liam Kavanagh is far from being off the hook. He is being actively pursued by both the council and administrators [of his companies].”
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Kavanagh has always denied wrongdoing.
Counting the cost
The figures involved in the saga are astonishing. In total, Thurrock invested £655m in bonds issued by Kavanagh’s companies, most of which was used to buy 53 solar farms. About £130m of the money, however, was paid in top-up investments made after Kavanagh had inflated the value of some of the farms. He pocketed that cash and spent it on a country mansion, a private jet, and a luxury yacht.
Much of this money went through another company owned by Kavanagh, Rockfire Investment Finance, which is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.
The solar farms were eventually sold last year, recovering £510m. But they were far from the only investments that turned sour. Thurrock also provided £94m to the alternative lender Just Loans Group, which later went bust. Only £19m of that has been recovered so far. Last week Thurrock settled a claim related to that deal against Laven Advisors LLP, which the council had alleged was responsible for an inaccurate due diligence report.
A further £14m was lost after Chip Chip Ltd, a wood-chipping company, went into administration. And £105m was ploughed into the CCLA, a former Church of England investment fund, of which £92m has now been recouped.
The investments, and the borrowing from other councils that fueled them, were arranged by Thurrock’s then director of finance Sean Clark, who was suspended and later resigned when the business model he built collapsed. Prior to that, the then Conservative-run council had spent years dismissing concerns about its investment strategy.
‘No place to hide’
Thurrock continues to require exceptional financial support from the government in order to set a balanced budget, as the law requires. For the current financial year – 2025/26 – that support amounted to just over £72m.
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This help comes in the form of permission to borrow from a public lending fund, which usually finances infrastructure projects, so the council can meet its day-to-day running costs. As of September 2025, the council had borrowed £821m from this fund.
To put that in context, the council spends £170m per year on the services it provides. As for the many legal, financial, and investment advisers brought in to help recover the money, their fees are predicted to reach £10.6m by 2028/29.
Thurrock has been run by commissioners from neighboring Essex County Council since September 2022. They say the divestment strategy and legal actions are “essential” to the council’s financial recovery but that withdrawing from remaining deals could take “many months or even years.” "We have to make sure that every single penny we can get, we do get. There should be no place to hide." - Lynn Worrall, Labour leader of the council.
Lynn Worrall, leader of the now Labour-run council, said: “There’s nothing that makes people [more] angry in Thurrock than hearing how much money is still outstanding and how much we’ve actually lost.
“We have to make sure that every single penny we can get, we do get. There should be no place to hide. The more we get back, the less we have to rely on the government.”
Morris-Cook replied: “I can assure you there is no stone that’s left unturned. There is absolute clarity; there is laser-focus on everything to do with this.”
Thurrock could soon be merged with other neighboring local authorities as part of a major reorganization of local government. Earlier last month, the council’s cabinet voted to postpone May’s elections, for the second year in a row, in order to concentrate on that proposed restructure.
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