Rules for submitting a petition
A petition is a written or spoken request to do something. It is usually addressed to a government official or public body.
You can start a petition on our website:
We receive a notification when a petition closes on our website. If it has received at least 10 signatures – the minimum needed – we will contact you about what can happen next. If it has not reached this number, we will take no further action.
We may deal with your petition in a different way if it is before an election, but we will let you know and explain the reasons.
If your petition does not follow the rules we may decide not to do anything further with it, but we will write to you to explain our reasons.
What your petition should include
When you write your petition, you must include:
- the petition organiser’s name, address and telephone number
- the name, address and signature of at least 10 people on the Thurrock electoral register who support your petition
- what you want us to do
Your petition must be about one of the following:
- something that we do
- something that affects us
- something that affects the borough
What isn't allowed
Petitions must not:
- be offensive or simply an attempt to waste our time
- be the same as a petition we have already dealt with in the last 12 months
- name or identify a council employee
- involve the disclosure of confidential or exempt information
Other online petition websites
You can use online petition websites, such as change.org, and other digital methods to create petitions. We have a duty to protect against fraudulent activity, however, so any online petition from a website other than our own must be accompanied by 10 or more handwritten signatures of Thurrock residents alongside their names and addresses.