PAUL Dundas admits he never really planned to become leader of Colchester Council.

He has only been a member of the council since 2018, when he was first elected to represent Stanway for the Conservatives.

Three years on he has taken over the borough’s top job - as the head of the council’s new administration at one of the most critical periods in its history.

Mr Dundas said: “It is a big challenge and not really something I had ever planned.

“I am under no illusion as to how much work it involves but I enjoy new challenges and will do my best.

“I always believe you should look back on life and regret the things you didn’t do rather than the things you did.”

He grew up in Maldon before moving to Colchester as a student to study at the University of Essex, loving the town so much he never left.

Despite being an accountant by trade, when his father died shortly after he left university he took over the family engineering business in Stanway.

He said: “I planned to do it for six months and ended up doing it for nearly 15 years.

“It was good because the customers were all in strange places so, although still based in Stanway, I got to see a lot of the world.”

“I spent time in the Libyan Desert through to remote parts of Siberia meeting all sorts of people which I really enjoyed and made a lot of friends.”

Eventually he got tired of the travelling and settled back in Colchester.

His first involvement in politics was with Stanway Parish Council, on which he is still a member.

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Mr Dundas’ rapid ascent to leader of the council came not just as a surprise to him.

After a bumper election night last month, it appeared to most onlookers Colchester Council’s then ruling coalition had clung on to power.

However, a few days later the Tories struck a deal with the Highwoods Independents, once partners in the so-called progressive alliance.

Mr Dundas said: “The Conservatives haven’t become Independents overnight and the Independents certainly haven’t become Conservatives. We are still two separate groups with our own views.

“It is worth remembering this isn’t an entirely new thing as we have worked successfully together in an administration for a number of years in the past and we have also done so with the Lib Dems. It is my job to remind my group we can’t just unilaterally decide to do things but need to work jointly.”

And there are a lot of big decisions to be made. As well as steering the borough out of the Covid pandemic, the Tories hope to reverse two controversial projects - the 1,000 homes planned for Middlewick Ranges and the student flats development off Queen Street.

Mr Dundas said: “Both are a big challenge because we are dealing with legally binding decisions taken by the last administration.

“[On Alumno] There is a legal complication with a covenant and Essex County Council and we are having urgent meetings with the concerned parties.

“It is a tangle we are trying to untangle and sometimes this has to be done behind closed doors. Will we succeed? I do not know but we are certainly going to try.

“On Middlewick we are once again trying to undo a decision already taken by someone else.”

There is much the new administration wants to do and little time to do it in. Next year there will be more borough elections and Mr Dundas will face a fight to hold on to his new role.

He promises residents won’t see change for the sake of it but should notice a shift in priorities.

He said: “Where something was working and the previous administration had a good idea, we’re not going to change it just because it wasn’t ours.

“However, what I would like is to see us devoting our energy to actually concentrating on the things a council has responsibility for – planning, waste, parks, cleanliness.

“I was quite surprised and a bit disappointed when I first got elected how political it could all be. We’d spend time debating international issues and national ones. I’d prefer to talk about bins.

“We are realistic about what we can achieve in a short time and aware of the challenging financial situation but if we have a priority, it is about general condition and cleanliness of the borough.”