Maldon District Council has been recognised as one of the UK's top performing local authorities, ranking fourth in a nationwide league table of council services.

The accolade comes following an in-depth analysis of government data by the Times newspaper, which looked at the performance of 318 councils across 27 different categories.

Various areas such as waste management, planning and roads, and finance were taken into account during the research.

Maldon District Council, leader Richard Siddall, said: "I’m really proud to see that Maldon District Council is ranked fourth overall for performance by the Times.

"In comparison with other authorities in the country, we rank highly in terms of how we manage our finances, and this is due to the hard work of our staff and councillors.

"We have put a lot of effort into prioritising how we manage our budgets.

"We are one of the top councils for our waste services and with the effort made by all our residents, we rank highly on our recycling rates.

"I know that the hard work doesn’t stop here, and we must not be complacent.

"We particularly need to focus our efforts on improving the services where we are ranked lower."

He added: "The Local Government Association recently completed a finance peer review of the council, and their findings support the improvements made by the council.

"All local authorities continue to face tough decisions in the future. We need to continue to deliver excellent services and at the same time deal with those challenges."