Its now Jamie’s Job To Locate

 Northumberland’s Largest Town

People have said why have a Mayor for the North of Tyne and what benefit will he bring to the County of Northumberland?

The answers are quite simple, the Government insisted that any devolution deal for the North of Tyne region must include a Mayor and in the case of this region the Mayor must seek consensus from the Constituent Councils in delivering its regional plans.

Labour’s Jamie Driscoll won the race to hold that post. The other role the new Mayor has in his remit is to engage the region on transport issue’s.

The BIG ISSUE for people from the Town of Blyth and its Town Council, which is by far and away Northumberland’s largest Town, is how will our new Transport champion help us become a destination, from a backwater?

Blyth has the population to carry a much better retail and business offer than it currently does, it also houses a thriving port, a wonderful theatre and a well historically publicised football team that brings away supporters to the Town no one can find.

So in order to assist the Mayor we have looked at how, without stepping outside of his zone of control he can begin to at least inform his region that Blyth, a town with better beaches than the Costas is worth visiting and that for businesses they can share in whatever new found wealth is created by telling people Blyth exists by opening up a branch of their business in the County’s largest Town.

Jamie will get some help by insisting that the Ashington, Blyth and Tyne Line remains with that name and drops the local Tories insistence on calling it the Newcastle-Northumberland Line. But in helping Jamie we need to give some pointers to where the road signs at least should begin to direct people to what can be his ‘First’ destination project.

Due to the growth and long term future of the River Blyth Energy Central project Jamie can begin his signposting at the Scottish Border, adding Blyth signs as people enter the County via the A1, the A69 destination Boards also need to include Blyth and at the northern exit at the Tyne Tunnel a sign for Blyth as a destination alongside Morpeth, Berwick and Edinburgh, with Blyth joining Ashington and Cramlington repeater signs along its route in Northumberland on the A19.

Jamie help a town that is suffering through the lack of destination signage and bring Blyth in line with the rest of the UK, where Counties Largest Towns are well signposted.
 

Northumberland County Council is to Two-Tier its Workforce

A recent report issued to the press from Northumberland County Council regarding staff sickness hasn’t only highlighted the increase in ill health being suffered by the workforce in this a Council where bullying is rife and has been reported in the mainstream press on a number of occasions, but has opened the door on the thinking of Northumberland Conservatives in developing a two tier workforce to lower costs and develop an extra fear factor that people are waiting in the wings to take your job.

When speaking to the Northumberland Gazette this week, Kelly Angus  the head of HR  “said staff absence can also have an impact on the use of agency workers and overtime, which is another area of focus for the council’s HR team, with the total overtime costs for 2018-19 exceeding £7.5million”.

“Work is taking place on creating an internal staff bank which will offer employees the opportunity to register for work at any department/area within the council (dependent upon their skills and experience) and ‘this will ensure we have a more flexible workforce and reduce existing costs”.

Following changes recently announced to the Local Government Pension Scheme, (LGPS) a staff bank in the local government sense is not the same as a staff bank in the NHS which have been a feature of the health service for almost 50yrs. In the National Health Service, bank staff are members of the NHS pension scheme and accrue benefits each time they work in the flexible environment.

In Local Government the employers body has agreed that new employees and temporary employees can be excluded from the pension scheme. Hence over a period of time any staff bank in local government that is also used as a ‘detrimental to full time staff recruitment tool’ will severely alter the retirement income of Counties like Northumberland where employers pensions form the basis of the additional costs it takes to dwell in the Countryside where everything costs a whole lot more.

The Trade Unions who have experience of two tier workforce problems are challenging the changes but will be unable to halt the fear factor and bullying element of working for Northumberland County Council.