16 September 2018
Letter
to the editor, Hexham Courant.
Dear Sir,
It was good to see your newspaper publishing the ‘outburst’ from
Councillor Georgina Hill, Chair of the County Councils Audit Committee who
attempted to denigrate the role of the Police and Crime Commissioner Dame Vera
Baird and tried to politicise Northumbria’s new Chief Constable, Winton Keenan.
Since the Police have stated on several occasions that there is no criminal
investigation into ARCH, its probably in preparation for her committee running
even more ‘sensations’ from the Company ARCH through its meetings outside of
its agenda.
My only concern with the report in your newspaper was the
indication that ARCH from 2013-2017 under the last administration was purely
‘Labour’. I can assure you and your readers it was not.
The Board of ARCH during those years was made up of a top executive from the building trade, one of the regions most respected lawyers, a chairman of a university, a housing charity chief executive, members of each political party including the present Leader of Council Cllr Peter Jackson and the company secretary was a professional from one of the Country’s better known experts in that field, Eversheds, with the Board being served by professional directors representing each field of work. The responsibilities of internal audit were handled by the Councils partnership with North Tyneside Council and externally audited for most of those years by Deloitte.
I can also assure your readers that although the Tory manifesto
contained the statement that they would scrap ARCH, Councillor Jackson never
spoke on that subject or informed the ARCH Board of his party’s intentions
prior to the manifesto’s publication.
Of course most of us are waiting for the outcome of the current
administrations first full year of running ‘Tory’ ARCH which will change its
name to Advance shortly. Its decisions to shrink the business by halting work
outside of Northumberland and divesting itself of its executive housing
portfolio, may have placed taxpayers assets at considerable risk?. We’ll wait
and see.
Yours Sincerely
Councillor Grant Davey
Leader of Northumberland Labour Group
