Those levels of pollution or so we have been told, have been used as a major part of various County Council bids to the highways agency, now Highways England to attempt to cure this major pinch point by developing a new highway link to the A189 spine road from the centre of Northumberland’s largest town.
Various political obstacles and well managed press campaigns by the Counties weekly newspapers have moved incoming cash from Government agencies to other projects to suit the needs of communities and much lower pollution levels than found on Cowpen Road were put forward To develop Haydon Bridge, Prudhoe, Ashington and Haltwhistle bypasses and the last Labour administration at County Hall found it was locked in to developing a Morpeth North bypass moving the development of the new Blyth highway to this moment in time.
This moment in time is the major obstacle that Blyth residents and their children face in being able to breath air at least as good as other communities. This moment in time is when the Tories,who’s financial portfolio holder Councillor Nick Oliver from clean air zone Corbridge has decided he is not going to borrow to deliver projects for the 22
months they have left of this administration.
At their one party cabinet where the opposition aren’t allowed to speak this week, the Tories began to rattle off the blame, it is Labour‘s fault we can’t (not don’t want to) fund this highway, it’s down to Labour that we’re in this position. Putting the earmarked £3.3m funding into the next Councils spend, and hoping it will be named in the regional funding plans for five years time.
Then let us remind Northumberland Conservatives, that as your elderly death rate figures remains at a constant and COPD cases don’t drop and asthma in children in Blyth doesn’t fall, it is your decisions at this moment in time to fund the retention of a costly building in Morpeth and fail the residents of Blyth that will go down in
history not the aren’t we good for not borrowing story.
