By The Ed
Castle Morpeth History Repeats itself for Conservative and Council Leader Peter Jackson.
Labour Party members both on social media and at meetings across the County are calling for the resignation from office of Northumberland County Councils, Conservative Leader Peter Jackson, following release of the news that the Governments auditor for Northumberland County Council, Ernst Young, has refused to sign off the Councils annual accounts and is investigating reports from whistleblowers.
The resignation call comes in the wake of Coun Jackson, who became leader of Northumberland County Council in May 2017 being regularly in the press regarding the bullying of staff and the treatment of building developers in Northumberland. Labour members reminded our Ed. that Councillor Jackson forced the Council to give him a shield of £1M public indemnity to protect himself from his accusers who were workers for the Council and or its group of attached companies. The Council has been exposed for the amount of cash they have paid out to case winning ex-employees in compensation and that bill to the ratepayers of Northumberland is expanding on a regular basis.
As the leader of the council, he runs an out-of-control administration with a regeneration company in the form of Advance Northumberland which has not delivered on any major projects since May2017 and a leisure company, Active Northumberland where he decided to remove all Council control from its Board at a time period when the Council has pledged to invest £90M over the next five years into that company.
His Council and its companies have delivered nothing to help communities since May 2017 and have adopted a completely secretive stance which Labour members believe has brought shame to Northumberland.
A Leading Labour activist said “Coun Jackson should resign as Conservative leader and as a councillor. If not, it is about time the Northumberland Conservative party removed him from office along with all those Councillors involved in the bullying of staff and County Hall spending scandals.”
Our reports from Morpeth where members reminded us that both Councillor Jackson and his closest confidant Councillor Sanderson were leading conservative members of Castle Morpeth Council when auditors refused to sign off its accounts, and that through his own mechanisms and wishes, has led the county council screaming headlong into a multimillion-pound lawsuit from a developer, has poured millions into conserving a obviously shocking out of date monolith, County Hall on the outskirts of Morpeth and has been found guilty by taking the option of compensating victims of his bullying. It was also said he has “damaged the council’s reputation through blindly supporting the cuts his party are ladling onto the poorest in society”.
