Newcastle airport has been one of the North Easts success stories for decades, 51% is in the ownership of the seven Councils of the North East both North and South of the Tyne and your Council has milked the profits to support front line services and more recently linked the aspirational growth in their business plans and core strategies with the economic plans of both the airport and the region.
An example of the power of a top regional airport to Government being the aspirations to reopen and expand the regions rail-network with pipeline projects such as the Leamside line, now on the Governments investment list and the Northumberland line, a simple reopening to passenger traffic for one of the North Easts now less used mineral lines which links South East Northumberland travellers up to the airport via the metro system have only seen progress through the emergence of the airports masterplan which is aspirational in wanting to increase passenger numbers who arrive by public transport from its current base of 13% up to 30% by 2035. The emerging masterplan allowed Northumberland County Council to invest heavily in the study’s required by law to reopen this line between 2013 and 2017.
Covid 19 and the Governments response to Councils has left both the airport who directly employ 3,900 staff and support a further 15,000 full time jobs on airport related activity besides many more in the regional economy, are still waiting for the Government to unveil anything but rhetoric on their support plan for aviation leaving the North-east communities reliant of aviation jobs, mainly Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland suffering a massive jobs black hole that in the words of Unite the Union who have reported their concerns to their members ‘may take decades to recover’.
The Local Government Trade Unions, GMB/UNISON already working with councils to save front line services jobs following the latest Government Covid pressure on Councils and the lack of support for the extra spend the pandemic has placed on social services have the added problems of arguing about where your Council should spend to safeguard most communities this winter, local services or the long term economic miracle of Newcastle Airport.
As Northumberland laymen we are aware that Councillor Oliver of Corbridge has reported in one of his Black Hole papers to the Councils cabinet that the government owes the Council £12M. In recent weeks they have also spun out massive figures and promises of investment County-wide including the statement they will be using reserves to fund the rebuild of Blyth’s Town Centre, pay for new schools in Ponteland and Hexham and a myriad of other undeliverables such as Bedlington and Ashington ‘holes’ prior to the elections in 2021.
He seems to forget when he’s spouting that Northumberland is unique in being intrinsically linked with the National Health Service and Governments experiment to weld social services and health together, they even share a Chief Executive with the NHS and that experiment has a massive cost.
The well reported hatred of public services of Boris Johnson and his Parliamentary Cabinet team and the Covid and no deal BREXIT excuses will allow him to deny access to winter pressures funding to the NHS for the next two years as his support for the City and market forces are rekindled whilst Covid 19 subsides, leaving Northumberland in the funding dilemma of who to support with only enough true reserves to cover the Councils long term borrowing will it be the Airport and its re-emergence as a regional profit maker, front line Council Services or the NHS?
It would be great if the Conservative Northumberland County Council could tell us without the spin but their Dominic Cummings links won’t allow it!
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