Criticism from Northumberland Conservatives about Labour's plans for an increase in Council Housing stock of 1500 homes over the next four years shows that they have no idea how much they have spent since May 2017 and on what?
During the run up to the 2017 local government election its well recorded that people actually believed the lies being spread by Northumberland Conservatives that Labour was going to increase public borrowing to £1.4Bn and spend £80m on a new county Hall in Ashington for vanity reasons.
Those ‘new conservative’ lies along with their spin regarding the money tree in 2010 have been proven by their own actions that borrowing both national and local has spun out of control under both a Conservative Government and a Conservative County Council in charge in Northumberland.
At the recent budget meetings led by Cllr Nick Oliver (yes that is the same Councillor who had to be told off by members of his own party in public last week for breaching Councillor etiquette and law on a planning matter) spoke about his group borrowing £800M of new capital cash so far and his need to borrow a similar amount to deliver their own vanity projects. A figure well in excess of that his group said Labour would borrow and yet look around where you live and ask yourself what have they done with all that cash. The only big cash item they have spoken about in public is their spend of £100m on rural road resurfacing. Not a great help to those in need!
This week the Labour Leader Susan Dungworth
and her Deputy Scott Dickinson have spoken about their manifesto promise regarding
the need for a major increase in Housing Stock to help those in need across the
County. The Tories hit back with the ‘money tree’ tosh immediately.
But we laymen believe the Labour Group is right to be determined to increase stock under their control as the experience of people who find themselves exposed to rogue landlords or having to extend the number of overcrowding incidents by young families having to camp in their parents homes due to the endemic low wage economy across the County. It is growing rapidly even though some retailers are about to reward staff with higher wages mortgages are now much harder to get, making a County-wide increase in housing stock essential to help those in greatest need become independent and feel safe with the Council as their landlord.
Labour Group’s big ambitions could not have come at a better time for the private rental sector. Its vibrancy has completely fallen away and rent recover is reported as being down in the low 60%’s during 2020 and 2021 hasn’t begun much better with many small landlords sitting on former Local Authority stock across the County looking to shed their responsibilities and cut their losses. They could find themselves with a cash ready buyer in a Labour Council after May 2021 if they market the stock at the right price and even though the Councils current housing stock sits mainly in the former Alnwick and Blyth Valley areas bought in homes in former Wansbeck and Castle Morpeth and up the Tyne Valley in areas such as Prudhoe and Bywell would be simple to manage were told, as maintenance craftsmen and housing officers already work and travel between their traditional sites.
During the last Labour administration at County Hall 2013-2017 Labour built just over 300 brand new homes to a very high standard indeed costing just over £32M and that included four of the sites being opened up from scratch. They used contractors to develop those sites but are aiming to begin training the construction workforce for the future and ambitiously hope to build using direct labour who can develop sites very reasonably indeed.
With the final link in their ideas being put in place by Government very shortly as the inspection and hopefully acceptance of the local plan giving at least a decade long supply of housing land to work on, much of it already in Council hands, Labour would not need to borrow much more than has been spent by the Tories on rural roads to get very close to delivering their much needed plans.
