Labours promise on James Calvert Spence is Amble’s only hope for a better future for our children!

Having read the Government’s report on persistent poverty and the damaging effect deprivation and a minimum wage which hasn’t kept up with inflation over the last decade has had on forgotten towns like Amble and the families and children who live in them I am pleased the Labour Party in Northumberland has decided that enough is enough.

During the last Labour administration at County Hall a £9m project was designed to improve the buildings at James Calvert Spence College in order to protect the damage time had done to the fabric of the building.

When the Tories took over in 2017 they immediately stopped the project in order to spend, spend, spend on new schools in Hexham and Ponteland and the repair of schools in the West of the County where the Tory self centred meddling had dislodged faith in Councillor Wayne Daley’s ability to deliver on the wests behalf, he said at his first meeting of Council that he would bring in teachers from bedsits in London to achieve his aims on behalf of Northumberland’s Tories. He didn’t bother too and he didn’t help James Calvert Spence College either.

The extra four years of waiting has taken its toll on the buildings in Amble and the Labour Party has pledged to build a new school which has been proven in other areas, where new build has taken place, will improve learning and the results of that learning dramatically. 

The Government and the Council have reported that across Northumberland 15% of families and children live in persistent poverty and that as many as 13% of young people leave home for better paid employment and never return, leaving Amble and other similar forgotten towns short of the entrepreneurship that township growth requires.

The Northumberland Labour new build pledge for schools should in the medium term help Towns like ours improve and retain the skills we need to improve business and wages and rid ourselves of the persistent poverty tag forever.