Conservative led Northumberland County Council

In a fanfare of spin this week, Conservative led Northumberland County Council announced they would make an application to their Governments ‘Transport for the North’ fund to develop a link and relief road combo for the town of Blyth, possibly in financial year 2024/25 five years time. This followed a bid with an unknown outcome to the same Governments High Street fund to finance a chat with the public of Blyth and form a vision for their high street and their town. Some of that chat has already happened during a short public consultation on the proposed link and relief road. The cost of this highway is in local government terms, tiny at £22m.

This highway has been in train since the 1980’s and has been subject to a number of ‘pinch point bids’ to the former Highways Agency. As they were the decisive power who would be needed to determine any Compulsory land purchase required to complete the project. The Highways Agency refused this bid on a number of occasions choosing instead to support other schemes County-wide, such as Ashington, Haltwhistle, Haydon Bridge, Morpeth North and Prudhoe bypasses and not a link road in an urban area.

As part of the formation of the North of Tyne combined authority and the devolution agreements across the Northern Powerhouse, the need for the Highways Agency to manage matters has now, this year, come down to a local level and transport for the north are to be approached for the funding and if this work was not so essential it would be considered prudent to wait another year for the outcome of this bid and five years to deliver this scheme.

Northumberland Conservative’s who would have you think they are managing the Councils finances in an orderly fashion are hiding the truth behind their well developed veil of secret service style PR, and with their portfolio holder for finance crowing about not borrowing any more capital finance one needs to wonder when they are going to pay for the projects they have spun their story threads on.

In order to help people who live in Blyth understand how the Tories are letting them down now that the handcuffs of the Highways Agency have been removed let’s look at other projects they have in train in communities that have no links with Blyth, a town where it has been said Councillor Peter Jackson doesn’t want to deliver anything at all.

£5.5m paid to Galliford Try to stop the development of a new NCC office block in Ashington.

Ponteland, a new high school and leisure centre is underway currently valued at £46m white its legal costs.

New primary school in Morpeth on Loansdean site £6.85m.

New roadway to open up Ashington ‘hole’ site £9m

The cost of refurbishing County Hall in excess of £25m with £17m already spent.

New council owned cinema in Ashington £7m

New Berwick Leisure Centre £18m

New Morpeth Leisure Centre £18m plus estimated land stabilisation costs of £6m as its sited in a flood plain. (That’s beside it being designed too small for the towns growth.).

A recent loan to Advance Northumberland of £27m.

Redundancy costs of £8.16m over the two years the Tories have held power at County Hall.

£1m to safeguard Councillor Peter Jackson and his Chief Executive from liability in a series of bullying cases.

These are but a few items of headline borrowing and spend valued at £178m planned for other places outside Blyth.

The Blyth scheme isn’t just a singular highway as is the case of the other bypasses mentioned in this article. It is a series of small roads knitting the Blyth communities together opening up the network and spreading traffic over a far wider road surface than at present. As Blyth residents all know cross town and school run traffic is a huge element of the towns traffic problems.

At the secret Councils announcement meeting Councillor Jackson stated too many houses have been built in Blyth, May we remind you Councillor Jackson that Blyth is your largest town and when your spending cash or borrowing for projects in your more favoured areas you are reliant on the income from your largest town to economically drive the well P R’d Conservative economy.

Therefore if the £9m costs paid by Advance Northumberland for the new road at Portland Park in Ashington is anything to go by the estimated £22m application will only cover the road from the A189 to its junction with the Towns network so we Blyth residents all need to know why this work isn’t planned to start immediately, the cross town road and its tributaries can be built and are not reliant on the bid scheme that as we can now see if your a Blyth resident, may be planned to fail.

Murky Towers spend to take precedence over Poisoning more Children

For over two decades, both District and County Council have measured pollution near to schools on Northumberland’s busiest highway, Cowpen Road in Blyth.

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.

Interesting outburst from Georgina Hill who is seeking election for the post of Police and Crime Commissioner in Northumbria Police

16 September 2018

Letter to the editor, Hexham Courant.

Dear Sir,

It was good to see your newspaper publishing the ‘outburst’ from Councillor Georgina Hill, Chair of the County Councils Audit Committee who attempted to denigrate the role of the Police and Crime Commissioner Dame Vera Baird and tried to politicise Northumbria’s new Chief Constable, Winton Keenan. Since the Police have stated on several occasions that there is no criminal investigation into ARCH, its probably in preparation for her committee running even more ‘sensations’ from the Company ARCH through its meetings outside of its agenda.

My only concern with the report in your newspaper was the indication that ARCH from 2013-2017 under the last administration was purely ‘Labour’. I can assure you and your readers it was not.

The Board of ARCH during those years was made up of a top executive from the building trade, one of the regions most respected lawyers, a chairman of a university, a housing charity chief executive, members of each political party including the present Leader of Council Cllr Peter Jackson and the company secretary was a professional from one of the Country’s better known experts in that field, Eversheds, with the Board being served by professional directors representing each field of work. The responsibilities of internal audit were handled by the Councils partnership with North Tyneside Council and externally audited for most of those years by Deloitte.

I can also assure your readers that although the Tory manifesto contained the statement that they would scrap ARCH, Councillor Jackson never spoke on that subject or informed the ARCH Board of his party’s intentions prior to the manifesto’s publication.

Of course most of us are waiting for the outcome of the current administrations first full year of running ‘Tory’ ARCH which will change its name to Advance shortly. Its decisions to shrink the business by halting work outside of Northumberland and divesting itself of its executive housing portfolio, may have placed taxpayers assets at considerable risk?. We’ll wait and see.

Yours Sincerely

Councillor Grant Davey

Leader of Northumberland Labour Group

Newcastle Evening Chronicles Hannah Graham.

Here in the North we have some of the best reporter/writers imaginable and few have such a masterly or is that mistressly grasp of the English language than the Newcastle Evening Chronicles Hannah Graham.

She has written an article entitled ‘Operator lined up for seven-screen cinema venture‘. Her extremely well scribed piece contains all of the clues one would expect from a top crime writer whilst allowing those who like to absorb her articles from the page to believe that Advance Northumberland formerly ARCH have found a company to help resolve the ‘Ashington Hole’ problems for the Council.

As and avid Agatha Christie fan I have decided to try to take all the clues and put them into blogging order as my English language skills are nowhere near the brilliance of Hannah’s but I may be able to decipher what is actually happening and what the ‘Secret Council‘ Is doing with your Public money.

Clue 1.    ‘Operator’ is not an owner, investor or developer, it’s a code word for a tenant.

Clue 2.    Advance Northumberland is the Councils development company that we find is even more secretive than its predecessor ARCH.

Clue 3.    £5.53m cost of scrapping previous plans, Galliford Try, was paid £5,530,000 to pull out of a contract to develop a new office block for the Council that would house 900 workers in a town centre that is sited at the head of a rail link that will have a direct connection to Newcastle central station, a through ticketing system with Tyne and Wear metro, developing a public transport link with Newcastle international airport. Ideally placed, this office block would have regenerated the town of Ashington through the planned massive rise in footfall.

Clue 4.    Northumberland County Council set aside a £4.6m loan to its company Advance Northumberland to build a publicaly owned cinema with ratepayers money and rent it to an Operator, effectively buying in a service.

To clarify the ratepayers money reference I have placed the link below to Councillor Oliver’s statement to his Cabinet recently where he clearly indicates the Council has stopped borrowing. Therefore one can only conclude that £4.6m is to be removed from Council ratepayers reserves.

Clue 5.    A grant of £3m is to be provided to Advance Northumberland to develop a Cinema food court. The Council and Advance have not released the cost analysis or local impact assessment on the businesses already sited in the Town. What does it say and why is it not in the public arena? Or may I be so bold as to ask, on surrounding towns?

In summing up, the Ashington Whole Group have asked some valid questions and I’m sure Hannah Graham will make a great job of reporting their thoughts following the public consultation on 17th July at Ashington Leisure Centre, next door to this site. I expect local traders from Ashington and similar representative groups from the businesses in Bedlington, Blyth and Morpeth to press their points home and demand to see the impact assessments on their areas.

So we have a Council exposing serious levels of reserve public cash on a building project for an industry that is renowned for the effects competition has on it, being developed in an area plagued with an epidemic of low wages sitting beside a food court that will affect spending in surrounding towns just to prevent a sustainable and value added Council office project from taking place on this site in future!

Northumbria PCC Election Kim is the only valid candidate

What a busy day it was yesterday, with Northumberland Conservatives Leader Cllr Peter Jackson and his closest henchmen, attempting to censor all stories and photographs linking the dubious independent candidate Georgina Hill with her Tory supporters from both the North and mid-Northumberland in order that they are not made to look like the fools they are in the eyes of the rest of the regions Tory members by promoting Robbie Moore;

Then we have the LibDem candidate Johnathon Wallace showing off by trying to destroy the PCC set up for the future in order that he gets a shot at the Berwick Parliamentary seat now that the Tories are losing the confidence of their mainstay voters, means that the Labour Candidate Kim McGuinness who's first press release included "The Tories are more concerned with fighting among themselves than making sure our police force have the funds they need to get more cops on the street and keep our communities safe." are the only true words that's been said in this campaign so far, is the only valid candidate in this election.

Ms Georgina Hill the never practicing barrister and ex-Tory press secretary is running on the ticket of 'there's no place for party politics in the PCC' and yet has been shown in a number of photographs living it up with Northumberland Conservatives and on the official Conservative Borderlands Combined Authority press shots clearly has the support of many of her ex pals, leaving Peter Jackson in the lurch as his members desert Robbie for Georgina.

Its well reported on social media that Jackson has been apoplectic and at the Tory Group meeting before Council today,  will, were sure, bully those who have been assisting him to lose face across the region. Hill of course has shown over the last two years how loyal she is to Jackson and her constant attacks against ARCH from her position as the trusted Chair of Audit were blown completely out of the water when Northumbria Police and the external auditor found no criminality in the Council owned company. She poisoned the brand so much even its new Tory derivative Advance Northumberland is suffering the plague she spawned.  Now that her job is done its just another woman to be cast aside by a rich Tory farmer.

We must watch the live video of the Council meeting and see the false faces painted onto the Cabinet members to cover their embarrassment.
 

Tories Fail to Consult on the ‘Privatisation’ of Physiotherapy Services in Northumberland

As most people know the NHS in Northumberland shares its top officers with Northumberland County Council. They are intrinsically linked and of course politically managed and manipulated.

What most of you won’t know as they are very good at hiding the facts through their ‘secretisation’ program, is that the Tories in Northumberland are hell bent on privatising all services in both the Council and its NHS partners.

The former LibDem now Independent Councillor for Rothbury , Steven Bridgett has brought this next matter to the attention of Northumberland’s residents and we are only too happy to assist him in reaching a wider audience.
Thanks Steven.

Contact your local Councillor to let them know about this and how it might affect you.
 

’Physiotherapy Services in Northumberland’.

I wanted to update residents who might not be aware of the fact that the Physiotherapy Services in Northumberland are being privatised.
Sorry! Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group's preferred word: "Partnership".
The new 'service' will see up to a 50% reduction of existing staff and the reduction/removal of services in places like Rothbury, Wooler, Belford, Berwick, Alnwick, Amble, Morpeth and Ashington.
I have already received correspondence from some residents, telling me that patients who would usually receive physiotherapy in Rothbury, are being 'encouraged' to access the services in other places such as Alnwick.
Sound familiar?!
It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that many of the people who access this service are elderly and given the poor and very unreliable public transport service to Alnwick, it makes accessing the service, for them, that little bit more difficult.
The new service will see the removal of the Hartford unit, which has developed into a first class service for the rehab of patients post orthopaedic surgery.
The worst thing about this whole process though is the fact that the Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group has clearly learnt nothing from the damning report by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for the Secretary of State for Health, into their failure to properly consult on the removal of the beds at Rothbury Hospital and hasn't even bothered to formally consult with residents on what is a removal of part of the service and a significant reduction in staffing levels.
"As part of the procurement process, the CCG carried out a period of engagement to provide patients and GPs with an opportunity to comment on how the new service should be designed."
Do you remember seeing anything as part of this 'engagement' period?
I have requested that the Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee of the council, investigate the reduction in service and if it is their view that the CCG has once again failed to formally consult on the matter, they can refer the matter to the Secretary of State and the Independent Reconfiguration Panel.’

 

Could you find a better advocate?

This comment piece has to begin with by dispelling a myth regularly spread by extreme right wing letter writers who express very strong opinions that drags down those who give their time free of charge to help their communities, local parish Councillors.

The myth is that the marketplace alterations in the town of Blyth cost Blyth Valley Council and therefore Blyth Valley residents £3m. Rubbish!

This item was debated at a group our small team attend from time to time and some research has been undertaken by students interested in local politics, what they found was interesting.

They found that the market place project was overseen and financially managed by ONE with European funds. The project was offered to Blyth Valley as it was heading towards closure and its responsibilities handed over to a new County unitary Council as a Durham Council ONE expected to take the project didn’t have any plans in place, Blyth Valley did.

At a difficult time for local government accountants, the final half year accounts of Blyth Valley did show the expenditure but when the students looked at the archived accounts, an interim authority was formed which shows the cash being paid in to cover off the costs with European funding.

So the brilliant public space in the centre of Northumberland’s largest town did not cost Blyth Valley residents a single penny.

Currently Blyth Town have a highly intelligent campaigning Labour Mayor, Warren Taylor, who is extremely proud of the market place and the whole town. He has entered the public arena following a series of very nice Civic Mayors and has shown he means business. His council is slightly in shock that their mayor is extremely willing to promote his town and use his time not only to attend civic functions but to challenge his residents to think about their town and grasp the opportunities that are just around the corner.

Research has shown larger East Coast towns like Blyth have suffered and have run down quicker than their smaller neighbours primarily due to the offshoring of work and the loss of traditional industry such as mining and shipbuilding throughout the 1980’s and haven’t yet recovered from the last decades financial crisis through the lack of quality jobs and the high numbers of families relying on minimum wage employment.

Warren and his Council who get no real help from their Tory County Council are tackling the issues of town centre improvements through working with partners to improve the local environment with the Town Council paying for grass cutting and cleansing along with their standard functions with the County Council responsible for the failed weeding of your streets.

Mr Taylor, your a refreshing change from what we are used too and we’re sure you will succeed and defy the detractors who want to run down your town and your politics.