Labour to step over the threshold and help Northumberland families in need

 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.

Information for resident's from your County Councillor Dierdre Cambell

 Spotlight on Newsham

Comments from Labours Newsham County Councillor Candidate Deirdre Campbell.
Council forces up Council Tax by almost 20% in three years, are now consulting to slash services to you.

Northumberland County Council is in the middle of an online consultation hidden from public view over the xmas period, to slash services and are offering residents of Newsham a continuation of delivering nothing for you.

May 2017 saw the Tories seize power from Labour at County Hall on the back of a National surge in right-wing politics and Labour’s dithering stand on BREXIT.

Well we can all see and feel how we have been let down by the Tories on that matter and in the meantime see how they have offered project after project to the residents of Newsham out into the press on this and that they were supposedly going to deliver for Blyth such as a relief road to ease the pressure off Laverock Hall Road. That relief road is essential as Laverock Hall Road has become an air pollution black spot. The filth from vehicles standing idling rises into the air during it most jammed times, both in the morning and late afternoon and its heavier than air particles settle on Newsham during the day and early evening exacerbating the health of our residents.

The Tories also promised on so many occasions that they will deliver the reopening of the AB&T line, rolling out ministers who had no intention of funding such a project until it was cleared by Transport for the North and with their Government now accepting the collapse of rail franchising at an alarming rate who are they going to get to run this line when spin, spin, spin is all they know?.

 

Northumberland and North Tyneside can help improve local fishing communities lot, even though Government abandoned them.

 Two minute read from Councillor Liz Simpson, Labour Councillor for Newbiggin Central and East.

One of the few things the extremely poor handling of the pandemic has done to improve my lot was to remind me that I needed to take some exercise daily.

Most days my husband and I wander along the prom at Newbiggin by the Sea and I look at the improvements to the beach behind the breakwater planned and delivered by a Labour Council. It reminds me to look around and see what has been delivered by the current Tory controlled unitary Council based in Morpeth, and I keep coming back to Paul Daniels and his catchphrase of ‘not a lot’.

The Newbiggin bay improvements were designed to save the town from rising sea levels and would be cost prohibitive on a larger scale, but looking around further I have noticed that the rocks at Church Point and the Quarry are worn smooth now by the tides and are beginning to wear faster. So how can we improve fishing for both anglers who bring tourist pounds, protect our shores and homes whilst helping traditional communities who rely on an industry lied too in the Brexit deal improve their lot.

The Euorpeans always expected that they would retain fishing within UK territorial waters and armed with a confident assumption that Britain would sell out the industry, reduced fish catches in the Medditeranean by 20% in 2019 and plan a further 15% reduction this year to help stocks recover, while investing heavily in inshore fishing reefs and commercial breeding programs to replenish depleted stocks much more easily in future while they can still raid UK waters to cover any shortfalls. So with a Government who appears to have abandoned an industry to simply raise its own profile, what can we do to help our traditional communities survive?

History and the Welsh,Scottish and Yorkshire embryonic but growing rapidly, coastal rewilding programs can give us pointers on some simple things that smaller levels of Government support and investment from established sources such as the Coastal Communities fund can achieve.

In Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire, the Government is investing in expanding commercial Oyster production activity and reseeding oyster beds to protect the coastline. Oysters and the reefs they develop protect our shores from erosion and filter our coastal waters free from algae developing a more oxygen rich environment within our inshore environments, allowing other marine animals and shellfish species to survive the batterings from rising sea levels, increasing quality fish stocks into the bargain.

In the past, history shows that huge oyster beds and their ecosystems protected our shores from Tynemouth to the Firth of Forth and now that better and more effective sewage treatment by Northumbria Water is online, they can again.

The benefits for Northumberland and North Tyneside if rewilding projects got underway would offset the cost particularly in areas reliant on tourism as sea angling is still a huge draw for the Tourist Pound.

As the County Councillor for a traditional fishing community I would really like to see any rewilding program start here in Newbiggin by the Sea and will push for it over the next four years. It would be nice to be able to watch as other shellfish began to revive and save the rocky shoreline around my Town. But wherever a program begins we would all benefit in some way and the spin off is that once oyster ecosystems become established they spread to surrounding areas.

 

Where does Blyth Valley End?

Local MP doesn’t know.

There have been calls for Ian Levy MP Tory MP for Blyth Valley to make a public open apology when he had the gall to announce a new factory planned in the Wansbeck Constituency stating it was a great achievement for Blyth.

The local Labour Party County Councillors, Blyth Croft Ward’s Kath Nisbet and East Sleekburn’s Jeff Gobin are both incensed that the MP for Blyth appeared to have no idea where his constituency ended and that any announcement should have been made by or on behalf of Ian Lavery the MP for Wansbeck.

Jeff Gobin told us, “It appears that Blyth Valley residents have chosen a media pirate who has stolen the kudos from our man for Wansbeck, Ian Lavery MP, to announce a project on the former Power Station site in Cambois that we the local Labour Party had our former  national leader visit five years ago when this battery plant was first revealed as a prospective factory tenant by ARCH the northumberland development company.” “Its shocking that this MP from ower the water has had the gall to break with all expected protocol in announcing an improvement scheme that creates jobs in another constituency and he needs to apologise for his very rude actions.”

Croft Wards Kath Nisbet said “This man the Tory Ian Levy must have read the LibDem handbook as they always claim that they have been involved with anything good whether they have or not”. “I think its great that Wansbeck Constituency is getting a factory to bring employment for 8000 people but when a man voted in as an MP doesn’t know where his constituency ends and he needs to ensure he apologises to Ian Lavery at least if not the whole of the area for his what is possibly deliberate to steal the press faux pas.”

 

“I’m so pleased health improvements are on the move for North Northumberland”

 The news that the plans for Berwick’s brand new hospital on the Infirmary site are going before the Councils strategic Planning Committee is excellent for those who dwell in North Northumberland, and that the new facility should be up and running in 2023/24 financial year.

By that time the promise of a new hospital at Berwick upon Tweed will have been a financially viable project for a decade, ever since in June 2014 when Northumberland County Council’s Labour Group organised an extremely cheap rate loan of £25M to make Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trusts dreams a reality. The power behind the throne at Northumberland County Council at that time was Councillor Scott Dickinson who held the post of Business Chairperson on the Councils Cabinet.

We caught up with Councillor Dickinson the current deputy leader of the County labour group, who was busily organising much needed meals on wheels deliveries for the elderly from his base in Hadston, part of the Berwick Constituency. He told us “I’m so pleased that health improvements are on the move for residents in North Northumberland. It seems like a lifetime since I persuaded the Labour Group to financially support health improvements through the building of a new hospital facility in Berwick upon Tweed and now that its moving on to the final planning stage I’m pleased I did”.

“Many of our (Labour) group members at the time hadn’t realised how many tourists come to North Northumberland from April to October each year and how that places immense pressure on the current facilities sited at Berwick’s aging Infirmary, I was so pleased that they accepted my arguments and that the Leader of Council Grant Davey immediately granted the loan facility to develop and improve matters for local residents and visitors”. “I have been keeping an eye on progress ever since and I’m very glad and extremely hopeful that the new designs which are going before a planning committee in the near future will get over this final hurdle.”

History shows that the only disenter to the granting of this loan at the Councils Cabinet was the Tory Leader, Councillor Peter Jackson.

 

https://www.northumbria.nhs.uk/new-25-million-berwick-hospital-better-patient-care/

 

River Blyth Labour Councillors Fully Support Jamie’s ‘Freeport Plan’

 

The news that the North of Tyne Mayor, Jamie Driscoll has a team working on a multisite freeport plan which includes the River Blyth and its surrounding industrial estates is fully supported by Labour’s Northumberland County and Town Councillors from Blyth and East Bedlington representing wards which surround the river basin.

Freeports expected to help traditional ports and surrounding Towns attract International and domestic manufacturing, transport and storage industries post Brexit brings hope to an area which has been missed over the last decade by Government and has had its hopes dashed further by the Conservative County Council who have recently pulled the plug on financing transport improvements designed to grow the areas GDP from their budget book.  

But its the news that the Mayor’s offices and the Port of Blyth are showing confidence in the quality of their bid to include Blyth in the North’s multisite freeport plan which has been hailed as ‘manna from heaven’ in the Wards surrounding the River Blyth which need a major boost as unemployment, child and family poverty is rising rapidly across the riverside communities which have suffered more than most from post industrial offshoring, a process begun by the Thatcher Government which reduced its manufacturing skilled workforce down to the bare bones and damaged the prospects for its young people.

We caught up with one of the River Blyth Labour Councillors, Kitty Brewster’s Councillor Grant Davey, the former Labour leader of Northumberland County Council 2013-2017 who said to us: “Labour Councillors from both sides of the River have been following North of Tyne Labour Mayor Jamie Driscolls interest in hosting through his offices a strong bid to Government to include the Port of Blyth in his multisite Freeport bid.” “During the last Labour administration at County Hall we Labour Councillors worked closely with the Port of Blyth to bring Energy Central to the North banks of the river Blyth importing power from Norway to satisfy what we hoped would be a growing North-East manufacturing base, last weeks Government spending review dashed those hopes as the Tories decided to retain regional funds in their deep pockets with complete central control over spend. Jamie’s (Mayor Driscol) plan has given us some hope that we have a growing future for our children and that the poverty we see all around the River Blyth basin is driven out by the creation of good quality and well paid jobs that a Freeport will bring.”

Jump in Jobless figures ruiness for Blyth.

Croft Ward Councillors Kath Nesbit &Margaret Richardson

The recent news regarding the unemployment rates for the North East of England with the area having the highest unemployment rate in the UK. When this information is dug into, the same old areas of disadvantage and deprivation have been hit hardest. Blyth in Northumberland is one of those areas with a major unemployment jump in October followed by many jobs lost particularly in the beauty and hospitality sector with the announcement of the second national lockdown, steering Blyth into a slump.

Currently the picture looks bleak for Blyth, as it has over the last few years developed itself as a destination for all things edible with a good number of restaurants serving world wide food and an excellent pub-grub reputation even before latest lockdown was announced this sector found that the fear of covid had reduced its turnover considerably with the trimming down of staff to suit the lower customer numbers taking place over an extended period. But the new lockdown has accelerated problems for local people who staff these premises and the Local Councillors for the Town are extremely concerned.

We spoke with Councillor Kath Nisbit of Croft Ward an area that is primarily made up of working family accommodation many of whom work in the industries affected by the current situation. She said “last year things appeared to be improving with the numbers of those in work rising across Croft Ward”. 

“But figures appear to me to mask the problems joblessness pours onto families, it still takes far too long to resolve the claim issues of Universal Credit and I can see in the faces of many whose sons and daughters have lost their jobs and with their grandchildren suddenly locked into poverty how they are also struggling as they try their best to help them through this dark period in their lives.”

“I’m very unhappy that the Council’s adopted policies under the current Conservative administration doesn’t appear to help those in need. The debt level that launches letters starting the legal process is set at only £15 and the Council has thousands of families with attachments for payments from Benefits as well as lowering the amount of help they give those in need by 8% two years ago. The Tories policies are not only ruiness for families in need, the legacy of the debt they are being forced into is unbelievably damaging to our local economy as the payments are still ongoing when they eventually find work and such things as long lying on periods before pay is received is dragging back the incentive of taking some jobs”.

“But my biggest concern regarding the recent leap in unemployment in Blyth is the Chancellor's announcement in his spending review in that the restart program cash will only be issued when a claimant has been unemployed for a full year. I believe this is writing off people from East Coast ex industrial towns like Blyth and it should be made available as soon as a person's job disappears.”