Is Northumberland about to become Margaret Thatcher’s Dream Council in Reverse?

Margaret Thatcher was a secret supporter of open government. Well, open local-government, anyway. One of the very first things she did as an MP was to introduce a Private Member's Bill to open council committee meetings to the press, thus shining a light on these hitherto murky gatherings. It was the Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill in 1960, a year after she was elected MP for Finchley. She introduced it in her Commons maiden speech, which is something no MP has done before, or since, for a Bill which became law. She said then: "The public has the right... to know what its elected representatives are doing”

Since May 2017, Tory run Northumberland County Council has become more secretive, ever more murky and less open by halving the number of meetings it holds and housing a single party cabinet to keep their secrets all too themselves as much as possible.

As the Conservatives in the County move towards the end of their third year in office having delivered diddlly squat apart from fairy tales, they have decided to part the ways with democracy altogether and go ever more secret by embracing a new corporate model that is distinctly the ‘Liverpool Pathway’ of Local Government, the probable end for the need of its shady Audit Committee and lead to the other aim of Margaret Thatcher, the privatisation of services through a centralised Board of Directors holding its own limited companies to ransom on cost, (or is that returnable profit through underspend on budgets that can be siphoned off by the Central Committee). A completely different operating model to Advance Northumberland.

A number of the current Tories on the County Council have dabbled in departmental privatisation previously with the former Castle Morpeth duo of Cllrs Sanderson and Jackson presiding over a refuse service undertaken by the contractor Cory who under the specification it worked too, tipped their waste at Lynemouth and as we have seen on TV the County Council will now have to cover the costs of the duo’s debacle.

By harnessing the model they are sending to their single party cabinet for ratification they will effectively bypass Margaret Thatchers ‘admission to the press of meetings bill’ as technically the companies they propose to set up are not committees of Council and will operate under Companies House rules.

Its been said to us that the Leader of Council has become an ardent fan of time travel who loves reading history books and he’s now trying to take us all ‘Forward to the Past’.

http://committeedocs.northumberland.gov.uk/MeetingDocs/45991_M9494.pdf 

Lack of New Council Homes Fuelling Growth in HMO’s in South East Northumberland

The massive growth of homes of multiple occupancy across the South-East of the County is being fuelled by the payments local Authorities must make to the private owners of these homes is, according to a recent Government freedom of information release leeching £1.1Bn from Local Authorities each and every year.

Prior to 2008 when Northumberland was in a pre unitary council two tier era each Council district had to deal with homeless people on its own patch and right up until May 2017 that was generally the case, with Labour from 2013-2017 building hundreds of Council houses in places such as Embleton, Amble, four sites in Blyth and had its development company ARCH modernise and improve homes across the Hirst area of Ashington to aid management of the homeless and those in need in Northumberland.

Since May 2017 the ‘new wave’ of young people who are not in a position to purchase a home and the net effect of the bedroom tax on their parents who have to seek smaller houses from the Council we have seen the number of homeless grow. This scenario along with the length of time it takes the courts to deal with what are seen as lesser crimes the number of people seeking ‘bail hostelling’ has also grown rapidly.

The current Conservative County Council although spinning out more stories about how they are going to do this and that than Hans Christian Anderson on the social housing front, have sat back and done nothing apart from steering young people towards South-East Northumberland and private owners of HMO’s.

People who live near these homes do not like the current situation and are beginning to become extremely vocal against the current rash of houses being converted to rip-off councils and have those in need wandering around their towns daily.
 

The North needs to tighten its belts as a second wave of cuts will hit soon.

U.K. shared prosperity fund is not a matter on everyone’s lips and ‘We’ suspect the majority of people reading this blog won’t have heard about it, in fact it is a scheme that will replace EU Regional Funding.

In the recent one year funding round Sajid Javid, he’s the one who lost a leadership race to the known, according to the Supreme Court, liar and charlatan Boris Johnson hasn’t set a budget line to support the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund but has uniquely spun out a situation where his electioneering single year budget hasn’t gelled with anyone other than those who want to see rapid free market economic growth and those who will benefit most from rising inflation.

Javid has also changed the goalposts in regard to funding with his promises for help in three areas in order to gather the headlines, health, police and education, leaving the other services we all rely on high and dry. He knows that the last spending round for Councils comes to an end in 2020 but has not begun to assemble a spending review that would allow councils to form new medium term financial plans. 

The last fair funding spending review 2014-2020 allows councils to plan and spend up until 2023 to give them time to complete late projects. It’s expected that Javid will claw back all funds not spent by November 2020 to pay for the two high street funds, the stronger towns fund, of which the issued list of winning bids lines up with the Conservative marginal seats list and the future high streets fund whose dates of acceptance are quoted as being after the next general election. It’s expected those towns who were not won by the Tories will be struck off the list.

Charities are also expecting to be battered by the Government as EU funded projects unspent cash, not earmarked cash, as has been the case previously, will be clawed back at the rate of 66p in the £pound. 

We all need to remember that under this Tory Government austerity is only eased for a single year leaving your Council without financial stability prior to the completion of a new spending review period and the current announcements will put local authorities into the hands of the free marketeers as they struggle to manage without medium term funding security.

The biggest concern for everyone in the North is that in a similar fashion to this years Local Government settlement that the shared prosperity fund will be divvied up among the Tory Council areas in the South and the desperately poor areas in the North will lose out on what id meant to be the replacement for Euro funding.

£350,000,000 Free Market Economy Useless Rip Off Exposed by BBC

Centralised Dog Register Urgently Needed

During 2015 the UK press and media were used by Government to begin to reign in £Millions on the back of the fear of dangerous dogs being bred to attack your kids being sold in dark alleys by drug fuelled maniacs.

The Tory Government changed the Law and demanded that all dogs were chipped and those people who were located who’s dogs didn’t comply with the law would receive punitive fines.

Tory investors went wild and those who couldn’t get shares in the new chipping companies formed their own companies to rake in and bank £Millions from the unsuspecting public and the public don’t just pay once for this service, all puppy owners have to pay through the nose for readdressing once collected from their breeder and every time a pet changes hands or a family moves home with their dog another payment needs to be made. For the Tory investors and donors linked with this industry it’s the proverbial ‘Money Tree’ and this income stream is bursting the banks for many.

The chip business rip off has been so lucrative that Boris Johnson is facing pressure from his Party donors to ensure the Law is extended to cats as well and with the unsuspecting pet lovers in the UK keeping almost 11M cats between them you can see how huge this money spinning useless exercise is!

We Laymen have used the word useless twice in this article why? Its useless, as part of the media message to the public at large 'it was sold to the dog lover as a way to protect your dog if it was lost or stolen' yet the RSPCA tell us there are 70,000 dogs lost or stolen each year in the UK but there is no public open centralised register to help pet owners be reunited with their pets when they are located,, despite owners coughing up to keep the 'chippers' bathing in asses milk.

13 Companies leech off the pet owning public and its reckoned more investors are waiting in the wings to hook in more cash when Boris decides to cheat the cat owning public as well.

The calls for a public open centralised register, are growing by the day. We the laymen believe that needs to be Government monitored as well as industry sponsored and access and chipping costs for the public need to be regulated and capped.

We Laymen would like you to contact your MP and get their support for a centralised register, well known dog lover and greyhound racing enthusiast Ian Lavery MP fully supports the initiative for a centralised register but we haven’t heard squeak never mid a bark or a yelp from any of the other MP’s in Northumberland.

STOP THE PET LOVERS RIP OFF NOW

Notes:  https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/140863-bbc/

https://www.writetothem.com/
 

Northumberland Tories attacking County Hackney and Private Hire Drivers:

If you’re a regular taxi user in any of the peripheral to other Council area Towns in Northumberland, like Prudhoe, Blyth, Seaton Valley, Cramlington, Ponteland etc you may have a regular number you ring to take you shopping, to a health appointment or out socialising. Or you may use any of the cards left in your local supermarket, hospital or pub and be collected by Cabs that are licensed in neighbouring authorities while if you’re a Northumberland Hackney driver your left sitting unemployed in a Northumberland County Council rank.

This is the outcome of nine years of Tory austerity and the growth of call centres to change the face of public transport across the nation. You may believe the nation should be exposed to the free market economy but its you and your local cab driver who loses out in the longer term.

In Northumberland where cabs from places such as North Tyneside, City of Newcastle, Gateshead, Cumbria and Scotland sit in back lanes and wait for their call centre to pass them work, local drivers have an awful time and income is often driven down to the bone. Yet those who are in power at County Hall in Morpeth and manage the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles have recently shown they don’t give a damn for the cabby who’s plying their trade and paying their taxes across the County, as under the cover of ‘Climate Emergency’ they have decided to force the taxi companies to modernise their fleets almost immediately and the cost of that proposed edict from the Tory led Council will be to force up costs to the public and drive most of the small operators out of business leaving the out of County operators with an open door to pick up passengers at will yet not have their cabs tested and checked in Northumberland.

The proposed amendments to the Northumberland County Council Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy is to make all vehicles compliant with Euro 6 emissions standards for passenger cars and Euro 5 for commercial vehicles such as mini buses and vehicles must be less than four years old. The Standards for electric vehicles will not change.

The current standards introduced in 2017 of Euro 5 for passenger cars and Euro 4 for commercial vehicles with an eight year change period, one of the shortest nationally, may sound old hat to environmentalists and Tory Councillors who will possibly still be running tractors that were built eons ago on their farms and holdings, is wholly policed by the County Council itself. Taxis are tested at the County Councils own garages four times per year! Small fortunes are transferred from the taxi industry into the coffers of the County Council which is effectively a stealth tax on the industry. Currently they are tested to a much more stringent standard than any family car to ensure that you and I for that matter as a passenger can travel in safety but having to change cabs every four years will have massive consequences for this industry.

In London, the nations prime cab area, with ‘black cabs’ pictured sending an image of settled soundness for the industry world wide, cabs have a lifespan of 15yrs, in areas where the internet cab is common you may be picked up in any age and standard of vehicle that are on many occasions under the radar business operated, but in Northumberland, county registered cabbies operate in full view but are being asked to fund change at a rate far too rapid for their industry while neighbouring Councils lag behind due to the pressure put on them by the industry itself.

The most galling thing cabbies have told me is that this week Northumberland County Council announced it was ‘Greenest in the UK’ with a 78.3% drop in emissions which proves that the current lifespan and vehicle testing system works a treat so why attempt to kill the livelihoods of many people and an industry that is an intrinsic part of the public transport system across the County when the largest self-praise coming from the Council is that of its plans to increase access to public transport further. HOW?

Notes:
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/northumberland-greenest-uk-according-new-carbon-emission-figures-627526?itm_source=parsely-api

***Many cab companies are running petitions at the moment to garner support from their service users regarding this savage change, please engage your local cab driver and sign their petition.

Concreting over the County

County Council Trading Away Democracy and Residents Right to Object?

As your well aware from our past scrawlings we laymen are from a variety of backgrounds and some of us still have solid ties with our past lives. Through these links we are able to bring politics from the other side and not simply from the party political viewpoint.

Well via our links with the construction industry and the midnight rantings on social media from a new MP we believe that as ordinary people in the street you need to know whats going on that could be entirely in the interest of investors and totally against your interest as County residents.

In the Trumpiest style, the Tories in Northumberland under yours and of course our own noses have been making secret decisions that have not been brought into the public domain, one of those decisions is to openly trade planning permissions through the pre-planning process.

Developers paying for pre planning advice is not illegal, its not even unlawful but it does destroy your right as a citizen to object too and have your voice fully heard on planning matters in your area and we believe its morally wrong to entice trade from a public service that is wholly based on trust.

The Council have made contact with developers and set up a  forum where land agents, builders and investors can discuss with planning officers how they get around difficulties in developing their land banks in Northumberland and once the dowry, or is it a ransom? is paid for pre-planning advice those difficulties will be managed away.

Northumberland is now a dream world for developers and we will see the Council collecting very valuable Council tax from properties in areas you never thought of over the next few years and we will also see the Tories concreting over even more land in their desire to profit from ‘little box’ construction near your home.

Tory Leader can’t dodge the bullets on the uncertain future for Ponteland and Heddon on the Wall

Watching the on air Council meeting beamed from Morpeth last Wednesday observers like ourselves may have asked why the Labour Party, the LibDems and the Tynedale Independents were so against the transfer of a planning obligation to the Labour controlled City of Newcastle Council for a small patch of land lying between Ponteland and Throckley that is a minor element of a major coal extraction within the bounds of the City.

Well for those in opposition at County Hall in Morpeth this isn’t an attempt to stop any decision being made by the City Council it is about the protection of the villages that surround the City and the future needs of both the region the Country and the Government. As a nation we still need coal, will do for the next decade whilst we build a renewable future and the extraction of English coal is the least costly in the terms of human safety and transport mileage. 

So why all the furore? The answer is manifold but today we the Laymen wish to put some scenarios to those who live near this planning proposal and show why the Leader of the Conservative Group on Northumberland County Council may have let down the Town and villages he represents.



This small patch of land is the exit route for the coal that may be extracted from this huge site and that exit route will not be through the City of Newcastle, who through being the regional hub of the North-East has huge traffic and pollution problems that could lead to ever more vehicles being routed around the City and not through it by costly environmental charges being placed on the Tyne crossings within the City Centre areas.
 That of course will mean any coal extracted from this site will be routed through Northumberland to its railhead or the Port of Blyth to be transported by sea.



You may ask why that’s a concern as similar scenarios have been happening since the second world war? It has and the County of Northumberland through being the largest planning authority in the region has controlled that traffic very well indeed but by ceding its planning obligations a change stuck on the back of an item on managing the County Climate Emergency the Tory led Northumberland County Council has allowed another authority to manage the exit of this coal onto the County highways, an exit that could be extremely difficult for people who commute from Ponteland who complain about the highway in that area on a regular basis.



But what about the future if this coal is extracted?

On becoming the Leader of Council in May 2017 Councillor Jackson had two planning applications in his ward stopped and had the Council withdraw its ‘Core Strategy’ planning document from inspection by Government. The two sites Clickerman and Dissington Garden Village were to pay for a new high school and leisure centre in Ponteland, Councillor Jacksons team have gone ahead with Labour’s planned new school and leisure centre without the income from those sites to contribute towards the considerable costs of such a venture, leaving the County Council to borrow capital finance to pay for it.



Borrowing capital finance puts pressure on the revenue budget of the County Council, revenue funding pays for the services you receive as a resident of an area, Councillor Jacksons Conservative Group have just agreed to cut revenue and services by £16m leaving the villages and towns affected by this possible coal extraction with rapidly worsening services.



Also, the extraction of coal from this site leaves the City of Newcastle with possibly the most sought after building land in the North of England right on the doorstep of Darras Hall in Councillor Jacksons Ward and leaves the city with the ability to develop a fantastic future in rateable value terms not only for this land but right up to Newcastle airport, which can be developed alongside this site leaving Northumberland in the embarrassing position of having to provide a green belt buffer as they have ceded this area over to the City in planning terms.



The replacement for the Councils core strategy is the  Conservatives new ‘Local Plan’ in which they reduced the housing numbers in Northumberland in order to protect Ponteland and Darras Hall’s exclusivity. So Northumberland gets to service any growth in this area, which we expect to be considerable, without the revenue stream to improve the services its currently cutting.



Running alongside this issue is the ‘climate emergency’ that is being actively pursued in the City of Newcastle through proposed direct action on vehicles will lead the Highways authorities to require the building of a new road that will connect the A1 north of Newcastle to the A69 trunk road as the western bypass is already at a stand still at peak times. Any development on this new site will mean that the future link road will sit in Northumberland and not in Newcastle leaving the villages Councillor Jackson is cutting services too vulnerable to traffic pollution at a much higher level than they currently suffer from.



Therefore in conclusion we the Laymen believe the opposition parties were right to challenge this decision as it’s the people in Northumberland’s future they were thinking of before being voted down by Tories and Bedlington Independents.