Northumberland Tories loved the two tier Localism Act until Labour took a tier out.

After the Tories ousted Labour in 2010 they immediately launched their well publicised localism bill 2011 a paper intended to shake out Westminster and give Councils more powers over local and regional decision making.

After a very short while Westminster officials started to glower at its contents when all levels of government became subject to the let’s make Britain smaller George Osborne’s austerity program.

Tory Councils nationwide stood firm and egged on by its members began to slip in local changes to suit themselves and stand against communities which didn’t vocally support their view of how austerity should damage services in urban environs and protect interests in rural ones.

The local government press issued this article as things got hotter with communities seeking support against a number of nationally approved planning applications, ‘Many local authorities emboldened by the fanfare which surrounded the enactment of the Localism Act and the implementation of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) told their residents that this would be the end of “top down” planning and decisions on development would be made locally’.

It was on most applications unless they fell into the strategic description. But it opened they way for developers to challenge council decisions on a huge scale with costs having to be met by local taxpayers and if lost councils had no control at all on the sites in both the layout and the adoption stages.

This missive on behalf of Councils through their cock a hoop attitudes bulldozed the nation into a housing crisis that is still looking difficult to resolve.

So when Labour won its majority in 2024 they didn’t launch new policy on the same scale as the localism act, instead the took a warmhearted view of the act and decided to regionalise disputed applications using the offices of regional mayors and the act allows it.

This new very minor change has been attacked by the remnants of Badenoch's rag tag army and in Northumberland by Councillor Horncastle the member responsible for planning with the Mayor telling the full story in an interview with the BBC.

The scaremongering Councillor Horncastle needs to read the localism act 2011 and he’ll find what’s proposed sits within the act and that he needs to get his finger out to find land to build the Councils way out of a crisis that has seen Tory led Northumberland County Council write off thousands of families in need of safe and secure reasonably priced housing.

But of course that doesn’t make the rich richer, does it?

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/20/contents

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/concern-voiced-at-plans-to-give-regional-mayors-more-powers-on-planning-decisions-8938578

https://www.northeast-ca.gov.uk/get-involved/mayor-meets

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/northumberland-county-council/northumberland-county-council-00em-regulatory-judgement-11-february-2026

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25688428.7-000-wiped-off-housing-waiting-list-northumberland/

Reform Councils told by Robert Jenrick to lower their costs by forcing benefit claimants in and workers out.

 

Robert Jenrick and his REFORM Ltd. cohorts have decided to collapse the UK Employment Rights Act 2025 in order to slash the nation's benefits bill by £50 Billion creating two tier workforces nationally.

He and his mates are planning to force Councils to accept the long term unemployed particularly those who claim personal independence payment and the higher rate of sickness benefit attached to universal credit into "cleaning our high streets".

Other legislation including the Procurement Act 2023 will have to be twisted to allow unequal treatment of contract workers in the public sector.

Jenrick’s plan, which does not have a working figure attached to it, will have to run similar to chain gang schemes across the American deep south.

This unequal treatment takes the UK back to 1833 and REFORM's light blue’s seem to have forgotten that PM Earl Grey halted slavery right across the empire and commonwealth which include the British Isles in that year. 

This new policy shows how twisted the decisions supported by his REFORM cohorts and denial of BREXIT’s failures which will cause even more immense problems on our high streets if £50billion is removed from the UK benefit system without a plan to replace it.

These draconians changes may also force Council’s into bankruptcy rather like Birmingham as laws protecting equality and equal treatment will become fair game for lawyers and trade unions who will challenge any future two tier workforce links through the courts.

How small will a £50billion saving look then Mr Jenrick?

Ian Lavery MP is correct? Changing our thinking only damages the poor!

 The recent attacks by right wing southern based media against local dialects are in the words of Blyth and Ashington MP “the last form of acceptable discrimination”.

Reading articles supporting his stance on social media he has correctly called out those who have used this slight to damage ordinary people from understanding what's being done in the name of politics which is designed only to make the rich much richer and to keep the poor in their place.

Ian Lavery MP is well known for helping those in greatest need and for years he has had to fight a Tory county council backed up by a Tory Government to get things done locally.

The bastardisation of the English language by the Tories which is the basis of these attacks has been planned and wicked, placing the poor in peril every day in the sphere of housing. We all need to fear politicians speaking through their forked tongues using the all encompassing corrupted double-talk ‘affordable homes’.

During 2011 Grant Shapps, the Tory Minister responsible for Homes and Communities introduced a new planning regime to ensure Westminster had its evil eye on everything. The basis of the real divided society that we all suffer from today.

His edict set within his new planning document was to snuff out the words ‘Council Homes’ and ‘Social Housing’ for associations and charities supplying homes at certain lower levels of market rent and stir them into a mix with new affordable homes ( which are only affordable once) and instruct all authorities with housing responsibilities to only use ‘Affordable Homes’ to cover off everything that may be used to challenge planning decisions under one suffocating blanket.

This similar slight to openly criticising people who speak with a local accent and with REFORM UK members openly speaking against the use and cost of use of our regional languages it's time for us all to jump up and down and demand the end of this it doesn't matter unless your rich attitude and get the planners to go back and in this years alteration to the national planning framework bring back the two lost terms and begin to speak with clarity and not like biblical serpents.

 People need to know what their hard earned cash is really being spent on and if it's for social or charitable need, Council safe and protective housing or bunging builders to lower the cost of a few homes on sites they're working on to cover off the needs of local planners without lowering profits for their shareholders.

Let's get back to supporting people who need our support and in the process rebuild communities to support those who dwell within them whether they speak with a plum in their mouths or retain the pride in speaking like their neighbours.

Sunderland's doing it, Hartlepool's onto it, South Tyneside sorting it and Redcar is racing to catch up.

 

Sunderland's doing it, Hartlepool's onto it, South Tyneside sorting it and Redcar is racing to catch up.This week with it being the school holidays and for a while bright and sunny, we codgers met in Astley Park for our regular chat as some of us have sitting duties to perform, either kids or pets or in two cases both..

The topic quickly got round to what's happening on the regional local government front as we had agreed previously not to debate the national picture as it seems to be getting brighter each day through the political shift at Westminster.

A few of us had noticed another spread in the Northern Echo about saving our quickly eroding regional coastline through the use of that long lost natural resource, the European Oyster which it's expected by environmentalists to become residentially homed in the Tees estuary and use its filtration system to clean up years and years of polluted waterway as well as protect the southern part of the regions beaches from further erosion.

A little while ago, Hartlepool announced their oyster nursery project to help build up oyster numbers along with their long term aim to aid the larger Teesside project populate their much needed now started plan to help to clean up and protect their very busy once heavily polluted estuary.

Moving northwards up the coast, in Sunderland they began a nursery a few years ago and have expanded the project to include specially designed oyster blocks near Whitburn to begin the formation of a much larger self sustaining reef to clean and protect a large section of coastline.

These projects may not be the final answer to much speeding erosion of land and rising sea waters may simply ignore them but evidence from other parts of the globe clearly show that the re-establishment of oyster beds can and does make a difference.

That said we codgers are more interested in what can be done to protect Northumberland’s dwindling shorelines with noticeable erosion taking place from Lynemouth bay to Blyth beach with particularly high levels of beach scouring taking place at both Cambois and Lynemouth bay with footpaths at both sites in danger of disappearing without some help.

Newbiggin by the Sea was protected with a well designed groin trapping sand from the longshore drift and rebuilding the beach over the last almost three decades but costs to save other sites using similar methodology may be prohibitive and protection using shellfish seems to be a secondary option and a small trial was announced with a test undertaken at Blyth marina to start a small test nursery.

One of the most exposed areas sits just outside of Newbiggin by the Sea’s groin, the long term erosion at the side of St. Bartholomew's Church at Newbiggin point the erosion has now allowed its churchyard to flood. It was reported on social media that Labour Councillor Liz Simpson was in contact with environmentalists who were hoping to reintroduce limpets and whelks back to the rocks at the point to help slow the erosion and Councillors since she was deposed from her County Council seat seem to have lost interest in the scheme failing locals who have registered their displeasure and the erosion problems that have beset their area.

Blyth has a site that is home to 13 oyster nurseries and the Port of Blyth authority have boasted about the number of young oysters that will drift out to populate areas surrounding the Port. Not much evidence has been shown in the locale to show the sites these creatures have chosen to make their home and concerned folk need Northumberland County Council must concentrate efforts and like other regional partners must show that erosion by the sea is a prime interest for a council with such a long coastal fishing and sailing history and is now promoting long distance walking and cycling routes along our shoreline and trying to establish better protection using shellfish to help rebuild south east Northumberland’s diminishing coastline.

The council and its planners may be using the long promised inclusion of two additional offshore windfarms to be sites near Lynemouth and North Tyneside before embarking on greater protection but as it seems other projects may have overtaken the small windfarms idea as huge areas of the north sea are being filled with hard working windfarms. If that is so the Council has no excuse to begin to save our shorelines and make a real attempt at showing local people that Tories can and do care about local people from the counties south-east and that only building two cinemas in a decade won't save our shorelines.

Notes:

Oysters return to Middlesbrough after 100 years thanks to 'hotel' | The Northern Echo https://share.google/2tPL4I0svdTqYfx7w

The Wild Oysters Project: Tyne & Wear - Groundwork https://share.google/CFKg108DdyKzFdNiL

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BXmYfoLRi/

Marine Environment - Port of Blyth | Leading UK Offshore Energy Support Base https://share.google/z6zHHvCxJqGMOqyZP

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/20/enacted

Explosive division has closed off scrutiny at Northumberland County Council?

 Reform UK, slipping in popularity through the public scrutiny of Leader Farage’s antics have recently shown how split they are as a party.

A change of group leader in May let in Cowpen Ward Councillor Rick Baker whose support for Farage’s anti net zero policies has threatened jobs centred on this huge industry based around the Town and the wider river Blyth estuary. Like the wider Reform UK party, he is an outspoken critic of Net Zero policies. He views them as "unsustainable nonsense" that burdens taxpayers with unnecessary costs, instead of advocating for the protection of energy security and the local economy with locals on social media voicing the opinion of anti net zero = anti Blyth workers!

The Reform party are split into at least two factions with the now titled anti Blyth Rick Baker holding court over the larger group who are politically struggling against a team led by Blyth Mayor and former Northumberland Reform Group leader Councillor Mark Peart who has also spoken out against the Tory led County Council’s attitude towards net zero and has been critical of the port of Blyth’s tree planting spend that's designed to attempt to lower carbon dioxide levels around the estuary.

Councillor Peart's criticism of the cluster of data centres planned for Cambois is a worrying and weakening factor when scrutiny of Council decision making is undertaken  as he and his new group leader Rick Baker both have fixed views that sit outside Council policy on net zero issues yet separate factional voting has weakened their ability as the second largest group on the County Council to challenge decisions through the scrutiny process. It doesn’t help ordinary folk at all as the weakness of division shows an inability of challenge, leaving true challenge of this dysfunctional Tory led Council in the hands of the Labour Group.

At Council meetings we have regularly seen the two factions of Reform disagree with each other through their voting patterns and group loyalty seems to onlookers as being at an all time low for political parties operating at a unitary all purpose county council level.

Comments on social media over these noticeable splits grew after the Blyth Town Council (led by Reform)  held a civic awards ceremony. The public watched in disbelief when the Mayor of Blyth had to undertake a solo act in giving out 78 awards to people from Blyth’s wider community for their good works with a rush at the end of the function by other Reform members to get into the photo shoot.

Reformists need to remember that as they grow weaker through the press and media challenging their political top brass their chances of seat retention will drift quite rapidly. So factions of Reform Northumberland we codgers ask to to keep up challenging each other and  watch your votes drifting like the Lib Dems in the past and disappearing down the pan.

Is it REFORM’s Blyth twin hatters** or Northumberland’s Tories acting like Mussolini in Blyth?

 

It’s a known fact that Bennito Mussolini the fascist leader of Italy from 1922-1943 tried his level best to change the Nations history through imagery of himself as a Roman Leader, along with censoring the press, being over negative with scenario (like some reporters on breakfast television) and stopping democratic elections with his party enlisting their own into public office.

(We will stay away from his warmongering and slaughter of people In Ethiopia and Albania) as it's difficult to think that we will declare war on Cumbria or they will return the nasties of war against Northumberland folk but we can’t read the runes if right-wing division within communities grows even more unhealthily.

Sounds very much like the slip to the right from Northumberland Conservatives and the stated aims of the ‘lets make the rich richer’ at our workers expense REFORM UK.

Here in Blyth the destruction of its history has begun to race ahead through the accepted by Blyth Reformers and delivered by Northumberland Conservatives LOW-MOW policy with weeds surrounding the historic display of public art centred on the Town's past and the Twin Hatters going into denial that they have the responsibility to maintain that history and therefore its public art.

The Town's litter and weed problems have grown out of all proportion Low-Mow excludes the service cut of litter picking before grass cutting leaving litter only slashed by mowers every seven weeks or so. This winter with no cuts being paid for by the Town Council litter is expected to sit for months before being butchered into shreds and the process of filth will continue on into infinity.

As the blame game from both parties continue, both Conservative and Reform in an attempt to blind side local people, residents will lose the public art display of Mining, Shipbuilding, Exploring and Explorers who sailed from Blyth as those historical stories decay as they become even more weed covered and litter strewn.

Its time both political party entities realise they were democratically elected to look after Northumberland’s largest Town including others and they both need to get a grip of reality and deliver ‘best value’ instead of ‘best blame’ strategies and get our town shifted from a growing slum area into the pristine coastal town that broke the mould of east coast towns that Blyth Valley Borough Council had developed to give residents pride in their communities. 

What sort of pride is being delivered by the divisive policies delivered by the unthinking ultra right that local folk can see getting worse each and every day?.

NOTES:

** In local government, "twin hatters" (also commonly known as "dual-hatted" councillors) are elected representatives who serve simultaneously on two different tiers of local authorities. A very common example is a politician who serves as both a District/Borough Councillor and a County or Town/Parish Councillor.

What do Reform Councilors fear? Even Northumberland Conservatives have accepted the process!

 

A simple check on Northumberland County Council’s website shows that despite all of the fuss made last month and clear explanations in the press and on the internet from more experienced Councillors, three REFORM UK Councillors have still not had their DBS checks signed off.

As most of us have seen in recent weeks with the string of violent riots from persons unknown who jumped to Nigel Farage's request to ‘take some action’ following the tragic death of Henry Nowak who was fatally stabbed by Vikrum Digwa it doesn’t take much for local folk to stop feeling safe in their own environment when that sort of activity is either sought or undertaken.

Do we know how many of those rioters were loyal members of REFORM UK? Or how many of those persons have dodged a request for a DBS check either recently or in the past, or even if any of those rioters are from Northumberland and members of Nigel’s Party?

Public Trust is a matter that is taken seriously by Northumbrians yet it looks like REFORM UK has three elected members from Northumberland who can’t be trusted.

The Leader of the Labour Group on Northumberland County Council Scott Dickinson said last month that he believed “every county councillor should be DBS checked”. He went on to say,  “if you want to work with children, support vulnerable adults, or even volunteer in a school, you need a DBS check. So why should we make exceptions for those who vote on children’s services, meet one-on-one with vulnerable residents, or make decisions that impact the most at-risk people in our communities?”

His statements are what most people expect from their democratically elected member but REFORM UK Councillors, some of them at least, feel they are above servicing the needs and wants of others but unfortunately that is what you were elected to do and that is what you should do.

We have had a little problem with this article as although the Leading Conservative group members are all covered by DBS checks we couldn't find many press statements where they came out in favour. In fact in the Hexham Courant (link below)the long serving Tory Council leader Glen Sanderson came out on the side of his ultra right wing colleagues stating that he was against mandatory checks. Did he need REFORM UK’s Councillors support for some of his anti-working class policies?

It's unbelievable that a person with his experience as a Councillor should come out with a statement like that, as a ward councillor he can be asked at any time by constituents to attend an old people's home to meet the residents or open a fete or visit a school in the patch he represents and he knows that. Is he simply putting politics before the safety of people or has he given up on protecting people altogether?

Notes:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=999018836387466

https://www.scottdickinson.net/single-post/why-i-believe-county-councillors-should-be-dbs-checked

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/northumberland-labour-leader-calls-for-mandatory-dbs-checks-for-all-county-councillors-5244958

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25350786.county-council-faces-calls-enforce-dbs-councillor-checks/