Race to the bottom between Tories and Reform easily seen in Northumberland Councillors attitudes

 

With recent you tube videos showing top Tories singing racist songs, Musk and Farage nose to nose over how far to the right Reform must slide, we note we have the managers of financial ruin, top Tory Councillors in Northumberland denying the acceptance of diversity through their attempts to slash down newly proposed housing numbers.

The fear that newcomers may bring their habits with them if they settle in an area has been hardened in through the losing Tory in the recent Conservative leadership fight, Robert Jennrick, stating that refugees and asylum seekers from nations with archaic attitudes towards women should not be allowed to settle in Britain. With social media pilots asking who he is referring to with Ireland, Poland, Romania, India and Pakistan leading the numbers of migrants entering the UK. With both right wing parties vying to become the ‘New Nasties’ following the support shown by the worlds richest man Elon Musk for Tommy Robinson.

 Reform who have ran out stories that Northumberland will have to accept migrants in numbers so high that a new town larger than Ashington will have to be build to house them and that the Tory led County Council has designed policy to in Reform’s words “Cram them in” has led to further claims and counterclaims.

 The outturn is that Northumberland Tories who have allowed almost 1,600 homes built each and every year since 2017 mostly huge executive homes leaving many of its younger residents behind. They have now decided to slash their planned housing numbers down to 549 a figure professional planners indicate will not maintain housing losses leading to an ever diminishing population.

 This shameful Council has over 435 Council homes unlet awaiting repairs with over 650 families needing social housing through the low wage culture developed over the last 14 years of successive Tory Governments and their failed Brexit.

 Housing needs are now the responsibility of the North-east Mayor who will have to cope with the constant whining from Northumberland Conservatives whose prime interest appears to be to drive workers out of their County in order that ever more holiday lets can be developed from the skeleton villages they tell all they love and cherish.

 The Conservatives constant message of ‘Labour is concreting over your County’ is fallacy and needs to be investigated by the North-east Mayor as Northumberland is the least populated County in England with absentee holiday let owners complaining they can’t hire cleaners to maintain their businesses as there’s no social housing in the villages they are investing in.

 
The new housing numbers from Government need to be grabbed by the Council and an honest survey (not a council consultation) by an independent body such as the Kings Trust to correctly determine if people would like to live in ‘living communities’ or whether they would like to live in film sets without schools, without essential services and live in fear after dark? developing a xenophobic society in our countryside instead of neighbourly societies.

 

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/freedom_of_information_request_i_308#incoming-2810461

 

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/councillor-calls-on-mayor-to-stand-up-for-northumberland-on-housing-targets-4934182

Blyth Drivers lose £13m per year Yet the conservative County Council sits back on bypass roads and expects drivers to absorb greater costs.

Hiding behind failed bids to their own Government since 2017 to attempt to deliver two bypass roads for the town of Blyth which has  44,000 vehicles accessing and egressing the Town every day has become a major issue across South East Northumberland.

During 2019 the Conservative regional chairperson at the time, Councillor Wearmouth joined by Councillor Riddle the Council’s highways guru allegedly said that their ‘Council had £18m available to develop the required roads and their bid to help ease the pressure from Blyth drivers through Highways England was to save ratepayers costs if they could’.

The bid which contained the numbers of 20,000 vehicles per day on each of the two access roads, Laverock Road and Cowpen Road was not accepted by the then Government as major highways work on the A66 was announced and austerity formula’s landed on the doorstep of County Hall in Morpeth.

That situation rolled on and a further bid was clagged together in 2023 using similar figures along with some safety features which were immediately challenged by the former deputy leader of Northumberland Conservatives, Councillor Daley. His campaign won the day at County hall but led to the bid for cash from the state failing due to the ‘lack of vision and it being less safe’.

Traffic has increased greatly on Cowpen Road whilst Laverock Hall Road has remained ‘full’ with a similar 20,000 vehicles per day using the road. 

This has been a costly exercise for Blyth drivers with sitting time each day adding up using minimum wage as a measure and the new figures of 44,000 vehicles each day  reaching a staggering £13m each year in lost time.

That standing time is about to be increased further with an active travel plan to extend Blyth’s already huge active travel network by reducing the width of Cowpen Road by a third, removing all right turn pockets, setting back all junctions many behind the sight line so that cyclists can have a right of passage at all junctions. 

It's a scheme that may benefit Deliveroo employees but which has been condemned by cycling clubs who know too well how dangerous this type of scheme has developed in other areas and failed to increase active users due to the danger it causes when drivers become impatient. But Northumberland County Council wants to build this new dangerous route before they develop the long designed bypass road and its tested for success for Cowpen Road. A plan that has also been opposed by Blyth Town Councillors who are worried that this active travel route will kill off their town for good.

Exacerbating the traffic flow on Cowpen Road will endanger the viability of commerce sited along this highway and as the shopping precinct in Blyth has been recently destroyed in order to build an apprentice training facility instead of shops in the Town in the name of levelling up, people from across Blyth, Northumberland’s largest town have come to rely on the shopping experience Cowpen Road can currently offer.

With the extreme amount of time lost in travelling into and out of Blyth there has to be a better way of managing traffic flow and still retain commerce and employment in the Town, it's time Northumberland’s Morpeth based Conservatives came up with a better offer than ‘ON YER BIKE’ if you live, work or want to play in Northumberland’s largest enclave.

2015 Sustrans plan for Blyth, illustrating that the ‘academies cycleway’ would alleviate the need to narrow Cowpen Road, for cross Town travellers to access the new footbridge to Bebside Station and that the current Cowpen Road cycle path is adequate for local cyclists.

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/Roads-streets-and-transport/cycling/Blyth_Sustainable_Travel_Audit_SUMMARY.pdf

The Cowpen Road narrowing scheme

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/Economy-and-Regeneration/Energising%20Blyth/Bebside-to-Town-Centre-Cycle-Corridor.pdf

The Cramlington argument

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/blyth-relief-road-closure-fear-28056781

 

Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1. Where did Northumberland Conservatives Go Wrong?

 

With recent news that Northumberland Conservatives, although charging residents of the county the highest Council Tax rates in England, have blown it all and their leader Councillor Glen Sanderson has told the public the huge business under his charge can no longer deliver basic services.

The fall out from his admission has been massive, so much so that his team was dragged through the dirt in the Friendly Port of Amble when he had shrubberies torn out to lower maintenance costs and promised to replace the shrubs with nice trees which take less looking after. A few short weeks ago he told AMBLER’s through the readership of the local newspaper the Ambler that the trees are unaffordable, deepening the fall out from his decision making.

His statements may have also weakened the case for additional Government help as he and his cohorts are split on his anti-government stance and his subjective declaration of independence naming it as a sovereign state. We codgers have noticed that the split is widening daily as older conservatives have come out against the Morpeth Farming Mob on planning and services issues.

The old conservatives among his ranks know that towns and villages across the County will die off in a very short period of time unless both affordable and social housing isn’t constructed in order that younger people can set up their lives near to where they were born and brought up, with school closures a real issue for the near future through the lack of children.

His responsibility for adult care is also placed in the spotlight as the other North East councils have come out to aid residents whose income is just above the pension credit threshold to fill the gap of winter fuel allowances for those in greatest need, leaving Northumberland residents asking what's happened to our money?

The current picture

• 1. Newcastle City Council - £200 post office vouchers for households on council tax support or housing benefit but who do not qualify for winter fuel allowance - those aged 80 will receive a further £100 in January

• 
  

• 2. Sunderland City Council - payments of £200 or £300 (if 80 or over) to households who receive council tax support or housing benefit but not pension credit

• 3. North Tyneside Council - £200 voucher for those under 80 and on council tax support or housing benefit, but not pension credit and £300 for those over 80

• 
  

• 4. Durham County Council - £150 post office voucher for a couple who get council tax reduction - £100 for those who are single

• Gateshead Council - offering discretionary payments

• 
  

• 5. South Tyneside Council - plans to launch a scheme next year for those who have missed out on pension credit this year

• 
  

• 6. Northumberland County Council - is contacting residents who may be eligible for pension credit with no future plans to help anyone at  all

During 2022 Northumberland County Council under the same conservative group stated that they would deliver the Inclusive Economy Agenda. They failed badly and have refused to acknowledge that people in need live in the same county as them, with Councillor and Civic Head Jeff Watson denying there was and is a problem.

The whole set of issues facing Northumberland residents has been brought about by severely poor money management by the Leader and his Cabinet who sat awash with usable reserves when they took over from Labour in May 2017.

Since then they have not achieved BEST VALUE and have as now sat at the bottom of the Telegraph League Table for service delivery on several occasions.

Were sure the questions will increase.

Notes:

https://www.theambler.co.uk/2024/12/11/northumberland-county-council-cant-afford-to-plant-new-trees/

https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2024/12/crazy-despot-declares-northumberland.html

https://www.local.gov.uk/case-studies/northumberland-county-council-delivering-inclusive-economy-agenda

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/tory-councillor-poverty-comments-northumberland-25207641

https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2024/12/angela-rayners-right-about-planning.html

Angela Rayners right about planning changes as in Northumberland It’s Murder path group versus real conservatives?

 

Morpeth, the name derives from Old English morð pæð and literally means "murder path" writing in 1666, the antiquarian John Stainsby attributed this moniker to "the many robberies and murders in those parts committed"

Some believe that at nearby County Hall things have hardly changed and the cataclysmic rift between the tiny minded minority trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and the real conservatives who worry that their home county is dying on its feet and is being ruined by diabolical politics.

Several issues sit at the heart of the matter but the recent statements from the Council’s Morpeth centric leaders that “Angela Rayner is going to concrete over the County” has been and is still disputed by real conservatives sitting outside the Murder path group.

A former chairperson of the Council, Councillor Richard Dodd has made clear statements in the mainstream and regional press explaining that current planning policy from his own government and his own local party has set Northumberland on a path to ever reduced services and without accepting change there will be no improvements as without people why do we need a dualled A1 or a rail service stopping at Morpeth?

The Murder path group who recently decided to design a partition of succession when declaring Northumberland a ‘Sovereign State’ and issued its treasonable anti government statements may not survive until the May election and their wish to break the law by not following instructions from Government will if enacted drag the Councils professional officers into any future prosecutions levelled against the protagonists.

Councillor Dodd warned there are "problems down the line" if planning rules in Northumberland are not changed to allow more new life into small rural communities.

He called for planning reform in the county after new figures revealed many of the county’s rural schools have low numbers of pupils, causing them to struggle financially and putting them at risk of closure. He also hit out at so-called "nimbys" – which stands for 'not in my backyard' and refers to members of the public who object to planning applications.

"There is a problem coming down the line. Longframlington has had 350 new houses, Amble has got 1,300 in the pipeline. "If we could just spread that stuff a little bit around the county, because a lot of these villages are dying. This really is a problem.

"When somebody says they’re going to build the houses, out comes the committee to oppose them, the nimbys and their armies with their petitions and their letters and everything.

"At one time, farm cottages used to be full of farm workers and their families who went to the local school, but now they’re holiday cottages. You see things like second homes too.

"We need to build all kinds of houses that people can afford, not with all the palaver that goes with it, but just cheaper houses. It can be done.

"Otherwise, we, or someone, is going to be sitting here in 10 years time and we will have a list of schools that will have to close."

The Council has over 1,700 homeless people, over 430 empty Council Houses awaiting repair and has a revised local plan to reduce the new builds across the County to a level that is two thirds below need.

The changes from Government would simply mean that each parish in Northumberland should encourage and have built and additional 2.2 homes each year over the current meagre housing numbers currently paralysing rural life right across the County.