Labour’s lift in cash for the County shows up GURU seeking public’s help to slash services after robbing £1m from the same public last year?

 

After eight years languishing under the handle of ‘Conservative financial guru’ at Northumberland County Council, Corbridge Councillor Nick Oliver is now asking for public help now that the massive cash reserves left by the Labour Party in 2017 are finally frittered away.

When Labour was ousted from office in Northumberland and self proclaimed financial guru Nick Oliver took the reigns of Corporate services and cabinet secretary whose role it was to monitor the Council’s finances he was presented on a silver platter a usable cash reserve of just under £200m with the councils assets with its debts covered standing at £340m.

The solid work of the Council's head of finance Steve Mason who was immediately sacked by Oliver’s team in office and all of the good work on prudence from the outgoing Labour administration even after facing the wrath of George Osborne’s austerity programmes was for Northumberland Conservatives like letting your kids loose with the sweetie jar.

Northumberland Conservatives heads began to spin and looking at them they all showed signs of rapid eye movement when asked about their embarkation into a spend, spend, spend culture likened by folk and protest singers across the Counties rural pubs and country fairs to Michael Holliday’s ‘runaway train’.

The Council’s wasteful expenditure, uncontrolled by the one party cabinet and its guru began by stopping a new office block at the planned by Labour railhead in Ashington then blazing £millions on half modernising the far too large and costly to run County Hall in nearby Morpeth.

They ditched Labour’s council house building scheme to spend millions on an A1 highway scheme not supported at all by the Conservative Government in Westminster ignoring the demands of various Transport Ministers and not backed even when one of Northumberland’s own ‘Tory pin up girls’ held the ministerial post.

Mr Guru employed a myriad of different financial officers and it was rumoured one only lasted a single day as unbelievable sums were poured into academy schools even though the National Conservative Government warned all Councils that their funding was to be spent on improving Council Owned and managed schools. Northumberland Conservative spend, spend, spend heads were turned as wasteful headlining scheme after wasteful scheme became the norm and the overspend of reserves and the dwindling asset base was only held up because of damaging inflationary policies from central government, and it's gone on for the last eight years with Council Tax and retained business rates going through the roof each and every annum.

Even after being slated nationally as being a dysfunctional council and promising their own Government they would change their ways, prudence was slaughtered on the altar of mammon and the pockets of locals were drained ever more with lower band homes in Northumberland paying a ‘mansion tax’ years before it became Government policy for more expensive high value homes leaving Council Tax along with the social services  precept climbing dramatically each and every year.

So why is their panic among the Tory ranks this year?

Well that's down to the spiral of anxiety from the last Conservative Government who decided that  raging inflation would keep up the value of Council assets to enable balance sheets to look a little better to local voting residents. But the constant falling rates of inflation since May 2024 and a change in the way constituencies are collated all into the same average size is another panic matter designed by the Tories in a hope it would keep them in office, (luckily their plan failed). Has led to a change in the way government grants to councils are viewed.

Mr Guru has now been asked to balance the Councils books and has given out the ‘CUTS FIGURE’ this year as £8,000,000 blaming the loss of rural services grant as Labour way of damaging Northumberland County Council. Mr Guru’s wrong of course as when all grants are put together just as their one time newly married former leader Councillor Peter Jackson said from 2010 until 2019 “the total grant is always the same” when delivering his Council budget speech or attacking the budgets set by the Labour Party. 

But the out of the blocks before getting out of bed Mr Guru has even destroyed the financial reputation of Peter Jackson as his Corbridge based Nelson’s eye didn’t notice the Labour Government’s 25% increase in grant to Northumberland County Council.

So with huge falls in inflation and the same Guru sitting on almost £1,000,000 of parking fine income from the last 12 months, his £8m figure is a blind to get some weird weld in on his damaging spin to get headlines where none exist  in case people forget who he is. The 25% increase in Government Grant levels out at £102 million this year so all his whinging and bleating on is really in vain.

Northumberland County Council is set to receive a £102.8 million increase in Core Spending Power over the course of this Parliament, representing a 25% uplift in funding under the new Labour Government.

The increase marks a major turnaround after years of underfunding under the Conservatives. During the last Conservative multi-year settlement between 2015/16 and 2019/20, Northumberland’s Core Spending Power rose by just £15.1 million – a 6% increase, which failed to keep pace with inflation and growing demand for services.

Core Spending Power is the Government’s main measure of how much money councils have available to deliver vital local services, including social care, children’s services, highways, and community support.

The new funding settlement provides Northumberland with greater financial stability and the ability to plan ahead, protect frontline services and invest in communities. 

The Government's increase has left Mr Guru on the floor with the need to apologise for leading the public astray in order to shine a gloomy light on himself, but failure in public office is failure in public office and he needs to accept that and ask to be removed from the cabinet of the County Council or resign to save face.

Dysfunctionality, overspends, and loss of public trust mainly due to the secret way this Council is managed along with the hammering of staff jobs, the very expensive privatisation of Leisure Services, the need to support its arms length company Advance Northumberland the runaway costs of the new theatre build in Berwick, the long wait for Blackstone help to bail out the Guru’s accumulated debt, not cutting back on the Cabinet glamour schemes and the pathetic need for constant headline making has led to so many people forced out of the door. To cover off this mess the Cabinet is advertising everywhere for volunteer labour to keep services open and running. This all adds to the maelstrom that has damaged this Council not just for now but for years to come. But asking the public to design its damaging cuts after hammering them for eight years is taking the biscuit surely?

Our bet as codgers is that the spin statement from Mr Guru will be swept under one of the unmodernised half of County Halls aged carpets and he will let his untrue statement that “doesn’t feel like rural communities are the friends of Government at the moment” sit on the record of the Hexham Courant in a possible stab to let them take some of the blame as Labour pushed by their four MP’s have dealt a fantastic hand of cards to improve things across the board for the residents of the whole of Northumberland.

Notes:

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25692305.northumberland-county-council-warn-8m-cuts-next-year/

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/northumberland-county-council-warns-it-must-find-ps8m-more-cuts-after-government-funding-reforms-5439170

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z36JE3RGXVM

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/about-council/working-northumberland-county-council/volunteering

It's 8 years on, NCC must renew their forward & corporate plans.

 

     Will they miss the BIG ISSUE again?     

One of the very first things Northumberland Conservatives did following their win in May 2017 was to bring in consultants linked to their government in office to rewrite the Council's forward and corporate plans in-secret.

The changes embedded into the new plans include breaking up the Council's arms length company ARCH into separate trading units, changing long established pre- unitary working areas that kept functions grouped into economically viable spaces based on demographic similarities and moving towards private first public second, dumping as many functions as they could onto town and parish councils to offset the austerity programs of an utterly chronic and totally distant from reality government.

Later they adjusted those plans further to break up beneficial partnerships with local primary and secondary care trusts causing regular rises in Council tax social services precept, forcing tax up by the maximum each and every year.

That last act of public piracy by Northumberland Conservatives forced a major change to family inheritance on the County’s non-farming public with demands to sell family homes and assets to pay for their loved ones' care issued to families days after care being identified. The value that disappeared into the massively deep pockets of the County's private sector massively outweighs the minor burden locked into the 10 years to pay farmers inheritance tax scheme.

Neither plans favoured the achievement of Best Value and a Government inspector Max Caller labeled the Council as ‘dysfunctional’ and members of the public certainly know his judgement was true.

The Council now has the opportunity to correct many of its past wrongs but with its massively bloated communications section missing the value of good staff stories whilst bullying up the Leader of Council, making up headlines where non-exist, we codgers expect the opportunities new plans could achieve will probably be missed.

For eight years the Council has missed its social housing targets with their plans, preferring to only support private sector affordable homes that in reality are completely unaffordable for two thirds of the Counties population.

The Labour opposition Leader has brought up the need to change on a regular and ongoing basis to assist the out of kilter needs ratio for social housing to drive down the numbers in need and assist the huge numbers who are homeless or are left without any surplus income after paying huge rents to in many cases distant landlords.

Even the new Reform & Independent opposition Councillors have questioned the use of section 106 funds which assist the funding of some elements of social housing.

We, the general public, will have to keep a weather eye on the make up of the new plans as the current Labour Government is determined to assist the development of Council housing, a policy it's expected Northumberland Tories will turn Nelson's blind eye towards.

But is up to local people to ensure they ask their local councillor about the way the Council forms its policies and following recent announcements ask should we as residents support a new flashy purple bin outside your homes worth £21m or should that level of Council borrowing be used to bolster the creation of new Council homes and repair the dozens of Council owned empty single persons units standing empty right across it's largest town, Blyth.

Housing, the real BIG ISSUE!

Tories Tagged Reform as ‘Nazi’s’ BBC shows Farage links with Epstein. Reform Councils in deep doodah As their DOGE program finds Jack.

 

Taking all of the above in context, what's happening across Northumberland now that panto season is upon us?

To look back over the last few months and answer the questions above the National Media system has we need to look at the run in to May 2025 local government elections.

Reform Northumberland in the name of Natalie Rolls began by posting a right leaning FOI on ‘what do they know’ pointing the finger at the Council’s involvement with the migrant dispersal scheme (link below) beginning the stirring of the South Beach spurtle spreading fear among locals.

Within a few short months of becoming the Council’s official opposition infighting among the Reform Group began to kick off publicly with low turnouts at meetings and Reform’s leader sitting silent at filmed Full Council meetings. —---  Revolt ensued.

The "revolt" in Northumberland refers to a recent period of internal chaos within the Reform UK party's local group, which led to the expulsion of three councillors in October 2025. 

Two councillors, Nicole Brooke and Patrick Lambert, were expelled for allegedly breaching party rules by attempting to organize a no-confidence vote in the local group's leadership. Both councillors denied any wrongdoing and have since joined Northumberland County Council's Independent Group.

A third councillor, John Allen, was expelled after an investigation into online comments he allegedly made, which included statements about wanting to harm Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The anti-racism group Hope Not Hate brought these comments to light. 

The expulsions reduced the total number of Reform UK councillors on Northumberland County Council from 23 to 20, though they remain the official opposition to the Conservative administration. The events have drawn national media attention and scrutiny regarding the party's internal governance and vetting processes. 

Councillor Allen whose investigation appears to still be underway and may have to join his Council meeting from incarceration, resigned from his Ashington Town Council seat but retained his well paid seat on Northumberland County Council and sits as a sometimes attending ‘Independent’ Councillor.

Next was ‘whose balls are the biggest’ with social media illustrating the ‘he did it first’ spats between a Tory and a REFORM Councillor who both appeared to block off disabled parking bays in their respective Health Centre car parks with their unbelievably expensive boy toy motorhomes. Whichever Councillor was first doesn’t really matter to us codgers but it really does illustrate the type of person making decisions on this described by professionals as a fully dysfunctional council.

The infighting continued between REFORM members with close scrutiny by other fairness campaigners than Hope Not Hate, with ‘show racism the red card’ and REFORM Watch Northumberland keeping up the public pressure on social media. With a follower of these sites openly expressing the opinion that seems to be growing that REFORM SUPPORTERS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN AT FOOTBALL GAMES AS PROFESSIONAL SPORTSPERSONS TAKE THE KNEE AGAINST THEIR RACIST COMMENTS AND ACTIVITIES.

The BBC then came in with a news story that may bring work for the builder politician Barry Elliott? As on BBC North-East news he was shown threatening to make a citizen's arrest of a reporter.

He mustn't watch or read much about prisons or have noticed that they are full to the gunnels, or is it that he wants to develop a site he may own to lock up citizens whom he doesn’t like?

But the BBC didn't only show this aggressive side of Councillor Elliott they told the Story of him not paying back his debts to aged customers he had scammed and the courts instructed him to pay back and like most things he hasn’t bothered to comply with the courts demands.

With the pressure on, the Tory led Council he represents took him to court to resolve his personal debts to them and society in general, that of non-payment of Council Tax and Business Rates. Its a story that's still running with the press with Elliott delivering his Geordies Overboard style once again.

There's currently a by-election following the resignation of a conservative councillor from Blyth Town Council, Labour are fielding a candidate Helen Lockyer who was brought up and lives centrally in the Ward. Reform are fielding a Tory who was so active in the Conservative Party he signed the nomination papers for Ian Levy the Blyth Valley Constituency Tory MP. It's strange how the world turns but the National Tory Chairman has labeled REFORM as Nazi’s so the choice is up to the people living in that ward, a ‘girl of the people’ who loves her community or an ex austerity party top supporter converted to fascism?

It’s been rumoured that the Tories on the county council are trying to pull a flanker by situating the polling station OUTSIDE THE WARD BOUNDARIES in some sort of hope their Councillor who lives in a different part of Blyth may pick up the outgoing councillors postal votes and keep a foothold for doginess going forward. We hope local people see through this veil of deceit?

We codgers wonder where the REFORM group on Northumberland County Council will go next as we hear they haven’t enrolled in the Bedlington panto group training led by a top local entertainer whose own fantastic panto is on a Consett Theatre this winter, but wherever it is it should be sitting on institutions that have been filled with fairness and positive understanding of Blyth communities needs and wants that are being twisted and not reformed by those with the loudest most aggressive voices.

NOTES:

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/nigel-farage-kevin-hollinrake-reform-uk-tories-nazi-party

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgy81jlxqgo

https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/councillors-reforum-uk-nigel-farage-b2765359.html

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/10/06/reform-is-failing/

https://leftfootforward.org/2025/06/reform-brutally-mocked-after-unleashing-new-doge-team-on-first-council/

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/freedom_of_information_request_i_308

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/news/politics/chaos-engulfs-reform-uk-in-northumberland/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2prgw8nzeo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yj927wje5o

https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/09/19/starmer-john-allen-reform-uk/

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-councillor-launches-attack-32655993

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25652262.northumberland-councillor-ordered-pay-near-40-000-debt-council/

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1227841512736227

https://youtu.be/H1H49LOiLOU?si=zTnP2ilvIAzN-e8M

Tory Farmer wants to spend £21m of your cash on complying with Boris’s silent Environment Act 2021

 During the disastrous reign of Boris Johnson running the nation and that's all we want to say about him, a new act of parliament was introduced,the Environment Act 2021.

The ‘act’ unlike most legislation was brought on line in an almost empty format with changes by Councils to be included if they fitted in with the then secretary of state's beauty pageant.

Councils who wanted to lead the pack rushed headlong into changes surrounding part 3 of the act issuing stacks of different refuse containers and stretching the time waste is left lying around at people's homes  sometimes standing four weeks between collection dates.

Farmer and Tory County Councillor John Riddle has proposed a change to try to encourage people to  recycle more, extending collection times into his expensive ‘have another bin service change’ and widening Northumberland's borrowing ‘Black-Hole’ by a massive £21m.

Under the 2021 empty environment act publicity was run out to warn the public they may have to house up to seven containers and food prices would be forced up to cover the supermarkets constant use of single-shot plastic boxes and bags along with huge environmental levies for getting rid of their huge piles of waste. That additional charge to supermarkets has grown out of all proportion with shrinkflation of  goods commonplace and it's Hobson's choice for most families to pay more and get less in supermarkets today.

With the Government so busy trying to save the NHS and strengthen our borders the number of containers has been moved to a maximum of four with that decision yet to be scrutinised in rural areas like Northumberland by MP’s.

Councillor Riddle is proposing four or is it five if you pay the ransom to have a brown bin for your garden waste.

Social media is red hot with people who have little chance of housing four or five bins and dozens of valid suggestions on what the county council should be spending £21m on.

But the real question asked by those who understand the vagaries of local government single status pay agreements, is how much will this seemingly unsolicited rise in self sorting of family waste force up council tax to cover the hike in workers wages bringing in this new scheme in?

Birmingham is in the midst of a bin strike that seems to have no end linked to an increase in responsibilities through their chosen recycling system. Those increased responsibilities must be paid for through the single status agreement.

It wasn't the fault of those on strike now working for a bankrupt city council that Birmingham hadn't honoured the same agreement for another set of their workers who won their case in the high court busting the Council through the result.

Council Tax in Northumberland is already one of the highest in the UK but which resident wants to pay more because a farmer wants to increase your debt and fill your garden with plastic monoliths.