Independents! Just learning the secret ways of the secret Council that regularly overspends?

 

As we move towards the next Northumberland County Council election the ruling Tories have come to realise that they have to deliver something other than Labour’s Northumberland Rail Line and a couple of picture halls for 10 years in office?

This Council, although regularly overspending on social care ever since they decided to break the deal between local NHS providers and the Council have taken up their top members' time with additional ‘secret cabinet’ meetings in order to twist the news towards themselves and avoid criticism at as many turns as possible.

As the next County election looms they penny seems to have dropped that they need to get out and about dealing with the problems of their constituents and not sit at meetings attempting to control an agenda they are losing due to the way their own party set up mayoralities with strategy having been ripped from them and given to regional mayors so that Councils can concentrate on delivering services, an area Northumberland Conservatives are unfamiliar with.

With so many farmers sitting as Councillors for the Tory Party we often hear about their perceived dilemma with inheritance tax which they get a decade to resolve if and when it happens whilst decreed by Tory Councillors residents must place their inheritance in the hands of NCC’s social services within six weeks of family members needing to enter care and are the Tories bothered? Not at all.

That said the Independents are now complaining that questions they submit to be answered at public question time are now being censored by officers!

Is that not slightly more professional than being censored by Councillors from the leading party who then substitute them with questions from their own party members to nullify and twist any story towards their advantage.

Politics has taken some nasty turns over the last decade but none so much as is now being exposed across Northumberland.

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/councils-new-rules-for-questions-at-meetings-branded-orwellian-by-furious-northumberland-councillor-9048448

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/26536921.northumberland-county-council-predicts-7-9m-budget/

Amble by-election REFORM & RESTORE the ‘just vote for us without thinking’ parties have NOTHING to tell Ambles voters?

 

One of Northumberland’s longest running and probably the most read local newsheet in the county, the Ambler, has published the election addresses for the forthcoming by-election in the Town.

The election has been called due to the passing of the last sitting Councillor Arty Hume.

Amble, known universally as the ‘friendly port’ has four named candidates standing at this by-election with two of them, Labour’s Amy Spriggs and the Conservative Candidate Jenny Richards. Both having issued out excellent appraisals of themselves and the policies their separate parties endorse to help Amble’s residents understand the scope of both parties way’s forward.

The other two candidates from both REFORM and RESTORE haven’t bothered to issue a jot to the Ambler for publication with local wit’s on social media asking what if any policies they have apart from wrecking free access to the NHS for Amble’s residents, harvesting £millions from crypto billionaires and marching on south coast towns to show how racists must publicly react.

Read how little the ultra right wing parties have to offer Amble folk via the link below:

https://www.theambler.co.uk/2026/09/14/candidates-for-ambles-county-council-by-election/

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.