Council Housing Chaos across Northumberland.

 

Tory Leadership and matey politicians under massive pressure, ‘the camel's back is now fractured’.

Being the second most wanted service from your local council nationally after streetcare 4uservices, council and social housing is seen as a prime need, requiring delivery at a high level in both quantity and quality.

Northumberland county council  have for the last eight years been put under pressure from Labour, Libdem and Independent councillors about their complete lack of interest in providing safe and secure social/council homes for those in need. 

Instead they have stuck with the expectations of their builder development ‘friends’ constructing and sometimes offering to sell affordable homes and not having NCC planners write them off for affordability reasons.

Northumberland’s problems don’t just stop there when it comes to getting affordable homes delivered as average salaries across the county sit at £9,000 per annum below  the rest of the north-east region* (plumlot).

The worst element of this most recent report by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) who is an independent non-departmental public body in England responsible for regulating registered providers of social housing, including local authorities and housing associations. RSH ensures landlords provide safe, quality homes, sets economic and consumer standards, and has powers to inspect, intervene, and fine providers that fail to meet these requirements. RSH story sits within the press response issued from the cellars of the Council’s leadership where its communication gnomes sit under dull short wick tilly lamps.. 

The council's leader has indicated within his press report that his council is spending huge sums of money repairing the Council owned estate. His comments over the last eight years show clearly that he hasn’t noticed that the Council’s housing revenue and borrowing requirements for housing sit in ring fenced housing accounts. In reality the money is in the ownership of the Council’s tenants, not the political heads of the minority administration run by farmers, solicitors and traders who have little interest in aiding people who are asking for help with their housing needs.

In an attempt to cover over the fact that Northumberland Conservatives are very anti-council homes they took a decision to write 7,000 people from their housing list hoping no one will notice they may have needs that the Council is unable to meet, hence the visit from RSH.

Being a Council  who holds a zero interest in housing people they look down upon, they appear to be joined by friends from REFORM most of whom are ex conservatives, landlords, or local businessmen they appear to hold sympathies even further to the right than the local Conservatives a stance that will be as much use to tenants as a poke in the eye.

Northumberland hasn't built enough Council housing since 2017 following four years of a Labour administration who developed 400 new homes during their short time in office. 

With housing sales still at a peak and the Council with 460 unrepaired homes with no income from rents coming in, the residents of the County have been placed in an insidious disgraceful position which has put the Council and its needy residents in turmoil. Something needs to happen as a matter of urgency.

This chaos on top of the Max Caller report where the council picked up its ‘dysfunctional culture’ label and hasn’t shook it off is very damaging to the council's reputation with not only 7,000 written off families seeking the end of this desert of hope called Northumberland, many from all political persuasions who know how needy people require help are raising their voices to seek the end of this ‘dodgy’ administration.

NOTES:

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/social-housing-regulator-finds-serious-failings-at-northumberland-county-council-5524383?fbclid=IwY2xjawP5tkxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEem6NLowU-za3oLah8S-nF3i_PploiNtCC2pWZEaGlgvG1zGMD1kXp3Jnom_8_aem_fhcIDaF80z2O7ycZ-MeKcA

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cost-of-living-crisis-labour-keir-starmer-b2918064.html?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqDggAKgYICjDN2nswv7cJMNWu8AI&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=g&gaa_n=AWEtsqe13DhbkJ8MlVJfRWwjvRYWaAKvvQkGuCjJ006D1eErThjkGoBNPCRJ-7JmY-uSruPfy72NlQdbi1_v&gaa_ts=698ce295&gaa_sig=5r8gl6GS9RGYcTT4oTz8PfIecCPAA_Q0PlZKLmnpVzGexZ9cEX2F9hq1ZwHehxjw88TjH-FLX8pqJGSO7CBkeA%3D%3D

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

https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Northumberland-salary-and-unemployment.html

The SAPS might have it?

The problems and costs encountered by the bankrupt Birmingham City Council has caused them to act in hindsight and cancel the reintroduction of its yet to emerge as a viable alternative to off the shelf packages for IT services.

Birmingham fell into the trap of trying a one size fits all system via ORACLE, the costs spiralled following a damaging equal value claim by workers that dragged into the position it finds itself in today.

The TIMES reports, Birmingham City Council has spent more than £2.5m hiring staff to manually fix errors caused by a failed Oracle accounting system, with nearly 100,000 hours logged since 2023. The IT rollout, launched in 2022, spiralled from a £19m upgrade to an estimated £170m including ongoing costs. 

Financial data became unreliable, suppliers went unpaid, and more than £30m in council tax and business rates were written off. Auditors blamed excessive system customisation and weak oversight, calling the failure unprecedented. 

The problems compounded existing pressures from equal pay liabilities and followed a bin strike that highlighted wider operational strain. The council has delayed relaunching the Oracle system until later in 2026.

Other Councils including the reported by experts as being completely  dysfunctional, Northumberland County Council, who in layman's parlance ‘doesn’t know its arse from its elbow’ appears to be locked into Oracle Cloud to manage its business suite and public face whilst developing a stare into the future with Oracle's fusion cloud and AI system.

Northumberland’s departmental heads may have chosen a better bypass route to satisfy its democratically elected one party cabinet members than Birmingham, as they have chosen their own systems to run alongside the Council’s one party cabinet system’s wish to develop business cases for everything and nothing with costs running through the roof for that development and no system to curb borrowing at very high rates when compared to clear thinking financially aligned councils who make decisions to support localism over business.

Let's take a simple example. The social services department at Northumberland County Council chose Liquidamber via a business case to its one party cabinet to run its systems as a stand alone system. To get information required by a wider council departmental structure links with other systems were developed and that integration has been blamed internally (according to workers in that field) for the ever present annual hard to locate overspends being made by social services. 

With Northumberland never undertaking scrutiny that includes information required to scope in change, mainly sticking with Post Decision scrutiny instead of the widely accepted in Local Government Pre-Decision making scrutiny which would define local people's needs for any decision before its taken, which the majority of high performing Councils rely upon, such as league tables, national and local performance data leaves Councillors outside the cabinet, local businesses, families and other Council departments struggling to understand why their Council rarely improves.

On the other hand smaller Councils using SAP systems seem to be able to share information between departments much more easily than giant monoliths like Birmingham and Northumberland.

SAP (Systems, Applications, & Products in Data Processing) computer systems are the world's leading, highly configurable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, integrating business functions like finance, HR, supply chain, and manufacturing into a single, real-time data platform. Essential for Councillors who need to share what's happening on the ground with their electorate.

It's great to go modern sometimes but in the eyes of people who want to know what their Council is doing for them, the SAPS have it.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/opinion_piece/

Turning the clock back is causing great fear for Northumberland’s Conservatives?

 

Northumberland County Council, well known as Britain's most dysfunctional council is now sitting at the crossroads sung about in in Robert Johnson’s song. 

They have to make a decision in the next few days whether to embrace the devil or sell their soul to learn how to play politics nicely.

That soul searching and the need for change to attempt to deliver what residents of the County would like has been largely ignored with less than ever cross party working taking place, glamour projects are still being financed beyond the norm and ‘mateism’ is growing out of control with huge swathes of public unrest being ignored to satisfy Councillors from the party which makes every spend decision in secret.

The Council has become a one party state over the last eight years which would make Putin proud. It used officers based in London and possibly abroad to run their business. This has led to borrowing levels so high through strategic decisions being taken before prudent scrutiny takes place that scrutiny of that decision making, a legal requirement of a council is skirted over in case questions slip into the public domain that may make the geisha face of the Council leader gain lines and wrinkles that require further treatment if real answers are sought.

The sad outcome for residents and ratepayers is that support for the few has overtaken the needs of the many.

Let's take a tiny little look at what's going on: In Amble a great furore has begun with a known Conservative sponsor’s company getting planning permission and backing from its town council on the back of a plan to develop 40 single person supported units on a greenfield site of local interest. Now the developers have come back to break the promise to the people and have the single person units expunged from their plans. 

Another glamour project is being run to suit the finance Councillor whose former life was filled with financial failures of companies he was involved with and feels he needs a cycle route between his home and the town he regularly shops in. A cycle route you may ask? Not a bad idea? Possibly! But this cycle route, part of a £14m spend, will include a set of traffic lights on Dilston Bridge, one of Hexham’s busiest roads, to facilitate cyclists crossing.

Neither project has the love of local people or their needs sated by the Council’s decision making process.

What appears to have happened is that over the last eight years of secret this and secret that the Council has drifted away from managing to assist its residents into a completely strategic authority spending on matters they have no Government clearance to do. The A1 extension into dual carriageway is a prime example, £millions have been spent on land acquisitions and the Council’s own Tory Government hadn’t got the project on its horizon let alone giving permission for such a huge overspend of public cash with no end result.

We also find without much digging that decisions on the future of its largest Town which is being run down to favour a town which votes Tory, decisions are being made by a Councillor from Morpeth and a party sponsor from the North of the Council. It could only happen in Northumberland.

To try to resolve some of this strategic overspending nonsense, Labour in Government have made a unique offer to the County, that if they can remember the great work done by the former district councils which were closed to open this huge monolith of a single all purpose unitary council and alter the Council’s thought processes then they can enjoy a massive increase in their spending power to get on the ground service improvements and leave strategic decision making to the Mayor for the region and her combined authority colleagues (which includes Northumberland) as the public are not fond of the bottom up service cuts being run out in favour of strategic planning costing millions which rarely makes any real progress at all.

Other combined authority members have changed and are now planning to reap the rewards of those changes. Northumberland may have discussed them in secret but haven’t altered their medium term financial plan to suit the offer on the table.

That offer is manna from heaven for struggling unitary councils. Most of them in the North-east region have grasped the nettle and are changing rapidly, with on the ground improvements in Parks, Grounds Maintenance, Street Cleansing, Refuse and Recycling, Potholes and Highways repairs along with Social/ Council Housing repairs and renewals. It's the real future for local government, it's what the people want and need from their Council Tax payments and those Glamour Projects which has led to a borrowing requirement paying back fortunes in revenue cash to cover interest payments rolling over and over during the Tories in Government's austerity years having to cease.

Don’t stand out from the crowd Northumberland Conservatives, follow it, get the work pushed by Max Caller begun as a Council and improve the lot for all who live, dwell and work in what was and still could be a great County sitting within a great North-east

Robert Johnson- Crossroad

https://northumberland.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s11106/02.2%20NCC%20Governance%20Review%20finalwatermarkcopy.pdf

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/calls-for-end-to-toxicity-after-northumberland-councillor-reduced-to-tears-during-meeting-3790169

https://www.theambler.co.uk/2026/01/27/shock-as-duke-axes-supported-housing-in-amble/

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1857053698282208

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/speed-limit-reduced-northumberland-main-175124778.html

Reform attacks those in greatest need and agree 400 workers should be written off.

 

Northumberland County Council Wednesday January 14th 2026 a discussion on the Council’s scheme to help people in need not be exposed to bailiffs and thrown out of their homes was attacked by Northumberland anti-working class Reform members.

Labour Councillors jumped in to protect the scheme with Pegswood Councillor Vicky Oakley condemning reforms attacks leading to social media support pouring in for her and the Labour Group led by Councillor Scott Dickinson’s stand against the ultra-rightists.

Reform Northumberland, who are awaiting the switch to be turned on by their national leaders to take in local Conservatives in a similar fashion to Reform Uk Ltd who have been accepting defectors and dross from Conservative Parties nationally have had a bit of a bad week, with You Gov poll rates dropping like a stone. This was followed up by Blyth’s ex-UKIP reformist County Councillor Mr Elliott attempted to call a meeting to propose the destruction of Newsham village hall (the piv.). When as a county councillor he MUST realise from his counterparts, mates and colleagues in power that they are so short of funds through overspends and mismanagement that 400 workers are to be paid off before May 2026 to slash costs.

The chaotic Tories who rule in Northumberland as a  minority administration and pay back £72,000 in debt repayments daily have also had a strange time with their Leader, Councillor Glenn Sanderson having another attempt at his well documented many promises of carving up his top heavy management. 

Another failure looks on the cards as his plan, which in the past has only cut down the number of contractors and experts earning more than £100,000 now according to commentators on social media has created a new role for his Chief Executive to ensure she is available in the office at all times by taking most of her work and loading it onto others.

The Council, who are being criticized by everyone working in the social housing sector for manipulating its housing register, are sitting with more than 430 empty homes awaiting repair and being so welded in tune with reforms attitude against those in need do not have the will to improve the situation and get those empty homes let.

The Labour Government has given Northumberland County Council a great opportunity to grow its spending power hugely as long as they spend the gifted increase on Street Cleansing, Grounds Maintenance and Highways Repair. They are hellbent on spending all extra cash on glamour projects in the Countryside which in the cold light of day will lead to more than half the population of the County who live in 3% of its land mass feeling denuded of help yet again. With people having to solely rely on Ed Miliband increasing jobs across south east Northumberland through his growth schemes for renewable energy.

Notes 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-council-wage-savings-25066598

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/people/every-member-of-staff-at-northumberland-county-council-offered-voluntary-redundancy-3845647

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-10-28/councils-new-boss-set-to-take-home-salary-of-nearly-200000

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-67573733

https://northumberland.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s19473/09%20Pay%20Policy%20statement%2024-25.pdf

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25734896.thousands-waiting-northumberland-housing-register/

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/northumberland-council-leader-refuses-to-apologise-for-level-of-debt-after-nigel-farage-criticism/ar-AA1I50M3

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/business/economy/northumberland-councillors-clash-over-looming-council-tax-rises-ahead-of-next-years-budget/

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-continue-to-slide-in-polls-as-they-hit-nine-month-low-402198/

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