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/

Reform’s Jenrick migrant stopping plan will lead to ‘conscription’ of the white poor?

 

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick’s plan to stop employers offering jobs to migrant workers by raising tax and national insurance payments on the migrant workforce.

This may sound wonderful to those who support the policies Reform are proposing to introduce to stop migration, but this radical plan may lead to enforced conscription into low paid employment for people living in deprived areas. When coupled with the known and publicized Reform policy ideas, the removal of the minimum wage, stopping welfare benefits and privatising the NHS will cause great angst among those employers who find the ability to attract British workers difficult will certainly put pressure on Reform Councillors and MP’s to ensure jobs are filled.

The Tory transferees into Reform are well tarnished with the ‘Victorian Values’ of their former political party when coupled with the removal of the minimum wage and pricing migrant workers out of employment will certainly lead to the middle class being able to employ ‘workers in service’at their homes without paying them enough to live on independently having to rely on their new retro employers for everything and all of the downsides Charles Dickens clarified completely in his writings.

It's a fact that  Reform UK voters are disproportionately concentrated in areas facing high levels of deprivation, economic inactivity, and poor health. The party has successfully built a voter coalition that draws heavily from struggling workers and economically challenged, peripheral coastal and post-industrial towns.

Their latest plans bursting from ex-Tory boy Robert Jenrick's lips will lock that poverty into those areas like Blyth in Northumberland for generations to come and will do nothing to support high streets, provincial commerce and foreign investors expecting that yet another Government will set the Marmot review into the annals of history losing the gains Labour has been introducing quietly over the last two years.

The winners of the Jenrick plan will be care home owners, warehouse conglomerates and middle class householders who yearn back to owning their own workforce who will be forced to fawn to their desires.

Notes

https://share.google/kllOfcDx0FcdP9swu

https://youtu.be/r1fsuZyNpZc?si=BFX3g5jLgF2dN-uS

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/06/16/reform-wants-to-release-a-racist-wrecking-ball-on-the-uk-economy/

https://youtu.be/r1fsuZyNpZc?si=BFX3g5jLgF2dN-uS

Northumberland’s secret dysfunctional cabinet caught out through closing their books to Government scrutiny

 

Car

Northumberland County Council cabinet member for education Cllr. Guy Renner Thompson has been to the press and made statements about the County Council’s shortfall in funding to build a new high school in Berwick.

In deciding to build this new school the Northumberland conservative council have decided to put 142 jobs on the line with parents and residents of Wooler and Berwick accusing the Council of not having a proper plan in place. With the huge cost of school transport spiralling even more noticeable since Trump began his war against Iran, closing schools many miles away from their proposed alternative will be a millstone around the necks of the County Council for decades to come.

The job hasn’t begun, yet the costs have been bloated much higher than inflation for a project that was published last year at running out at £50m the county's cabinet member has stated. It now has risen by 22% to £64m. In one financial year.

The rise in costs are enormous, having jumped from £22M from when the Tories were going to deliver this project in 2022 up to almost three times that cost.

The department of education who didn’t fund this new build from its inception planning stage during 2017 when the Tories took office at County  Hall and a long standing Tory Government sat in Westminster are still now dubious about the council cabinet member for education's verbal public costs.

His costs have been called out by the Labour MP for Berwick for clarity and he has asked that County Hall opens its books to Government scrutiny to ensure that the true costs are brought out.

With Government and Local Government civil servants appearing not to be convinced that Northumberland Conservatives have improved on their secrecy one jot since the Max Caller Report. It was published in June 2022 and was a damning governance review that found the authority to be "dysfunctional," "distracted," and paralyzed by internal battles between political leadership and senior management labelling the ruling Councillors ‘bullies’.

That dysfunctionality still exists as the Council have failed to deliver best value for the last nine years and are ‘famous’ in local government circles for not publishing their Key Performance Indicators and where they sit in national league tables to let its Council Taxpayers scrutinise what they pay heavily for.

How can a constantly failing Council expect to be believed when they have not bothered to deliver what people really want in order to prioritise ‘glamour projects’ that will mean very little in a few years time.

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/education/councillor-frustrated-with-government-over-funding-for-new-berwick-high-school-8664320

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62z7j830l4o#:~:text=After%20a%20consultation%2C%20Northumberland%20County,high%20school%20in%20the%20town.

https://etheses.durham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7227/

Dysfunctional Northumberland Tories start a new scrutiny panel.

New raging ‘nasty party’ has decided to ignore it to score soft political points?

Northumberland’s ‘raging nasties' have begun a campaign to expose all owners of houses of multiple occupancy across Blyth and Wansbeck in what we believe is in order to further expand ‘Fargage’s rage campaigns’ further North than Watford Gap and pressurise Landlords who have invested in increasing much needed housing numbers. As its County Council who are responsible for housing sits back and dine on their narrowing of opportunity for the young and those in need.

This is a follow-up to a Freedom of Information request from Natalie Rolls a leading member of Northumberland Reform UK Branch and an active County Councillor seeking information about homes now owned, many of them Homes of Multiple Occupancy, by the Mears Group who are a giant landlord and manage almost half a million homes and employ 5000 staff .

For readers unfamiliar with Mears it is a company which expanded rapidly during the last Tory Government to handle housing for migrant workers and asylum seekers. Ms Rolls last FOI request didn’t give the answers to expand the anti-migrant feeling into Northumberland so another method is being tried.

From their seat of power on Blyth Town Council, one of the nation's largest parish Councils they are driving up local feelings against homes of multiple occupancy.

Their new demands surround article 4 of the 2022 planning acts.

Article 4 Directions are a legal planning tool local authorities use to withdraw standard "permitted development" rights. When an Article 4 is in effect, building works or changes of use that usually wouldn't need permission now require a formal planning application to be submitted. 

Their demands are that the Council forces all smaller HMO’s to be registered and that data be open to all.

If the County Council cedes to that request Ms Rolls original request via ‘what do they know’ would be granted. We expect large landlords would take legal action against the County Council as they have a right to do under current planning law on protected data.

But we have said many times on this blog THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE PROLIFERATION OF HOMES OF MULTIPLE OCCUPANCY IS TO BUILD MORE COUNCIL HOUSES,

The target for the refresh of Northumberland Council housing stock was set from May 2013 to May 2017 at 100 per annum under the chairmanship of Councillor Scott Dickinson MBE. Labour achieved the target therefore the Council is now 900 new homes behind target as the since Conservative held council hasn’t bothered to even attempt to develop a decent number of homes.

The housing regulator The Regulator of Social Housing handed Northumberland County Council a C4 grade (the lowest possible) following a damning inspection. The review found "very serious failings,"  The Council after dragging its heels has set up a scrutiny panel to investigate the report and make some suggestions, even after a number of long serving councillors were critical of this not being a ‘working group’ with teeth to drive forward policy change.

The ever optimistic Councillor Scott Dickinson MBE leader of Northumberland Labour Group said : “As we begin to see the work programme of the Housing Scrutiny Committee take shape, I'm incredibly proud of the work Northumberland Labour put in to secure these amendments during the Council budget process”.

“These weren't just proposals on paper; they were practical measures designed to tackle issues such as damp, mould, repairs, housing standards and need, helping to improve the lives of tenants and families across Northumberland”.

“Now the real work begins. It is vital that focused action is taken on these priorities and that robust monitoring ensures the amendments we secured are delivered in full. Residents deserve safe, warm and well-maintained homes, and we will continue to hold the Council to account to make sure these commitments lead to real improvements for tenants across the county especially when we get things right and get back on track to develop a new range of much needed Council Housing stock and try to get the target set by Labour of 100 new homes per year back on track to help ever more County families in housing need”.

Unfortunately the report from the first meeting of the scrutiny panel was dire with the completely out of touch Conservative Cabinet member for housing, Colin Horncastle displaying how little he understands the needs and wants of tenants, he said:” said the council was "not happy" with the result of the February report that identified "very serious failings" at the local authority.

They were very serious failings Councillor Horncastle and you should have been supporting the correction of those failings and not protecting your own failing to understand your own subject from criticism.

His Council has gone from being judged dysfunctional, then having a housing crisis in the middle of a bullying crisis and a lack of loyalty towards residents crisis illustrated clearly through its latest shocking policy of leaving grass uncut, which shows Northumberland under the Tories is not only failing its tenants its taxpayers who aren't tenants are suffering as well. If you look around at the workings of its equality working group and its displays of toying with their subject you may see where this scrutiny panel may be heading.

With the scrutiny meeting chaired by Reform Councillor Natalie Rolls it seems to onlookers that the information she sought on HMO’s last year and could lead to social problems and rage events may be made available as the County Council often fawns to its chairs even though the data behind it is now deemed private and not to be shared.

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/county-council-sets-up-new-housing-scrutiny-committee-in-response-to-c4-grading-96948

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

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/regulator-of-social-housing-finds-very-serious-failings-at-northumberland-county-council

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-council-not-happy-34068553?fbclid=IwY2xjawSQAiZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeO6rJjCK6bNc5IM3Srnt-9fkifC-Kcex3cAvm1JY26LQC_riN24wyuWKoAXY_aem_xA2Ag6z84ygWjsPqQLDDyQ#ICID=Android_ChronicleNewsApp_AppShare