Northumbrians Demand Reform!

 

Strong Minded Parish Councillors

Cut the allegedly corrupt antediluvian Tories Spin Dead!

The news that in the safe Conservative County Council seat of Wooler its prime Parish Council are exasperated with having to deal with the Tory led County Council and its inability and unwillingness to deliver basic essential road safety projects which have sat festering in the Councils Local Transport Plan or others from its seeping and leaking Infrastructure plan rotting for eons. These plans were reset in May 2018 by the Tories and refreshed during December 2019 and a desktop review was reported in the trade press in October 2020 in preparation for a visit from a high level Government planning inspector.

Wooler isn’t the only Parish Council to find that the Tory Administration sat at County Hall has lost the will to deliver on its own simple Unitary Council plans in favour of centering activity and preserving in aspic at whatever cost to the public purse Castle Morpeth Borough Council and damn the rest.

Huge sums of money have been spent on the revitalisation of County Hall, a building erected to house almost three times the staff than currently employed by the Council. Sitting in an area that is of no economic benefit to the Town of Morpeth as it is positioned well away from the Town and too far for workers to shop and browse at the goods on offer in their lunchtime. Leaving Parish Councillors who have Towns they cherish out in the cold as with the disappearance of cash to Castle Morpeth their planned projects await completion. 

Projects such as Pipers Place in West Bedlington Parish, where in the auditors report on ARCH cash had been set aside for its completion. The current administration poisoned ARCH and at huge cost to the public purse launched Advance Northumberland, (now subject to intense multi agency investigation) but the real question is where has the money gone to develop this seriously ugly empty site?

Continuing on behalf of West Bedlington Parish Councillors their County Councillors recently told them and it was run out in the press that they would be getting a new Leisure Centre developed on the Pipers Place site and that cash had been set aside by the Administration to furnish their request. In links below to the recently reviewed planning documents you will see under the infrastructure delivery plan pages 63-67 that the Council have no intention of developing a Leisure facility in Bedlington their developing a new one in Morpeth instead and an FOI from the Councils shows they haven’t set any funds aside for its delivery in West Bedlington either.

Similar exasperations from Parish Councils are to be found all over the County through the shifty way they deal with spin and finance that is interfered with by elected members which damages plans that have been agreed, made and promised for years. But the most blatant actions which all Parish Councils should measure their Unitary Council on is the experience of the hatred of working class communities by the Tories particularly Ashington, where the current administration have left a Town Centre site locally known as the ‘Whole’ in a desperate state. Ashington parish Councillors and the Local MP, Ian Lavery have tried and keep trying to get the Tories at County Hall to listen to their case but to no avail.

Blyth Town Council have found similar problems with a highway resurfacing project on one of Blyth’s few cross town roads, Malvins Road, has been stopped from completion by the Tories for the last two years. 

County Council Tory spin stories about projects to help the Town of Blyth with multi-million projects released to the press on a regular and ongoing basis whilst on the sly they have removed signage from major roads and bypass roads and even roads in the Town telling people how to get to Blyth Town Centre in order that shoppers go elsewhere and as the Town Centre deteriorates further, lowering people's expectations any small thing may be seen as a benefit (real nasty party antics). This fact of no signage was even brought up by the Northern Football Leagues, They found in their investigations that Blyth the largest Town in the County is no longer a destination when signage is replaced by the Highways Authorities. Fair treatment of place it seems is not a priority for Northumberland Conservatives as in the neighbouring Parish of Cramlington new signs directing the 11 Million people who visit each year to its shopping mall have been going up all over the County and in surrounding Boroughs and A class roads.

 

NOTES:

 

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Highways/Transport-policy/Transport-plan.aspx

 

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Planning/Reports.aspx