First real test of Northumberland's 'go it alone' declaration as Newcastle gets the North of Tyne 'devolution' jobs?

  

The unbelievable arrogance of Northumberland County Council's Conservative administration in Leader of Council Councillor Glenn Sanderson's  statement declaring his group only want 'normal relations' with the other members of the North of Tyne combined authority has backfired badly as the partners who have chosen to support the regional mayor in his endeavours to improve the regions lot, Jamie Driscoll has hooked in 9000 jobs to be centred in Central Newcastle.

Many of these devolved jobs from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs aren't moving very far but the centralisation of process onto a single site is a coup for the North of Tyne and a snub to its neighbours who like Councillor Sanderson didn't want to work with an elected Mayor and it's the Borough of Sunderland which loses out as a number of the jobs are currently based in the Town of Washington.

The new site is situated in the Pilgrims quarter of Newcastle and will be covered by a clean air zone which in reality requires workers to arrive by public transport as car parking in the city of Newcastle is already at a premium. And that's where if Councillor Sanderson had his head screwed on the right way he could have 'used that loaf' to entice the HMRC guru's to consider a site in Northumberland well serviced by train and bus from the Newcastle-North Tyneside conurbation such as Cramlington, Hexham or attempt to alleviate some of the Council's deprivation by bringing some excellent clean jobs to Blyth or Ashington.

It was our murky hope that Boris Johnson's most recent visit to Kitty Brewster this week was to resolve the issues a local horse charity has which may slow the reopening of the AB&T Northumberland line.  A reopening which should have been the catalyst for the Conservatives to work with the mayor to secure a cleaner and wealthier future for its least well off areas with shrinking GDP's massively affected by Brexit which if still controlled by District Council's would have attracted large sums of EU regeneration funding to help their dire situations.

Rapidly reconsider what 'normal' is Councillor Sanderson and get stuck in to help those residents in need of a supportive team to run their Council.