NO referendum? Only pre-fixed question consultation on regional mayoralty?

 

Northumberland and the rest of the region know that levelling up has failed us, so the question is how crap will a new combined authority be and will your street still be covered in weeds, litter and dog muck when the cash is slipped into investors pockets?

The complete and utter lack of trust in Northumberland County Council’s current administration due to the now proven liars, cheats and bullies at the helm. An administration who currently wants to eliminate Council jobs and remove dignity from workers and families who have helped communities across the County for decades has brought a fear and toxicity to any cries for a mayoralty.

The fear is that any mayoralty in the north east will strip out further cash  from Councils and put up the nations highest council tax in its lowest wage region and just like Gateshead who’s leader Martin Gannon is extremely sceptical that any benefit will arrive for the residents of Gateshead from this Tory led devolution deal, Northumbrians are fearful that they will once again become the whipping boys and girls of London's ruling Normans, oh sorry Tories!

In Northumberland the current Government is represented by the worst kind of Tory Councillors who keep everything secret until it's too late to criticise, taking the Council’s poor response and the Tory Government’s lack of funding towards Britishvolt and 8000 jobs for the region as an example along with the decisions not to dual the A1 great north back lane or the A69 accident alley through the County, fully complemented by a giant black hole in the funding available to reopen the former Ashington, Blyth and Tyne line across the South East of the County where more than half its population live and the Tories decision to centre their borrowing requirements on cycle lanes in the wild west which will force even more jobs to be removed from the workforce, Northumbrians have the right to believe this is not for them.

Northumberland’s Government puppets have been forced in recent weeks to possibly and note the word possibly please, to begin to consult on this huge, no that words not big enough, massive change which is similar to large regional failings from the past which ran for a short time before being dissolved such as Tyne and Wear County Council, Cleveland County Council and the biggest of them all Strathclyde all of which failed as communities felt distant from democracy and decision making. A mayor isn’t going to improve that at all and the Council member for Berwick, the northmost outpost of England Councillor Georgina Hill was right to press ‘glamorous Glen Sanderson’, Northumberland’s Tory leader who its said has a selection of sports jackets of ‘sun god’ proportions on the matter at last week's full Council meeting, held in the crystal palace of County Hall in Morpeth where fortunes have been spent to emulate Versailles, does Versailles flood when it rains and have a sump hole outside its front door? You may ask. But it is almost empty and devoid of life so similarities have been part of the design and alter multi million pound facelift.

County Durham have also been forced into this tryst with a lack of love for the Tories latest project being expressed by its LibDem Leader in the often heard in the past ‘their tekin the breed from wor mooths’ Durham war cry followed by her Geta Garbo stance of ‘Durham I want to be alone’. Sceptical, well of course she is!

With a nation reeling from crisis to crisis and local volunteers coupled with working family donors being the saviours of society proving to anyone suffering at the hands of the hapless Tories that small and local is best then this is the wrong time to create something that people don’t really desire but it's probably time to ask how do we form smaller Councils nationally, fund them correctly to delver what people want and keep our areas trim clean and communities vibrant? then go back to the future and leave regional development to a series of agencies which can deliver on the big stuff and not create divisions between brothers and sisters in arms.

Regionally this mayoralty isn’t about having a replacement development agency to attract jobs, it's about creating a dauphin of regal proportions so that Westminster Tories can close the door on the North-east of England's unfair land forever.

 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/north-east-devolution-deal-referendum-26018145?int_source=mantis_rec_rhc&int_medium=web&int_campaign=more_like_this_rhc

 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/north-east-forced-devolution-deal-25894558

 

Northumberland Council Leader Glen Sanderson?

 

Has he had surgery to have an articulated arm fitted to pat himself on the back?

Sometimes the local press can be badly hoodwinked by political press officers offering up page filling stories but the fairy tale linked below is beyond comparison and shows how spin can be used by politicians to mask the truth.

 The headline spun out by the Conservative press office in the name of Councillor Glen Sanderson, Northumberland County Council is 'indescribably better' after 'dark days,' claims leader, is almost as far from reality as the truth is from Boris Johnson on parties at No.10.

 Prior to releasing this ‘bag’ he had circulated the press with news that he was planning to pay off hundreds of workers severing their employment in one the most crisis ridden periods for working families over the last 90yrs. Followed by a cover story, examining his lack of decision making skills when he couldn’t make his mind up to decide if  he was forcing Council tax up by its maximum or not.

 He later announced that he wants to pay £9m to consultants in order to slash and burn his Council’s budget by £17m? Surely anyone with half a brain could decide that by not wasting £9m bringing in ‘consultants’ the council could lower its cuts needs down to £8m or did Councillor Sanderson drop off sums at school before his prime ministers expected age requirement.

 Next, The secret team he calls his ‘Cabinet’, then suddenly decided to force the charitable arm of the Council, Active Northumberland into the world of open competition for leisure services and insisting they tender for their work. This act is Thatcheringly forcing Leisure Services into privatisation and the open market culture which proved under the last Labour administration at County Hall was too expensive, bleeding the Council budgets severely, hence the transfer of the service to the arm's length charity, formed to help affordability for service users. So does the Council Leader think the sun will be shining on employees within his leisure sector or is it more dark days for them?

 
We could go on and on illustrating how the sun is actually setting on his administration, but we have decided to see what his ‘secret budget’ throws up at the Council meeting this month and see how many Northumberland families will be plunged into real-life darkness by a an allegedly deluded Farmer who certainly rules the Council in his own image.

 

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/northumberland-county-council-is-indescribably-better-after-dark-days-claims-leader-4001916

 

Exposed for cutting the cloth too tight!

 

Local relics damaged by right wing profiteers.

 Northumberland County Council, 

 A Facebook Group Site with 3000 members exposed problems of starting a project without enough funding in place.

This week on the public interest site Seaton Valley Northumberland Past and Present  a contributor has told site members that whilst developing the reopening of the ‘Northumberland Line’ AKA Ashington, Blyth and Tyne line, that even after he had informed the County Council of the sites existence their contractors dug up a historical site of special interest without its value and history being logged for posterity.

On 28th May 2021 Northumberland County Council submitted a Transport and Works Act Order to the Department of Transport to gain official powers to reopen the rail line to passenger transport with only £34m of the £166m required to complete the tasks.

The GRIP [Governance for Railway Investment Projects] studies and archeology reports had been commissioned and paid for by the last Labour administration at County Hall to ensure that the type of problem exposed last week could be avoided.

The site of the destruction of our historical heritage was at Lysdon Farm near the village of New Hartley. The damage could have been avoided if better and more sympathetic management by the County Council had been paid for, but scathing cutbacks have been imposed onto the site in order to slash costs with the size of car parks and possibly the quality of rolling stock being reduced to benefit the shipwrecked County Council’s borrowing requirements.

Just an example of how badly the current administration at County Hall is fixed, the Leadership, Councillors Sanderson and Wearmouth want to pay off hundreds of staff, reduce services under the guise of ‘modernisation’ and bring in £9m’s worth of consultants to slash £17m from their overcommitted budget.

 Where do these Conservatives come from?

 https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/works-order-submitted-to-reopen-northumberland-railway-line-02-06-2021/

 

Morpeth mob, feasting on Northumberland's golden egg laying goose.

 

"Gaslighting Morpeth Tories won't accept that when people get in their cars to shop they don't follow tradition and will not put up with congestion through ignorance". "Killingworth and Kingston Parks takings will have shot up through this mess while our town dies off" 

This week, after the announcement that the Morpeth led Tory county council had bypassed Cramlington for any assisted Tory only funding from the leveling up fund and we read the remarks on roadworks from Councillor Mark Swinburn against his own Council of which he's a highly paid member, we thought we should take a codgerley bus trip from our park bench and take a look.

A short walk up from the village stop near Sainsburys brought us up to the absolute chaos at the west end of Cramlingtons wonderful shopping centre and leisure campus. We found a tail back of traffic trying to exit and enter the west area car parks of biblical proportions. The cacophony of car horns and irate screeching retail spenders was horrendous and for the first time we had to agree that a Tory Councillor, Mark Swinburn, had called it right and we, like Councillor Swinburn, believe the shambolic and self centred Morpeth mob planned this disruption to show the Cramlington Conservative faction that they must tow the line or else!

A wander around the centre illustrated how badly the monstrous exposure to the removal of easy access by car is. Most of us park bench codgers have been in awe of the success of Manor Walks and its retail park, a success that has disappeared over the last few weeks.

We adjourned to the pub and after filling our aging boots we, your codger team, began to copy the times reporters who had been in Blyth this week following the loss of British volt and just like those professional media degree experts, we couldn't find anyone who would admit to voting Conservative.

But, when it came to talking about the traffic problems caused by the County Council they opened up and one Cramlington Councillor, the business chairperson of the Council, Councillor Barry Flux was slated by all we spoke to and rumours of him fighting in Newcastle and his nastiness abound among Cramlingtons public. Getting back to the traffic problems was a little difficult and  the quotes were very negative with Mary saying "Killingworth and Kingston Parks takings will have shot up while our town dies off" with Robert telling us " those gaslighting Morpeth Tories won't accept that when people get in their car to go shopping they don't follow tradition and will not put up with congestion through ignorance".

*Our team editor can't correct the spelling particularly from young shoppers,  some of the anglo saxon script was unprintable so we dropped off the quotes list.

Although we should finish our tale with the fact that we piled on the bus back to our park bench and it stood in the traffic for over ten minutes leaving some of us stranded for an age as connections had been missed. 

 

Council to spend £9M on consultants to modernise services, After spending £7.8M on Councillor Allowances.

 Public demand to know what highly paid ‘secret cabinet’ members actually do?

Castle Morpeth shambles to be revisited.

Blog readers across the County of Northumberland will be well aware of the antics which broke Castle Morpeth Borough Council and led to the formation of a single unitary Council, a system detested by commentators and residents alike as it has destroyed local decision making to aid the needs of local areas something people enjoyed from 1974 to 2009.

Castle Morpeth Borough Council was led and run by the current and former leader of Northumberland Unitary County Council Glen Sanderson and his disgraced pal who wouldn't follow the rules of conduct set by the County Council,  Councillor Peter Jackson.

During their race to be top dogs in Castle Morpeth consultants, cuts and modernisation was the name of the game as this former Council was awash with Tories who expected everything to be spoon fed to them and their nappies changed on a regular and ongoing basis.

Research shows that Councils all around them, Tynedale, Wansbeck, Alnwick, Blyth Valley and even Berwick who had a very small budget indeed, modernised using working groups of Councillors who grafted and sweated cobs to save jobs and deliver top class class services for their residents and local businesses could rely on the Council's workforce spending regularly with them and continuity prevailed.

Castle Morpeth went down in history with a similar reputation as the Hesperus. Selling their home building at the Kylins and moving to Longhirst Hall so that their public couldn’t easily reach them. The practise run for the ‘secret council’

But consultants when brought in allows the ‘secret cabinet’ members to stay in bed late and get off to socialise early and when the consultants decide on the numbers game to pay off workers and staff to deliver the £17m cuts and their £9m costs, £26m in total, the Castle Morpeth Tories can deliver their often heard during the Borough Council days, gadgy cry of ‘its nowt to do with me, you need to ask the consultants’.

Over the last six years the Council has paid out of local taxes £7.8m on Councillor allowances, almost as much as the modernisation (slash and burn) consultants demand.

Newspaper articles show the last Labour Council drove forward with modernisation plans put together by hard working Cabinet members and Council Chairpersons and the outcome was hated by the Tories now in power as in order to fund the Tory Government Austerity cuts and save as many jobs as possible County Hall was to be sold and a modern cheap to run office block opened in the AB&T railhead Town of Ashington with office hubs in every market town across the County, to make it easy for people to make contact with their council the services it delivers and local democracy.

The Tories stopped that cash-saving project and spent (as said in top class football, an undisclosed amount) on facelifting the County Hall building that was designed for 10,000 staff when only 2,000 office based staff survived the change over to Unitary status of which most now work from home.

With the Leader of Council paid almost £42K a year to cover his part time job and his subordinated secret cabinet members £25K plus we at this blog can’t understand why consultants for a massively reduced workforce since the Tories took power in the County during 2017 are required at all when other Councils simply form their own ideas and run them past already paid for from taxes organisations such as the employment specialists the Association of North East Councils or the Local Government Association.

Notes: https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/Councillors-and-Democracy/NCC-Members-Expenses-Register-Report_31-03-22_2.pdf

Britishvolt The irony of EY being appointed as its administrator will not be lost on Northumberland’s radicalised Tories?

 

The Rudderless County Council urgently needs new Leadership and openness.

The failure of the Tories at all levels to back a massive job creating project in the River Blyth basin to build British Made batteries to power the UK’s road users in future is a tragedy beyond belief for the residents of South-East and Mid-Northumberland.

 Those residents who miss their absent loved ones dearly needed to dream of a secure long term jobs boost to assist their sons and daughters from remaining as the world's primarily engineering, health and construction homing pigeons, working around the globe and only flying home to recuperate or retire.

 The company Britishvolt, who arrived on the scene out of nowhere in 2020 immediately struck gold with Northumberland County Council’s then new leadership of Councillors Sanderson and Wearmouth needing to up their spin and try to show that the loss of a nationally renowned auditor, EY, for not finding fault with the council owned company ARCH, but they did with its Tory successor ADVANCE Northumberland; The loss of a Leader, Councillor Peter Jackson, for not following the rules of engagement, with allegations of uncontrolled bullying of staff rife in the public domain and the need to up their game to engage correctly with other bodies who could bring finance to their rapidly emptying table left the door open for Britishvolt to become part of their regular and ongoing spin doctoring driven by this then new leadership.

 The Council and its Company ADVANCE Northumberland steered resource after resource in the direction of Britishvolt selling them the site they are abandoning in Cambois Northumberland cheaply with a higher than sale buy back clause built in. Not good business practise when working with an unproven company without investors other than a County Council in place.

 The loss of this project was openly criticised this week by Wansbeck Labour MP Ian Lavery, whose seat includes the factory site, he accused ministers of failing to support Britishvolt with the investment needed, telling the world from outside Parliament that the Conservative Government had failed to put a single penny into Britishvolt after promising to finance it on a number of occasions. With the beleaguered Blyth Valley Tory MP Ian Levy who grasped this project as an opportunity to raise his standing in the Communities around the river Blyth basin stating he will lobby the Government on the issue. Ian Levy who was a vocal supporter of Liz Truss may not get the welcome he expects now that the Government is led by the man who came second to her, Prime Minister Sunak.

 But during this administration period we are certain that the mess and its links with the Tory led County Council and its company ADVANCE Northumberland will come out as EY, the named administrators, were silenced like the lambs last time they dealt with Northumberland’s Tories and forced to resign. 

 With the Tories running away from ADVANCE Northumberland like rats from a drain, leaving the chairmanship in the hands of the County LIB-DEM leader Jeff Reid who is accepting his fourty pieces of silver to become the companies paid but expendable Chairperson they must expect the news to be dire. It's time that the other radicalised Tory factions on the County Council came to the proper conclusion that the Morpeth Mob have failed them entirely and their prospects for survival in a role that pays’ moderately handsomely for a part-time position has been lessened considerably through their antics.

 We are sure that the burner phone conversations between the Tory factions will be red hot and that change may be made much sooner than we think.

 

Editorial Notes:

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/18064475.council-auditors-resign-row-report/

 

https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/governance-and-structure/controversial-county-leader-ousted-in-vote-of-no-confidence-03-09-2020/

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-64306261

 

First Tory Nationally to notice fleece holders and non-adoption of estates leaves residents ripped off.

 Councillor Daniel Carr of South Ward, Blyth must have had a serious bump on the head recently or so were led to believe.

On his community facebook page he has committed an illegal act according to the Conservative Party rule book and is questioning the national disgrace of both non-adoption by Councils of new housing estates and the disgrace of fleece hold charges born by those who live in apartment blocks on those estates.

He mustn’t be a reader of this blog or Northumberland Labour news sites as they and us here at Murky have been banging on about these disgraceful money rip-offs from developers and that Councils have not offered any form of rebate for those suffering from this money making disease since their inception.

Luckily the national Labour Party is hell bent on ending this tragedy for homeowners if they win the next election, which we believe they will.

Following contact with Northumberland Labour it appears they are going to speak with the facebook author, Councillor Carr and ask if he wishes to join them on the honest side of the Council chamber and develop his skills in helping out his residents by campaigning against his former colleagues inaction on this and many other matters now that he has found that he has a conscience. 

PS. were concerned that Northumberland Conservatives may have arranged for him to be admitted for brain surgery to help him recover his hatred of common decency and concern for his neighbours and communities.

 

Don’t let ‘devolution’ become regionalisation or Tory Northumberlandisation?

 

Major mindset change by the Northumberland public required before entering into the deal.

With the major players in Northumberland’s fractured Conservative Party trying to do over each other through an enforced Boundary Commission revamp of wards across Northumberland, one person has hardly been seen. The designer of the ‘Secret Council’ and closed Local Government for Northumberland, top regional Tory and increasingly accomplished sparpler of tornado like proportions, Councillor Richard Wearmouth is said to be beavering away on a plan to use the weaknesses of North-East attitudes towards life by designing platitudes to hook in the weak towards support for a Tory led regionalisation plan.

Devolution for the North, promised by the Tories, decried by Durham Labour, desperately wanted by the privateer Tories, needed by working families and Trade Unions as well as ‘New Newer Labour’, is becoming a battleground of good over evil.

With nothing going right for the media controlling Tories at all levels at the moment, with mortgages going through the roof, a recession, inflation and stagflation going to hit regions hard from this May. State pension increases being hoovered up by energy companies through the pathetically high, agreed by investing Tory MP’s, new price cap as well as food inflation running at 14.7% according to the grocer. North East regional Tories under Richard Wearmouths watch are going back to the exploitation of people's fear of the dark-side to ensure they capture any Devo-deal and regionalise where families will continue down ‘poverty lane’ in the North-East of England.

Practice sparple’s began a couple of years ago after Cramlington Tories were the first group (all but Councillor Barry Flux) to break ranks and refuse to follow his enforced line after the public outcry against the former Leader of Northumberland County Council and chief bully at the time Councillor Peter Jackson, the High Sparpler, ‘tornado dick’ Wearmouth shoved a close member to his rule into the new MP for Blyth Valley’s Office to control that new MP in case he got above his station. An unfortunate incident meant he had to change that watcher but he quickly replaced him with the man who was carrying the can for the Morpeth Mobs activities and rammed Councillor Oliver through Ian Levy’s door at high speed to let him know his place or was it to create the ‘Secret Councillor’ so people forgot the baggage he has carried since being exposed.

Sparpling moved on and Councillor Wearmouth has now begun to model the ‘Secret MP’ in Ian Levy and has begun by closing down his social media pages in a hope that the electorate forget the challenges he is facing from locals so that Councillor Wearmouth can configure a sparple to confuse the new electorate of the Towns of Blyth and Ashington by running a  Lavery v Levy challenge at the next election as he must have a new face in mind to run in the brand new Cramlington with Killingworth seat since losing control over Cramlington’s Conservative Councillors who sit outside his wish to harry to North-East into a confusing hatred of devo-deals so that the Labour vote stays at home.

But Northumberland Tories wish the devo deal to become the basis for regionalisation, which will mean that national pay bargaining is lost and the cheap labour (to be cheapened further) of the region will have to travel and become the construction site fodder of the future while the Tories sit back and harry their families at home.

So the moral of this story is?

Look back at what the Normans did to the North to keep locals under control, at what Thatcher did to emulate them and now what media control by a top class spinner is designed to do to you and your’s and don’t mix up that name Levy with Lavery.

* Sparple Verb SCATTER, DISPERSE, ROUT, DISSEMINATE

to deflect attention from a major issue by making much of something else.

e.g. Hiding a mountain behind a molehill.

As time goes by: Where does Glen Sanderson sit on his Government's promotion.

 Murkily looking through ancient press articles on a smart phone at our favourite park bench the codgers turned up a press release from 2012 posted by North Tyneside Labour Group.

It criticises Northumberland Conservatives who allegedly submitted an illegal motion to the then LibDem/Tory partnership council in Northumberland who along with North East Tory MP’s at the time supported the banning of renewable energy sources, in particular on-shore wind farms.

In their press release North Tyneside Labour Party are asking the Tory Mayor of North Tyneside to speak out against the motion as it affects thousands of jobs on the North Banks of the Tyne and River Blyth.

Councillor Sanderson who read out his motion in Northumberland County Hall fully supported the ban.

Time has gone by and we now want to know if Councillor Sanderson will come out with a message of praise for his Governments change of heart, with his party’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, last years third choice PM, leading on the Governments wish to change national planning policy and bring back full support for onshore wind farm development this year which will open up a cheaper alternative for energy investors to rake in profits from the ‘Conservative war on working people’ than long term investment in battery factories, offshore wind or grid company infrastructure that's necessary to extend solar, wave and wind power, offshore where former Conservative voters wanted energy farming to be sited in future.

Oct 2012

Tory Mayor called to condemn ‘illegal and ill judged’ Northumberland Tory motion

‘Northumberland Tories incompetence will damage jobs push’ 

 

Northumberland Tories who tabled an illegal motion are facing calls from another council to admit they got it wrong on a controversial motion seeking to ‘drastically cut renewable energy subsidies’ and ‘outlaw wind turbine developments illegally’ even in parts of Northumberland who may want and need them.

 At the forthcoming meeting of the Tory run North Tyneside Council on Thurs 27 Sept, the Labour party group have tabled a motion calling for the council’s Tory elected mayor to ‘stand up for jobs on the North Bank of the Tyne Enterprise Zone’ and rein in Northumberland Tories deputy leader Glen Sanderson who tabled the motion at County Hall last week.

 The Labour motion at North Tyneside will also call for the Tory mayor, Linda Arkley to write to the North’s Tory MP’s, Guy Opperman (Hexham), James Wharton (Stockton South) and John Stephenson (Carlisle) urging them to publicly distance themselves from a letter signed by 106 MP’s including Mr Wharton calling for a damaging removal of subsidy from the emerging renewables industries and the Northumberland Motion.

The Northumberland motion tabled by Councillor Sanderson attracted wide spread criticism and led to 5 abstentions from Councillor Sanderson’s own group and led to his leader Councillor Peter Jackson being banned from the debate. In a separate incident, Councillor Jackson was revealed to have submitted at least two planning applications for wind turbines on his own land. The five Tory abstentions included the Chairman of the West Area Planning Committee, Councillor Ian Hutchinson and long serving Tory Terry Robson from Hexham.

Labour MP’s Ronnie Campbell and Ian Lavery have joined in to add their weight to the calls for Sanderson to withdraw his attack on the renewables industry. They previously released a joint comment which ‘accused Northumberland County Councillor Sanderson and his Tory group of undermining ‘Con/Dem’ attempts to attract jobs to the North East and of undermining local renewable energy businesses’.

North Tyneside Labour group leader Jim Allan, released his own comment ahead of the North Tyneside motion

‘The Elected Mayor in North Tyneside needs to distance herself from the actions of her own party in Northumberland and her Tory colleague in Stockton South, James Wharton MP who signed the letter to the Telegraph which we think sends out the wrong messages to potential investors in the North Bank of the Tyne Enterprise Zone. Northumberland Tories illegal and incompetent motion will damage the North East job push.

We’re calling for her to write to Councillor Peter Jackson and Councillor Glen Sanderson and the Tory MP’s of the region to ask them to publicly back the renewable energy industries and to withdraw their support for the withdrawal of subsidies to the renewables industries.

The Northumberland Motion may have been illegal but it sent out the message that the Tory party in Northumberland wasn’t backing the North East LEP and we want to make sure Mayor Arkley sends a clear message that sort of political ‘gimmick’ isn’t on and doesn’t reflect Tory sentiment in North Tyneside’.

 

Notes To Editors

·        Attached Press Releases which include the Northumberland Motion - Conservative motion will ‘kill Northumberland jobs’

             Calls for Tory Leader to get a grip on ‘fractured party’

·        http://www.northtyneside.gov.uk/browse-display.shtml?p_ID=538217&p_subjectCategory=40

 

 

   

 

Evidence of gross underfunding of South-East Northumberland by Morpeth centred Tories.

           Letter to residents? ‘We are only going to build you half a car park’.

On the day Zoe Billingham, a director of the IPPR North think tank wrote for the Guardian on the importance of transport for levelling up England's regions saying “those living and working in the north of England, it has become achingly clear that our transport system is broken”. Residents living near the North's only new rail line development, the reopening to passenger travel of the Ashington, Blyth and Tyne line have received letters raising fears of being treated like second class citizens by Northumberland County Council.

The letter, reproduced on social media, explains that the project team have decided, at the first station being built in Newsham near Blyth, they are only going to build half a car park.

Coincidently today is also the first day that Northumberland Conservatives have allowed the officers of their ‘secret council’ to explain the budget and its medium term financial plan to Labour and independent opposition Councillors and they expect to ram that budget through Council in two weeks time with the backing of some of their well funded LibDem allies to carry the vote over the line. No timely public engagement expected at a series of meetings in November took place and an unsuspecting public will simply have to carry the burden of costs laid before them by Morpeth’s finest.

Building half size car parks on a reopening rail line running through an area where over 50% of Northumberland residents live will be catastrophic for residents as its reopening aligned with Newcastle and Gateshead rolling out their clean air zone scheme. 

Our research shows that in the West Midlands, residents near stations and fast bus routes into Birmingham who implemented their CAZ’s two years ago are plagued by indiscriminate parking in any space available within walking distance of a fast bus stop, tram, metro or rail line miles away from the city centre. Residents have placed enormous pressure on Councils to provide multi story out of town car parks across the West Midlands to take this burden from their doors. 

Messages from residents of homes at South Newsham and South Blyth on social media show how concerned they are with this latest cutback from the Tory led County Council and that's without the public knowing what the latest budget has nailed into it.

Although comments including ‘inflation must have forced the cost of Morpeth’s new Leisure Centre up and we are going to have to bear the costs and burden’ and the ‘secrecy surrounding the true cost of glamorising the Tory flagship county hall in Morpeth’ seemed to attract the greatest numbers of likes.

What will their cutbacks bring residents next?