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