Local relics damaged by right wing profiteers.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment