A year on and the Northumberland Tory Leader is repeating the same old story?

Taking borrowing soaring over £1.2Bn and cutting £17.5m from Council revenue doesn’t bode well for either children or the elderly now or in the future.

One year on from Councillor Glen Sandersons "call to action" at the authority's inequalities summit, his promises are almost identical yet the needs of both children in poverty and the wait for social care to keep the elderly in their own homes has grown considerably as his Government lets people across the County languish in poverty without hope.

It's time his ‘call for action’ was centered on welding his own group of disparate factionalised nasties into one unit so that the Council can move forward at a pace instead of languishing in a period of respin of hollow promises he is now much less likely to be able to deliver that than when he first spun his tale. 

Known Conservative social media shows that instead of appeasement between the factions which make up the broad right of his party that threats are now being hurled between mobs with a similar passion to that his party’s national government when levelling up disparity and brexit problems exacerbating a recession gets mentioned, even without the negativity of the return to power of Liz Truss who’s free market let’s fertilise the money trees dying flowers administration killed off opportunities to help children and the elderly for decades to come.

Councillor Sanderson’s messages to the public should be about hurling letters at his Government to help in the care and education field and not get lost in the hype around austerity spewed out by a dying administration in Westminster. 

An example of the maelstrom he has been caught up in is the building of a Special Free School in the town of Blyth which ‘costs the Council nothing to deliver this brilliant service’ report he put out after January’s 2023 children's services scrutiny panel met. He obviously hadn’t noticed that the Education and Skills department of his Government deduct funding for places at established special free schools from local authority high needs allocations and pay it directly to schools. It may not cost the Council anything to develop a free school but the loss of an asset in the land transfer and the reduction in high level funding which will reduce the spend on other schools in the County seems to be a damaging move for children other than those attending the special free school or is that a spinning conundrum that the Tory’s think people may not notice?

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-improve-chances-deprived-children-25887333