New brush normally sweeps clean, but can it?
As most people who read the press across Northumberland you may have noticed that the Council has recruited a ‘brand new’ chief executive and social media from the Tories state that a new officer team is being recruited and formed to serve the new CO’s needs.
Included in the list being fielded is that a new head of planning has been recruited.
As readers of this blog know, the Caller report on poor leadership from the administration, secrecy, bullying, lack of teamwork, dreadful lack of communication with the public highlighting spin over truthfulness, disparate training of Councillors, and the fear of officers to say NO to the Cabinet members which should be prime in directing the Council forward, is now being spun as nothing special by the Tories.
Those same Tories obviously hadn’t noticed (or want to keep it secret) that Mr Caller also heavily criticised the administration of the Council in its performances on planning. Other bodies including professional developers and businessmen can’t believe that Northumberland has produced a local plan following the Northumberland Tories destruction in 2017 of the Council's emerging core strategy, the New Local Plan allows villages and market towns to be slowly strangled and die, whilst the 4% of land which makes up the South-East of the County and houses well over half of the Counties population at this moment in time is to be allowed to grow to the Hong Kong new territories housing density levels.
So six months after the release to Cabinet members of Mr Caller’s report things hadn’t improved one jot and long-serving cabinet member, a planning application had been submitted to the Local Planning Committee for the North of the County to develop a new home in Bamburgh, totally outside of the Council’s Local Plan. Cllr Guy Renner Thompson explained that he felt the development was one the village needed, and even called on other councillors to show Christmas spirit. He went on to say “I would implore you to allow it. Bamburgh needs more people. They have lost the school many years ago, there’s no post office and the village shop is still there – but it needs people to keep it going.
The Cabinet of the Council had agreed the new local plan in March 2022 12 weeks before the Caller report yet here we have a Cabinet Member pushing through a development outside the plan without a valid planning reason for doing so.
Councillor Renner Thompson was quite right in his statement to the area planning committee that villages need people to survive, therefore we have to ask why did he not say that when the new local plan was brought to his cabinet to ensure that all new homes are to be dumped in the South East of the County as it doesn’t affect rural towns and villages, when he knows that empty villages and market towns where only elderly people and second home tourists live is not healthy and he should get his cabinet to take the plan back in conjunction with the new head of planning and get a proper plan for growth from Berwick to Old Hartley that will benefit business, young people, those who need social housing in the countryside to work in rural areas and begin to open up the County turning the remaining 96% of the area into a vibrant place to live, work and bring up families who want to stay near their home bases.
We just have to hope that new officers and the new chief executive can say NO and not allow themselves to be bullied into improper decision making by infighting Tory Councillors who use dodgy decision making as weapons against their internal enemies within their own political group.
Notes
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/family-granted-permission-for-new-home-in-bamburgh-despite-planners-concerns-3965660
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