Mr ‘Blyth is a Dump’ Working his way through the second major bankruptcy under his watch.

 

Hot on the tail of his new well remunerated Chairmanship of Advance Northumberland the Council’s shoulder-length regeneration company, Councillor Jeff Reid is now beavering away overseeing the huge losses facing his Council and their company after the collapse of Britishvolt an organisation the company under his charge sucked in to manufacture batteries on an ex-power station coal handling plant.

Press reports including the Financial Times have informed the public that the failing company had accrued debts of £150m. We don’t yet know how much of that is public cash drifted through Councillor Jeff Reids Company and/or the Council but we are quite sure that Councillors of all persuasions will be washing the mud off their buckets and spades in order to begin a new excavation into the antics surrounding this major business collapse in his name.

Advance Northumberland is of course the rebirth name of ARCH which according to records, was begun by LibDem Councillor Jeff Reid when he ran Northumberland County Council from 2008-2013.

During that period when he tyrannically ran the Council in a signed contractual deal with Northumberland Conservatives, he and his Tory buddies managed to lose a small fortune of council tax payers money by investing public cash into frozen food giant, Northumberland Foods, a year after its sister company had fallen on hard times.

Bolstered by the scaffolding the binding contract with the eventually found out and disgraced Northumberland Conservative Group Leader Councillor Peter Jackson’s team gave him and his cohorts, he persuaded the outgoing organisation OneNE to give him £3.6m to bail out Northumberland Foods followed by another ¼ of a million pounds of Council taxpayers cash and because of the lack of cash management by ARCH, the County Council and the company was immediately swallowed up by the companies receivers.

Councillor Reid went on to upset a good number of people who dwelt in his home town of Blyth when after running the budget of the Council as its leader for almost four years attended a public meeting in the West of the Council and called ‘Blyth a Dump’.

In a similar vein to the current MP for Blyth Valley who informed a committee in Westminster that people from Blyth aspire to live in Cramlington (another part of his constituency), Councillor Reid got it completely wrong.

Were hearing rumours that this well paid post as the Tories whipping boy for Advance Northumberland will be his last stand as a County Councillor. It's also an open secret that the LibDems are making a comeback as defected and worried Tories looking to extend their political lives are jumping ship in their droves and paying their subs to the yellows.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeff-reid-northumberland-council-boss-1741326