Real Northumberland Murky: October 2023

Tuesday 31 October 2023

Northumberland Conservatives Couldn't Win Eurovision?

But Recharge Industries has them dangling like ‘a puppet on a string’

Being a member of Northumberland's most secret society is surely bad enough for your personal reputation? but when you're actually able to convince enough people that you will represent them through thick and thin and protect their place in society, whatever that may be, yet fail to do so, is despicable.

Its very well documented by Government inspectors such as Max Caller and improvement teams led by top local government people that Northumberland County Council’s elected conservatives are probably the most secretive group anyone can remember and they have let down the whole of Northumberland’s residents through their extremely poor decision making and lack of business acumen when it comes to enlarging trade within the county.

The siting of a GigaFactory in the River Blyth economic energy zone was a brilliant idea from the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and the Port of Blyth. Relying on Government grant and levelling up funds to progress the opportunities an economic energy park could bring the North East Northumberland County Council had to become a prime partner, both through the mechanism for handling Government cash and the fact that they were also in charge of planning.

The GigaFactory project promised to bring 8,000 new jobs to an area, (south east northumberland), devoid of large scale employers with this supposed economic miracle pushed as the savior of local townships and a project would bring growth and promise to the whole region.

During 2021 the Leader of Northumberland County Council is reported to have hailed in BritishVolt, one of the few open statements he made on the subject that year:

Glen Sanderson, Leader of Northumberland County Council (NCC), said:

“It’s great to see work starting on the ground on a site which the council and partners have been actively engaged on in recent years to make it an attractive proposition for investors”.

“Since we granted planning permission work behind the scenes has continued at pace so to see enabling works getting underway is fantastic – not just for the council and Britishvolt, but for everyone in the county”.

“With thousands of jobs in the pipeline and billions of pounds of investment this is such a good news story for Northumberland and the wider region and we look forward to following progress over the coming months.”

His voiced ‘billions of pounds of investment’ didn’t arrive, his partnership with Britishvolt collapsed through lack of funds and EY were brought in to manage administration of the site. But his Council had a buy back clause in place in order that the public purse could hang onto the site.

Recharge Industries had been selected as the preferred bidder by administrators EY and introduced to NCC.

Recharge chief executive David Collard said the Britishvolt brand name would remain, as well as the ambition to complete Britishvolt's electric vehicle battery factory in Blyth, Northumberland.

A bit of a dispute opened up between Mr Collard and NCC over its buy back clause and the scope of the work to be taken on at Cambois, causing concern among some Conservative Councilors as it appears and was reported on in open politics that Collard couldn’t pay his bills in the US and didn’t have the funds in place to buy the site in Northumberland.

Who provided Councillor Sanderson with any due diligence reports before settling in bed with David Collard? We presume it's another secret.

But Collard being much wiser than NCC Conservatives spoke with the BBC and cheekily stated that he was deferring his decision on site buy back until December 2024 and was going to outmaneuver NCC and the National Grid by taking on the incoming connections from offshore wind farms onto HIS site. Keeping what must be a very worried leader of NCC Conservatives dangling like Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String.

Meanwhile not a soul has been seen by locals on the empty sodden siteworks!

Councillor Sanderson get off your strings and sort it out and don’t leave Northumberland Council Taxpayers to pick up your team's mess!

The real story behind David Collard’s departure from PwC - open politics

Getting Scalier: David A. Collard's creditors, lawsuits, now a thing of Scale - open politics

https://news.sky.com/story/battery-maker-britishvolt-bought-by-australian-firm-12821187

Recharge Industries Unveils Plans for Northumberland Battery Plant Amid Controversy - West Island Blog

More delays at Britishvolt site in Cambois in dispute over Northumberland Council buy-back clause | ITV News Tyne Tees

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67149907?fbclid=IwAR2yVRRV0U3qNW5hOv6Pp9HxHdql6duPdiywYCGgHXQcZ8ZTAZtZ2OWgRPw

North Sea Link | National Grid Group

Berwick Bank Wind Farm

Monday 30 October 2023

Taxpayers Alliance expose Northumberland County Councils Tories yet again!

Yet again the taxpayers alliance have caught Northumberland County Councillors with their knickers down yet again.

Although this Tory led County Council makes plenty of noise regarding how brilliant Morpeth has become under their leadership through information released via the lodge. The rest of the Counties 300,000 residents have not got any idea if what’s delivered within the old Castle Morpeth boundaries is good value for them or not.

And why not you may ask? Because the County of Northumberland have put full and audited accounts over the last few years on the back burner issuing only draft accounts and expecting their residents to make up what is good and what is bad from Northumberland conservatives without the support of the external auditor.

With doginess being next to godliness for Northumberland conservatives we the public need to know why secrecy rules and truthfulness is a forgotten term.

The patheticos who politically run Northumberland must know they have let the Counties residents in all walks of like down a back alley since May 2017 and issuing draft elements of the truth into the public realm will drag them down the plug hole much faster than they planned or thought.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/great_british_council_audit_transparency_crisis_as_hundreds_of_councils_fail_to_publish_audited_accounts?fbclid=IwAR1ARsjwJsd91kJNyyEGEqbdUZ5OKNZsUQKHiBYaDklaZ051rCsK-DK4LuU

Monday 23 October 2023

It's time Morpeth’s mob spent some cash protecting Rothbury,

After all, even Labour spent £27M protecting Morpeth.

Another autumn storm and another flooding event in Rothbury?
as Northumberland County Council neglects the river Coquet’s residents and treats them in a similar fashion to their Government, turning the other cheek towards ‘A1 great north road’ travellers and not speaking out against potential ‘grave robbers’ trying to steal land and projects in Cambois, with the Sunday Times locked into David Cambois Collards ‘strange but true’ activities surrounding multi-million pound public purse projects that may strip Northumberland County Council of the vital cash needed to protect those living along the Coquet Valley from Rothbury to Amble when Labour return to office.

From 2014- 2017 the Labour Party in Northumberland dealt with a number of highly costly flood defences along the Tyne Valley and on the River Wansbeck to save property and people suffering regular damage not only to their homes and businesses but the then Leader of the Labour Group Councillor Grant Davey spoke publicly on more than one occasion about the damage to both personal and community mental health being regularly affected through worry about damage during periods of bad weather.

He managed to present a compelling case to then flood minister Rory Stewart MP which helped secure funding for projects across the County.

The public demonisation of Councillor Davey’s minority all party administration by the Tories brought the Morpeth Mob back into office in May 2017 and completely stopped proper investment in people and property with the Garden Village project which was primed to fund a River Blyth flood project in Ponteland stopped in its tracks and the plans placed on a dusty shelf in the almost empty County Hall in Morpeth with Rothbury folk and the river Coquet having to settle on a new town bridge instead of a complete flood defence scheme and luckily for the residents of this lovely riverside town the Tories left it outside their huge, or is that massive greenbelt scheme to preserve Morpeth in aspic to the detriment of everywhere else.

Regular reports on the loss of many areas and homes to flooding and water level rises by 2030 in Rothbury, Amble, Blyth, both riverside and south beach, Lynemouth, East Chevington, Sleekburn and East Bedlington and areas outside the new flood plains developed during 2015 in the Tyne Valley as well as areas we have already mentioned shows that the next Administration at County Hall needs to spend heavily on flood defences and now that the current administration has blown the Council’s reserves and has been told by officers to slash its capital spend budget they also need to have a compelling argument to speak with the Government in office with both sea and river defences needed urgently.

Friday 20 October 2023

Tories dodgy grant funding for Blyth?

will ‘rip the heart out of service delivery county-wide’

Exposed by the Local Government Chronicle the new,’ Town’ funding issued to Tory marginal seats from a fund with a massive capital shortfall is designed by the Sunak/Hunt team to show improvement in the marginals while all surrounding towns suffer.

The net effect on Councils accepting this supposed ‘new money payment’ is that each of the 55 towns will receive an “endowment style” fund worth £20m over ten years, split between 25% revenue and 75% capital. This is different to previous rounds of levelling up funding, which have provided only capital grants, Blyth is one of those Towns.

Criticism of a part revenue grant which must be spent in one particular area that will be audited for compliance to ensure this is extra to the norm within a massive County like Northumberland is disproportionate to residents of areas outside the Town of Blyth, it's definitely unequal and probably unethical.

It is expected that departments cut to the bone due to lack of revenue to service other areas will be forced to shelter staff in Blyth to cut back on the extremely expensive costs of redundancy facing Councils over the next few years. Blyth will certainly notice the lift in service delivery while other Towns surrounding them will feel the pinch from day one.

In nearby Cramlington, Northumberland’s second largest Town where the conservatives have denied residents a fair share of capital project funding since 2017 there's already a cry to improve on the level of Grass Cutting and Street Litter work undertaken by the Unitary all purpose County Council. Northumberland County Council have had to slash back revenue spent on service delivery in all areas since 2017 as the cost of servicing and paying the interest on the Millions of Pounds of capital-cash borrowed since 2017 to spend on vanity schemes in other more favoured by the Tories Towns and Villages has stretched the Council budget to snapping point and in recent weeks the officer finance team have instructed the Council’s single Party cabinet to put a pair of scissors through their recently published capital programme and reschedule over half of it into future years.

Due to the economic crisis this conservative Council now has one of the highest Council Tax bills in the UK of which most of the income generated is used to pay back the interest on cash borrowed to finance dream projects such as the modernisation of County Hall in Morpeth.

It is thought that opposition parties will not be able to put forward a manifesto for change as the Council is so stretched and possibly close to going under. So living in a ‘Wrecked by Northumberland Conservatives’ County is not much fun, but if you're a resident of Blyth, it might be slightly better, but better than what Blyth residents may ask?.

https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/devolution-and-economic-growth/exclusive-marginal-seats-dominate-latest-towns-funding-03-10-2023/

Tuesday 17 October 2023

Levelling Up? Where’s Blyth’s MP now we’re downlevelled?

Just like Mary Poppins, during 2019, Ian Levy MP was blown by the east wind onto the doorsteps of Blyth’s houses. He becomes a most unusual nanny for the constituency of Blyth Valley as that east wind hadn’t blown in the same swirling manner since June 1987 when the hunting and shooting Independent MP, John Ryman was ousted by the Labour Leader of Blyth Council and NUM delegate Ronnie Campbell MP.

Ian Levy who destroyed the chances of Susan Dungworth, Labour’s Group Leader on Northumberland County Council and current Labour and Co-operative candidate for the post of Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, that same east wind brought Blyth Valley into the public eye as the first ‘Red Wall’ seat to fall nationally.

That notoriety brought the Tory big guns out and into Blyth Valley with a massive spend announced in 2021 and a plan to bring 8,000 new jobs into the River Blyth industrial sites to service the UK’s biggest battery plant.

Ian Levy MP danced across the rooftops of Blyth’s terraced and council housing like Dick Van Dyke, heralding the arrival of the factory, the first good news Blyth Valley and Wansbeck whom they share the River Blyth with had heard jobs wise for decades. The Tory trumpets could be heard above the blazing saddles after beer at the lodge, as a wonderful future was to be had by all.

Not everything was rosy at the top of the Tory pile and when you're at the top as all of our readers know too well, the only way is down.

Leadership changes following lawbreaking prime ministers antics followed by an economist who failed to bring the economy along with her rhetoric brought in a PM without a real interest in the County of Northumberland, but he sprinkled a little fairy dust our way while sending the prize asset to an Indian company in Somerset as all hope for South East Northumberland got caught in the first westerly breeze which crossed its fabulous beach.

British Volt Failed!

EY came in to manage the failure and suggested an Australian firm, Recharge, took the reins. The footpath must be narrow as it gets down past Harbour View and onto to the Giga site as the Australian also slipped off, he almost floated as his pockets appeared to be empty but were not sure about that.

The companies have had to down their tools and leave the site with the Sunday Times reporting an expose as the County Council led by Tories have a buy back clause on the land but while those who should have administered the changes on behalf of the people of Northumberland who its expected will be left with the bill to resolve this nonsense, procrastinated for eons and according to an EY report below and the Sunday Times article somebody took out a mortgage on the site. Tut Tut! More pressure on the public purse.

Although since the first day the Easterly turned to a mild westerley Ian Levy MP hasn’t been seen or heard on Blyth’s rooftops and has had very little to say about the Jobs situation in his constituency that's now even worse than when he took office.

We can meteorologically predict that a west wind will blow through Blyth at the next General election and after all the dodgy changes from the Tories to boundaries in Northumberland Ian Lavery current MP for Wansbeck will blow in as the winner of the newly formed seat of Blyth with Ashington as its one of the UK’s most deprived areas.