Real Northumberland Murky: 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.