Scandalous ‘Riddle’ of Northumberland Highways £26m per year spent repairing roads

 

With £2m spent compensating drivers for pothole damage!

A recent article run through north east regional newspapers illustrates quite clearly why the secrecy surrounding everything Council within the County of Northumberland needs to be questioned by the public. The above figures are confirmed in the article by the portfolio holder for highways at County Hall, Cllr John Riddle. Also how the unlawful scrutiny of services continues well after its Leader, Glen Sanderson says whenever questioned about anything, ‘but you haven’t taken this into account’ and waves his bad tempered arms about a bit, driven by his ‘you have the temerity of questioning me’ elitist attitude.

The above figures don’t include the extra £3,872,000 received from Government in March 2023 specifically to tackle the Counties pothole problems, tackle them they must, but caught out by the local press and compared to other authorities in the region per Km and mile of highway Northumberland has, as expected, failed the test, using the amount of highway 3000Ml+ they look after as a prime excuse.

In life, everything is relative and life itself is a fine balance but in Northumberland since 2017 the Conservative policy of spending on pet projects has led to a greater number of skilled people being removed from the workforce each and every year damaging the balance in the favour of chumminess projects and not managing their service delivery correctly.

The trade costs of repairing a pothole revised for inflation in November 2023 is split into two categories:
Cat1 PLANNED MAINTENANCE of known pothole zones costs £45:83. Each.

Cat2 EMERGENCY REPAIR of potholes costs £71:40 Each.

This shows that for the £2,012,537.87 compensation to drivers figure published in the local and regional newspapers, Northumberland County Council could have delivered 43,639 planned maintenance potholes or 28,011 emergency potholes.

The figures are worse if the additional funding gifted to the Council in March 2023 is taken into consideration, they were given £3,872,000 extra by Government to help them along, leading one to think they should be repairing 84,486 planned maintenance potholes or 54,229 emergency potholes.

Our group of codgers who deliver this blog could not find any National or Local Key performance indicator information in any of the local services scrutiny minutes to indicate how few in comparison with trade estimates have been delivered and how the race to rise to the standards of Durham and the Tyne and Wear metropolitan councils on a mileage or km basis compares. It doesn’t bode well for the Council who have bumbled from high profile mess to mess of ever achieving best value on behalf of its residents, something they have failed at over the last six years. The lack of KPIs and LPI’s by councillors at scrutiny is unlawful as a Council can’t be scrutinised correctly without that information being made available at each and every meeting to manage improvements against plan and may have been why Councillor Peter Jackson is banging on about bringing the Police back in to investigate Councillor Sandersons administration.

One glance at fixmystreet.com using your home postcode will see how many potholes have been reported near your home. But the root cause of potholes is also something that the loss of experienced staff over the last six years has exacerbated severely and now may be beyond the control of Council.

Flooding and soil erosion coupled with the management of hedges and ditches is one of the main causes of potholes on the highway. Yet Brexit has failed society in this respect. As early as 2021, the Big Issue was banging on about the lack of cash being spent in this area as common agricultural policy grants disappeared. Northumberland County Council who should be maintaining 2203Ml of highways ditches and farmers and landowners who own an estimated 1700Ml of ditches that are required to be kept clean to lower the water table and keep roads pothole free are not doing so. In the case of the County Council its due to lack of inspections and the now low number of inspectors who used to liaise with farmers on this matter whom the Council employs.

Councillor Sanderson the Council's leader has published and declared a climate emergency. It's an underfunded ‘look at me I’m a Tory’ document backing up 11 projects at £5000 each for volunteers to steer climate publicity in his favour. It's a bottom spot of an idea from a man who should know better as for years his prime income was generated as a regional peer of the Tory held Local Government Association covering Yorkshire and the North of England, going around teaching Councils how to deliver Best Value in a world where his Government was driving austerity as opposed to service delivery. A do as I say not as I do world of the deluded by power, waiting for a knighthood Tory.

Looks like more failure is on the way unless a serious change at the top of this Council happens rapidly and a new medium term plan of deliverable action is published.

NOTES:

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/north-east-councils-car-damage-28349438

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/martin-lewis-drivers-potholes-compensation-27038895

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/News/2023/Mar/Council-welcomes-extra-road-repair-funding.aspx

https://www.bigissuenorth.com/news/2021/05/no-government-funds-for-hedges/#close

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Climate-Change/Climate-Change.aspx

https://www.cpre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Hedge-fund.pdf

Scrabbling around, Northumberland Tories can’t even make up a decent excuse.

 

Spend, spend, spend, waste, waste, waste, fail, fail, fail. The worst Council in England is named by the Daily Telegraph and it's not a city it's the do nowt and achieve nowt Tory Council which badly runs the wonderful County of Northumberland.

 This is the Council who were issued with a section 114 before anyone else in Britain outside of Local Government had even heard of the rules existence.

 This is the Council who had to bring in the top troubleshooter in local government, Max Caller, to report on the administration's activities. In short he said: “Northumberland County Council has lost its way, with leadership at both political and managerial levels distracted" and involved in "internal battles" to an "unhealthy extent." The operation of the council was described as "dysfunctional" by many members and officers” He was quite correct but they took no notice.

 This is the Council who had to bring in SOLACE to undertake a Governance Review that the Tory administration only used the mind twisty bits to attack senior officers.

 This is the Council who had to organise an independent improvement board whom they sacked when improvements were asked for.

 This is the Council who regularly threaten people with police investigations and when investigations find nothing they want to spend more public cash bringing in another Police Force.

 This is the Council who have spent public cash as if it was water ‘doing up’ County Hall in Morpeth wasting £17M by 2019, it's only half complete and this is 2023 the total costs will be enormous if its ever finished but at a similar spend rate its already costs £51M, much more than Peter Jackson's famous faux pas from his inaugural speech when saying “County Hall only needs a coat of paint” 

This is the Council wrapped up in bullying of staff by Councillors and strange goings on in the international market signed off by Cllr. Jackson and denied by him when the wheels of fire came off.

 It's the Council who are:

1. A Council struggling to pay its bills, with £27 million taken out of balances to paper over this year’s budget and £30 million of savings to find over the next two years and no plan from Cllr Sanderson to achieve that.
2. A Council deep in debt, with debts of £1.5 billion and rising to £2.5 billion and no plan from the Tories for any reasonable repayment. It adds up to 300% of their core spending power according to their own Government and 17.4% of their current revenue budget spent each year paying debt, reducing the Councils ability to deliver services to a reasonable quantity or a decent quality standard first time every time.
3. A Council with plans to allow villages across the County to die out, let schools close through lack of children and many people born in the County are denied the opportunity to purchase an affordable home where they were brought up.
4. A Council that encouraged large developers to swamp our towns with housing yet has failed for the past four years to plan for basic infrastructure such as doctors or the adoption of services through their love of fleecehold schemes.
5. A Council where every decision is a secret.
6. A Council with a culture of fear and intimidation.

 

But back to their latest failure, two different external auditors have failed their ability to deliver Best Value on behalf of residents each and every year for the last six years, on the BBC Politics Show Councillor Sanderson the current Leader said he had £50m sitting there to spend on affordable homes thats £50m he could have improved some of the performance indicators towards reaching best value with yet he hasn’t tried to use it and hasn’t delivered Best Value on behalf of residents either.

Yet the Council's response to this latest accolade is to put up an anonymous half hearted reply in the Hexham Courant.

Doesn't bode well for a merry christmas for all who sail in the sinking NCC.

Notes

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/24000227.telegraphs-worst-value-council-revealed-northumberland/

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/are-you-living-in-britains-worst-value-council/

https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2018/09/northumberland-county-council-is-facing.html

 

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-authority-section-114-notices

 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-county-council-max-caller-24195316

 

https://northumberland.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s11106/02.2%20NCC%20Governance%20Review%20finalwatermarkcopy.pdf

 

https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2018/09/northumberland-county-council-is-facing.html

 

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/23822597.former-leader-northumberland-county-council-calls-investigation/

 

https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/governance/396-governance-news/50737-independent-governance-review-hits-out-at-county-council-that-lost-its-way-amid-internal-battles

 

https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-scales-of-justice-will-affect_6.html

Having to launch two new departments will force Northumberland Council Tax up to its maximum?

 

Now it's out into the open that Northumberland Conservatives who held reserves of cash second to none left by Labour in 2017 decided to embark on an identical route to their former well documented Castle Morpeth Borough Council and follow Oscar Wylde’s ‘it's not true gov’ road to ruin when Lord Queensbury outed him in public.

Its reported that the spend, spend, spend attitude of Northumberland Conservatives and their denial of their excesses has led to debt levels of 300% of their annual revenue core spend churnover and 17.4% of the cash you as a taxpayer expects to have services delivered with, being creamed off to keep up the HP payments on their debt.

News was broken by the Blog, North-East bylines, who graphed up the figures for the first time that the government released debt and borrowing figures this year.

The debt repayment statistics are among the first to be published by Oflog, THE OFFICE FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT which was launched on 4 July under interim chair Lord Morse, a former chair of the National Audit Office, as announced in January by Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and include empowering citizens with information about their local authority, enabling them to hold local leaders to account. Its first publications, apart from local authority finance, cover adult social care, waste management and adult skills.

It is normal for local authorities to borrow to invest. What is not normal, as the Oflog figures show, is the level of indebtedness reached by a few councils, including Northumberland County Council. Councillors and officials may take comfort in the fact that their debts are within the Prudential Code, but council taxpayers could still be forgiven if they are uneasy or even concerned, as their Council has not come clean about its debt levels even though a section 114 notice was delivered two years ago by their financial manager because of the rising debt and unlawful payments along with exposure of its inability to deliver BEST VALUE for its taxpayers.

Council Taxpayers with mortgages will know first hand what difficulties interest rate volatility can bring. It is now evident that some council officials are becoming very concerned too.

Even after being warned Northumberland County Council, a Tory led Unitary Authority, has long been warned of budget challenges through their personal need to service chummy projects and still manage service delivery in some expensive to run areas such as social services. Unlike many local authorities NCC should not have had to make any tough choices, as they were left in the best financial position of any Council in the North of England in 2017 when Labour was voted out of office, and we Codgers who look after this blog are worried about the recent audit report and the the tone of its latest financial reports that will stop projects being delivered in their tracks as they reflect a greater sense of alarm than ever. Its huge debt is part of the reason.

Things have got so bad at County Hall the debt laden half finished project to modernise this monstrosity of a building has drained much of those reserves along with pouring millions of pounds above the very generous ‘building schools for the future’ cash from Government into academies that the Council has no input into and expanding the offer in Castle Morpeth Areas to include massive add on schemes in places like Ponteland.

Local social media has begun to ramp up the pressure on Glen Sandersons bucolic Council by suggesting that two new departments of the Council will be announced on budget day early next year, the ‘Computer say NO Department’ to deal with enquiries from the public and the ‘Lang Stand’ department for anyone who turns up at County Hall to express their disdain or lodge a complaint.

AND YOU KNOW THEY MAY BE RIGHT!

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/landmark-northumberland-line-project-hit-28214580

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-line-delayed-again-no-28277716

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/11/more-english-councils-expected-to-fail-owing-billions-warns-moodys

https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/governance/314-governance-a-risk-articles/54523-what-can-be-done-to-stop-the-rise-of-the-super-debt-councils

https://www.localgov.co.uk/Northumberland-issues-s114-over-unlawful-finances/54249

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/the-north-east-council-spending-almost-quarter-of-income-on-debt/

Now there is no youth and community funding

 

Northumberland Conservatives get found out by hard working charities.

Virtually every day we open our local and regional newspapers and find members of the ruling administration at County Hall in Northumberland claiming projects and services delivered by volunteer organisations as their own.

The County Council has issued its most recent funding mag which can be found via this link https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Economy-Regeneration/Grants-Funding.aspx

After opening the link you may get a shock that warm spaces, community businesses, etc., etc., must locate funding from the providers in this extensive list, but within the list the County Council itself are now only funding business but claiming every penny every charity gets as if they  are some sort of philanthropic saintly body gifting alms to the poor.

Those hard working charities who help those in need have given evidential information to the NHS/social care partnership organisation known as healthwatch 

On their regular and very good newsletters they illustrate the good works of the voluntary sector across the County of Northumberland and how people can access help in certain areas and how NHS funding is used to power up volunteers who deliver excellent services to those who need them, while the county council in the shape of Northumberland Conservatives sit back in their warm offices an deliver news stories claiming the work of others as their own.

Northumberland Conservatives of course are not keen on charities, proven through the recent ditching of the County Council’s charitable arm Active Northumberland who delivered sports arts and leisure services across the vast and needy County to be replaced with a company who apparently can deliver BEST VALUE within the County framework.

If the new company achieves that it will be a first for Northumberland Conservatives as they haven’t delivered BEST VALUE on any of the services they deliver and have delivered since 2017.

As for charitable help, it seems that the billion pound a year spender has raked together a paltry £55K to share out amongst charities seeking to assist Northumberland’s Tories to reach net zero.

What a cheek!

https://www.activenorthumberland.org.uk/about-us/our-mission

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/News/2023/Oct/Funding-for-environmental-projects-in-Northumberla.aspx

https://healthwatchnorthumberland.co.uk/what-we-do/