Real Northumberland Murky: 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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
A Council where every decision is a secret.
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