Real Northumberland Murky: Gove instructs Councils to sell assets to fund social services and offset cuts: Giant, empty, albatross of County Hall to be sold off?

Eric Pickles when he held the job Michael Gove has now famously stood out against council cuts to voluntary sector grants and brought forward instructive draft legislation where Council must inform the sector of cuts and work with them to mitigate their effects.

Pickles actions and advice took place during 2011 in year one of Cameron's austerity program when Councils still had reserves built up in most cases from 1974, the year County Council’s were given the role of adult care and social services armies were sent out daily to keep the pressure off the NHS and safeguard vulnerable as well as the elderly in their own homes.

The twelve years since 2011 has seen Pickles edicts forgotten by Councils who have had their budgets savaged by Government and we see many more charities and third sector companies involved in social services with Councils unable to determine the full extent of their cuts until its almost too late to inform the sectors third sector contractors that job losses and service cuts must take place.

Today things have got much worse for Councils who have used their asset values to offset paper bankruptcy and be borrowed against to safeguard the delivery of core services, many of which don’t have any involvement in or with social services at all, as the public appear to have a greater interest in clean, green and streetscene services than supporting the vulnerable.

On Jan 31st 2024, the Guardian reported that Michael Gove wants Councils to be stripped of their assets to keep up to speed with his austerity games to drag down Local Government until it is wrecked completely.

‘Councils in England are to be ‘encouraged to sell’ publicly owned buildings and other assets worth around £23bn under plans being explored by ministers to plug budget shortfalls.

Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, is looking at how councils could have greater flexibility to use money raised from asset disposals to tackle budget pressures. In a consultation with town hall bosses, ministers estimate councils have "investment properties" worth £23.2bn that could be disposed of to help meet budget shortfalls with proposed changes to the rules that would allow sales without Government approval’.

Since David Cameron and George Osborne launched their “austerity” assault on public spending councils have sold off or closed over 1,000 swimming pools and 800 libraries. Half of magistrates’ courts, hundreds of playing fields and over 1,000 public toilets have gone too; a recent article in the FT from architecture critic Edwin Heathcote illustrated this asset stripping that has and will stymy and shackle local government forever.

In Northumberland, the County Council owns a building developed to house 5000 staff which has now reduced 10 fold, which has been invested in more than any other since the Victorian era, County Hall in Morpeth. Hardly one that could be called an asset but Labour when choosing to build a £32m brand new functioning office block in Ashington 5 miles from the money sink of County Hall site had a sale agreed valued at £40m with a housing company.

Peter Jackson’s Tories who told the world that the office block in Ashington was going to cost £80m, Jackson also said that “County Hall only needed a lick of paint”, halted the sale and began pouring public money into the renovation of this building in the full knowledge of his diminishing workforce each and every year for the last six years. The renovation is almost half finished and is now complete with a natural flooded area outside its front door which makes the site look shabby and not in keeping with the size of the spend that has been spewed out to beautify this architectural monstrosity.

This year it has been revealed by the new chief executives treasury team set on after the Caller and Lally debacles, have informed the Cabinet, led by Councillors Sanderson and Wearmouth that the Councils reserves are too low and borrowing must stop, the one party (conservative) Cabinet of the Council have taken no notice and are removing another huge amount out of their reserves leaving the fear of a ‘Black Hole’ appearing in their accounts. That debacle is a likelihood if inflation rises again or if more people slip into poverty and have to claim benefits. A real possibility now that the same Council cabinet team have utterly failed to create their promised new jobs and their decision making is destroying business opportunity whilst levelling up nothing at all. Those jobs have been regularly promised over the last seven years of office and its own Government has given up on them, halving promised numbers and spreading them like marmite thinly over the whole north-east region.

During the last reported financial year, 2022/23 the Council which is now seven private companies set up by the Tories at great expense to the ratepayers when they decided that the Councils former company ARCH was affecting the business opportunities of their mates, used its asset register to bolster its group reserves on paper, it's shown within its unaudited draft accounts in the link below. (page 21).

Michael Gove has now caught them out and asset stripping as well as reserve pot shrinkage will leave any other future council in a very miserable financial position indeed but if one asset really needs disposal in order to safeguard social services until some future Government is forced to transfer it nationally to the NHS, it's the cash sinkhole of County Hall in Morpeth as its pulling the Council down and the Council could easily meet in their newly being developed culture centre in the Town of Blyth which would be a great use of brand new public building six times a year.