Real Northumberland Murky: Future Empty High Streets Fund Fulfilling the Wishes of Rural Based Tories!

Blyth folk understand some of the plans hoisted on their Town Centre from the Morpeth mob who control and run Northumberland County Council, such as changing Richard Stannard House into an apartment block, essential repairs and maintenance in Bowes Court and the purchase of empty homes in Cowpen Quay bringing them back into use.

It's a great initiative and will, if carried out sympathetically, bring ever more folk back into Blyth’s central zone.

Most are also happy to see South Beach get a new hotel and two organisations bringing sea-side pod shopping to this well used beachfront area; those changes will also help retain Blyth’s iconic beach huts and secure their future.

BUT: What isn’t understood by local people is the destruction of its commercial shopping area, the Keel Row and its replacement with a £9m energy institute.

Talk across the Town appears centred on: Why was the new institute not being built on the gasometer site as promised by the Council during the consultation period?

Why was the massive space that makes up the Keel Row not adjusted to make up what appears on face value to be no more than a further education unit as surely that would be much more cost effective than demolition and rebuilding?

How effective will a £9m education facility be in aiding growth in a shrunken Town Centre when the same Council is happy to spend £50m to develop a school on a green field site in Seaton Delaval?

One of the most common statements heard by the campaigners trying to have the remaining stores from the Keel Row relocated (a project the Council has also failed to deliver on) so that residents of the town will still be able to buy clothes and shoes or digital services in the Town was that: ‘The County Council expect to force us to shop in Cramlington, but the best bus service we have from our town centre every few minutes, whisks us into Whitley Bay very rapidly indeed and we can get what we need in the shops there’.

Those campaigners also collected many questions we can’t print for censorship reasons although the common theme was that the population of Northumberlands largest town feel they have been duped and let down badly by politicians who wouldn’t deliver this type of negative experience in Morpeth or Ponteland. They also believe the future high street fund has been redirected and used to abuse residents of Blyth instead of aiding an improved town centre life to be pleasurable and easier for residents to access services and gain the opportunity to purchase all their needs, they find they will be forced to travel to distant townships to purchase what after all are life’s essentials.

Whats on offer is a split twin town life that may be seen as how rural families have to live with but the residents of the county’s largest town have enjoyed an urban environment for most of their lives and are not geared towards the cataclysmic change being forced on them by poorly thought out plans pushed onto them by primarily agricultural thinking politicians.

This is a Council whose record includes a failed Business Improvement District scheme in Hexham, a shambolic cycle lane project in its high street most recently leading to the closure of M&S in the Town and a dangerous closed bus station rotting away in front of the eyes of its despondent residents and they are currently hoisting the same mistakes on Blyth’s residents. With Labour Candidate for Hexham Joe Morris telling the BBC that “in his view levelling up has failed the aspirations of local people”.