Real Northumberland Murky: We thought they were farmers but it's taken seven years to spot the first green shoots.

Northumberland County Council may wish to see itself as an improving body through its massive spend on a cultural change program known as BEST.

It’s taken the council's Leader, Councillor Glen Sanderson seven years to decide on his priorities which he now states as “Our three key priorities remain – to give value for money to our residents, to drive investment and jobs, and to tackle inequalities. These will continue to be set in stone going forward.

Let's take a simple look at them?

a)Value for money: delivered regularly on behalf of the public by the last Labour administration at County Hall but since 2017 this conservative administration has failed in its attempts to deliver anywhere near best value and unless the bad tempered culture set by its Cabinet members begins to change then even if the public is told best value has been delivered they won’t be believed.

b) Drive investment and jobs: As recently as this week we have seen Labour’s candidate for Blyth with Ashington, Ian Lavery MP make a public appeal on social media demanding investment in jobs to stop the area from sinking. The conservatives in office at County Hall have failed to deliver the much promised 8000 jobs in the River Blyth Basin after having had dialogue and dealings with two failing groups. The Tories in Government haven't bothered to support bids in Northumberland to have the much vaunted giga-plant built yet we see that government investment in the same industry is backed for giga-factories to be built in Coventry, Sunderland and Somerset. Where and when will Blyth fit in with the level of investment being poured into these other three schemes by the Tories in office. Locally all we have seen is the loss of retail jobs in Blyth Town centre as this Council has closed down the Town’s future. This is from a Council who have already failed with a business improvement district scheme in Hexham and have been heavily criticised for its handling of Leveling Up schemes by members of the public and political opponents.

c) Tackle inequalities: For a council who this week have been heavily criticised by opposition members for their lack of support for a free school meals service, have privatised it’s Leisure Services and not expressed support for Councillors who have illustrated the huge jump in anti-social behaviour even in rural areas, pulled out of sponsoring youth groups and left the voluntary and community centre to seek its own funding without the direct help of the Council then tackling inequalities appears very low on the actual priority list.

The Leader of Council opened up an urgent peer review to try to engender some level of positive thinking within his own and opposition groups with the working together gap widening as ever more information is retained on the secret list of its one party cabinet. The review written nicely by the LGA simply adds to the worries people have about this Council as the only positive statements appear to indicate several Councillors thought that some ‘green shoots’ of improvement were being put in place. Some green shoots after seven years of failure is not something most people want to see in an improvement agency report.

More recently heavy criticism of the failure of democracy has been leveled out at this Council on social media as reports from the audit committee are to be passed through Council with legal advice stopping any questions or debate about the reports from opposition members placing fear in front of them that if they ask a question they should fear losing their homes. This isn’t the first time control of debate has been managed in this way and it's an utter disgrace that democratically elected members of a prime authority should be blocked through threats and not protected by insurance indemnities. It seems that control through threats is the new way of keeping this secret council ever more secretive and with its failures to keep the public informed and the dismissive way the public is treated then how can we believe any of the spin put out in the Councils name?