Real Northumberland Murky: We’ve spent it, we’ve shifted it back, we’ve spent it The money go-round of the Ashington ‘Whole’?

Part two of the ‘Whole Story’

Being secretive, basing figures on debauched unhinged contempt for others, only talking with friends or those who can provide one with something and backstabbing those on the edge of your scene eventually leads to twisted minds and shocking behavioural circumstances.

The creation of Ashington ‘Whole’ is the epitome of ruthlessness, backstabbing a complete community that's the real truth behind the spin from the famous Morpeth Mob.

Let's look at the history of a company in 'real public ownership', sitting in the possession of the council taxpayers of the County of Northumberland?

The company in question has an easily traceable past, it started out on its journey as a regeneration company, set up by Wansbeck District Council to protect people's former colliery homes and help ordinary folk cope and not be left behind as society changed dramatically from manufacturing, mining and sea fishing into a service sector based economy. It was a brilliant success in the geographically restricted area of Wansbeck District.

When the County of Northumberland was set up in 2008 as the then largest unitary rural all purpose council in England, the Wansbeck company was transferred leaving oodles of funds from the sale of its former football stadium to help develop a new leisure centre close to the centre of one of its largest yet second poorest townships, Ashington, and develop a new football stadium for its local team.

These developments were undertaken and delivered by the company ARCH, a metamorphosis of the Wansbeck District Council regeneration company, guided by the Council with Councillors in abundance on its board.

Northumberland Conservatives were very close to ARCH when they power shared with the LibDems but when labour won the 2013 election this successful arms length company was poisoned by the Tories on their ‘Matters’ sites and the well publicised manifesto commitment ‘we will close down ARCH’ from Councillor Peter Jackson who sat on the board from 2008 sounded its death knell.

The abandonment of the ‘Peoples Company’ ARCH halted the development of a modern Council Office block in Ashington leaving the second ‘Whole’ in our trilogy.

This ‘Whole’ or Hole as AI from google doesn’t recognise the local version has become so famous it appears on Google Earth as a named site of cultural interest.

The base rhetoric from Northumberland Conservatives that eventually led to the formation of the ‘Whole’ was that Labour would not only build council houses on the wide expanse of meadows outside the front doors of the wealthy in Darras Hall Ponteland they were going to spend £80m moving from County Hall in Morpeth that in the words of Peter Jackson only required a ‘lick of paint’ into the den of iniquity 5 miles from the current site in Ashington.

Our investigations and FOI requests have found that Labour had a report on the state of County Hall developed for 5000 office staff that would cost £13 million to repair from a top of the tree quality surveyor and out of the blue a housing development company offered £40m to purchase the site of County Hall. Sitting with a well developed plan to build a modern comfortable cheap to run office block to suit the much smaller local government workforce for £32m complete with a 200 seater cinema within its Council Chamber set up as its only used for full council meetings six times a year, This project would be loading £8m into the Councils reserve funds.

Instead Peter Jackson who during 2019 announced in the chronicle £17m was to be spent on his ‘lick of paint’ following his abandonment of the money making scheme of moving to Ashington although in complete denial he still insisted that the £32m Build in Ashington was going to cost £80m. Over estimation must be a farmer thing? A recent FOI extended the cost by an additional £15m as it contained scheduled repairs and maintenance costs. That is all on top of the contractor payoff costs which the BBC reported as £5.6m leading the totals sitting at £37.6m, no culture centre completed and the Councils reserves stripped out and an old County Hall sitting half repaired outside Morpeth.

The ‘Whole still remains but in line with Blyth a levelling up conservative culture hub and cinema is planned for the site with the cash being shifted to and from the site on a number of occasions at the whim of the Tories

But recently as its an election year the Government have gifted some funds to level up Ashington but they seem not to include the cinema which Ashington could have had seven years ago integrated into a wonderful new County Hall, which unlike the Morpeth model set outside the Town in Morpeths leafy suburbs and of no benefit to the Town, Ashingtons County Hall was designed to sit smack bang in the Town centre and benefit the retail sector of this very deprived area through trade with Council Staff………to be continued!