.Unbelievable Council Meeting told all.
The codgers met after watching the May 1 2024 Full Council Meeting where The Leader of Council announced the giveaway ‘deal’ to sell off the Brit Volt site buyback clause for a ridiculously lousy 1.11% of the current estimated Data Centre project cost.
With Northumberland County Council slipping to be the second worst run Council in England according to the Government data exposed in the Times newspaper this week and as people from all over Northumberland know their disastrous involvement with so called levelling up projects and promised non-starters has taken this Tory led County Councils eye off the ball as their inability to keep places clean, green, potholes filled and tidy outside Morpeth and Ponteland is hated by most other residents county-wide.
Local opposition Councillors are having a field day, with Berwicks Georgina Hill completely embarrassing the Council Leader and his hapless Deputy when asking about this long term failure to deliver a single element of best value in the last seven years following all of the leaders promises to deliver more and better services on the public's behalf. With data supplied to Government illustrating failures in Planning, Waste management, Highways repairs and maintenance and Financial management.
The Leader responded with the wishy washy despondency of a man surrounded by the smell of shot foxes that he had lodged a complaint and the wrong data had been supplied to the Government in a failed attempt to gaslight the public. He also had the audacity to say that the Times should have warned him in!
These two exposures this week, the Brit Volt fire sale of land rights and the vipers tongue comment that somehow his own Government had been supplied the wrong figures for every service the Council delivered and delivers to and on behalf of the public except social care! No wonder the Government have reneged on promises to deliver a dualled A1 also promised on so many occasions by the MP for Berwick upon Tweed Anne-Marie Trevelyan eventually reaching the Scottish Border when the Financial management of a local authority which would act as the broker for this project falls further back than its usual weak position to second bottom of the pile of all Councils and has been exposed as pathetically desperate. A wandering service that Labour Councillors brought up into the public eye prior to the Council forcing through its budget with cash reserves stripped out to an all time low.
With audit expert Councillor Anne Dale asking to send the matters to the audit committee for the external auditor to have a look the dismal performance of the Conservatives at a previous meeting, with this hanging over them the Conservatives awful business moved on, but: The fire sale is the absolute admission by the Conservatives on the Council that they have completely abandoned their promise to help create 8000 jobs in South East Northumberland and develop an institute instead of a shopping centre right in the middle of Blyth in the name of levelling up. This institute was supposed to train and service the 8000 jobs that would have spun off from Brit Volt and educate a well planned replacement workforce on an ongoing basis it's obviously no longer needed.
We at the codgers group meeting believe it's now time to abandon the institute build altogether and leave further-ed to other better positioned organisations who through Government interference and xenophobic resistance to foreign students in case they settle here have space in abundance to house the now meagre bit of training needed to service the few jobs Northumberland Conservatives have brought to South East Northumberland. With their abandonment of the Keel Row centre the Tories can boast 176 jobs to be created in 2025 at a wire factory and 203 lost in retail in the Town of Blyth in 2023. This is on the back of news that Blyth’s largest employer Dreagar is looking to re-site its headquarters away from the Town. A hapless position to be sat in.
The mess they have created in the Town of Blyth is using ‘Future High Streets Fund’ cash by the bucket full to develop a high street with no future as the Farmer, Glen Sanderson who runs the Council desires
It's time that fund was used for its rightful purpose and halt the re-development of the Keel Row centre using their own retail development arm of Advance Northumberland who have brought in new shops and kept Cramlington Manor Walks at the top of the league for the last eight years. It's so busy they now need to develop much more car parking to sustain business. Yet the Conservatives are closing a High Street in the County’s largest Town using public cash when retailers are looking for sites across the piece.
The Range who bought Wilko brand are looking to relaunch the brand on high streets this year, Peacocks, Next and Bon Marche are reportedly looking to get back onto high streets in larger Towns, Hobby Craft are moving from trade centres as high streets is the place to be for them as the move back to cash to manage family budgets is growing and online sales slowing down, with many more retailers including the Co-op and B&M’s bringing new shops smack bang into high streets across Britain moving back onto high streets from out of town, with Sainsbury’s and Tesco wanting to build medium size units in Town Centres where they do not have units aleady.
Advance Northumberland is in a terrific place to grow Blyth back to a centre that people want to spend in and the people of the Town in numerous surveys over the years also want a covered in Market so Northumberland Conservatives get off your high horses and deliver what's wanted by real people who live in Towns in our Future High Streets.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8a31933e-b16e-44df-b745-0d5e5108eec3?shareToken=a9e6331a245aae6206ba3159fad52fe6
