Possibly after his reeling brain settled a bit, as his party had been crucified nationally, destroyed in North Tyneside and kicked in the teeth in Hartlepool with only one glimmer of hope as they won a Council seat on a single issue campaign in Newcastle North. This negative activity showing the long term plans of his design had unravelled, with his national Leader deciding a return to being the vocal nasty party was better than the secret society methods of Councillor Wearmouth did he come around and give a one liner to the Chronicle to say he would support the new North East Combined Authority.
The new openness lasted no more than a few hours when in an attempt to steal a positive headline and steer peoples eyes away from his groups loss of 8000 jobs in Cambois and replacing them with an environmental disaster set against his Councils declaration of a climate emergency by selling the site for all those jobs to develop a power hungry data centre he rolled out an improvement plan for the nearby Ashwood Business Park in the Northumberland Gazette.
Councillor Wearmouth has been involved with two previous attempts to kick start this enterprise zone site, announcing a masterplan from Advance Northumberland in 2019 revealing £250m was available for development work through its Enterprise Zone status and an announcement that the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (NELEP), in conjunction with the Council and Advance Northumberland had agreed to invest £2.7m in opening up the site in 2020.
So here we are in 2024 with neither the masterplan or the sub plan spend doing very much as the filling station and cafe’s on the site were funded by their landlords Euro garages, Yet the same Councillor Wearmouth is now promising to open up the site and deliver 1000 jobs and has BORROWED £2.3m from the outgoing NELEP who ceased to exist on May 2nd 2024 when the new mayor for the North-East region was elected.
With Councillor Wearmouths organisation, Northumberland County Council spiralling downwards almost daily this announcement to the public of borrowing ever more must be an immense worry for the new Mayors office as it is responsible to collect the repayments of legacy lending that the NELEP has doled out with NCC’s dysfunctionality still not corrected two years on after the Caller report.
With Northumberland County Council’s treasury department being rated by the Conservative Government in Office as 246th from 301 Councils nationally and the overall position of the Council sitting at 300th from 301 with only the bankrupt Nottingham City Council holding them up one place then the mayor and her officers have a good right to worry about repayments not being made or the third crack at this site being successful ever happening at all as the secretive Councillor Wearmouth has simply placed innuendo in the press about whose hooked in if anyones really showing interest at all its a simple headline grabbing trick from a one trick pony.
The only good to come from the announcements and a promise that may be delivered is that at long last the North Seaton/A189 roundabout is to be fitted with lights following a major local campaign being fully supported by Labour Councillor Liz Simpson from Newbiggin by the Sea along with the local traders association chair Enid Wilson and the Town Council hitting home as the Tories begin to look for friends with the local elections being less than a year away.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/a189-north-seaton-roundabout-lights-28596991
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-61740195
https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/planning-construction-news/northumberland-unveiled/66781/
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/around-90-jobs-created-4m-18938350
Daljit Lally 2018 memorandum of understanding with Government
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ad610f7e5274a76c13dfc1e/Northumberland_MoU.pdf
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