Our Council has raised tax by 4.99% and you won’t believe what they are spending your money on?

Conservative led Northumberland County Council has raised its council tax by the maximum allowed, 4.99% yet again after a series of massive hikes every year since 2017.

It’s a Council which has been rewarded this year by the Labour Government in office with a £42m increase in funding even though it has been ruined by nimbyism, scandal, bullying accusations from a former Chief Executive Officer, was investigated by its own Government who drafted Max Caller their troubleshooter in to resolve issues, during its period of administration it also lost a internationally acclaimed audit company after pushing forward with alleged false reports through its committees and have issued promises after promises which they haven’t even bothered to deliver on at all and we are now weeks short of eight years in being spun by Tories in office.

Following well publicised promises from the Leader of Council to slash the number of higher paid officers, this years budget papers showed the Council has had a massive jump in highly paid people.The budget leant towards the 2023/2024 unaudited accounts showing that the Council is paying its chief executive £208,000 a year with 13 officer posts paid over £100,000 per year and 650 paid between £50,000 and £150,000 thats a jump of 133 highly paid officers during the last financial year with residents complaining about the lack of service delivery in all quarters of the Council.

Residents right across the County have been complaining about the various spending patterns of the Council with inequality everywhere. Areas such as Prudhoe who were promised a myriad of improvements from its leading ex-cop Tory councillor which haven’t been delivered, yet a few miles away in the Millionaire belt of Stocksfield the County Council took retired multi millionaires out for lunch, considered a disgrace by many in a county with thousands reliant on food banks across the South East of the County where in 3% of the area 53% of the Counties population live, many on the breadline. With the Council’s privatisation of its leisure services taking once affordable activities out of the reach of most of its population.

Favouritism for some areas has outshone poorer areas by three to one except in the poverty stricken Town of Blyth where those same Tories working with their own Government promised 8000 jobs would be created to improve the whole of South East Northumberland. Sites were cleared by private investors only to find that the cash didn’t arrive via the Council from its own Government so as an improvement they decided to build a cinema/ conservative culture centre and pull down the Towns shopping centre, causing blight in the County’s largest Town, an unforgivable act.

But the galling thing for most residents is that the Council has issued its papers for its budget emphasising their need to deliver value for money a target they haven’t met over the last seven years and if VfM consultants actually spoke to people across a number of the Counties urban and market towns they would find that road closures on an ever ongoing basis, street weeds, litter, dog dirt and fly tipping, housing issues including homelessness and overcrowding along with a dodgy change of policy to mask the true numbers requiring help to improve their lives are prevalent reasons why people feel VfM is miles from being attained yet the Conservative back patting over fixing a few potholes near farm gates and rural roads is a reason that they have achieved their target.

Heaven help us!

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/About-the-Council/Finance/Statement-of-Accounts-2023-24-unaudited.pdf

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/number-highly-paid-officer-positions-26779072

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/ashington-blyth-mp-ian-lavery-31020613

Cut more grass not services

This week's budget meeting at County Hall in Northumberland shows full well how Northumberland Conservatives have given up on ever getting the opportunity to run this Council ever again.

Being kicked from pillar to post by the public and spinning out a cuts budget following a £42m+ increase in income (£20m for general services improvements and £22m for education, children and young people) from the Labour Government shows how their injection programme to increase the level of ‘Osborne’s austerity virus’ among the Tory faithfull still hasn’t worn off.

The budget from County Hall also includes a medium term financial plan or should we call it a trap for the next council of a £25m debt interest payment next year. The net effect is that the next Council will walk into County Hall and locate a huge ‘BLACK HOLE’ that will damage services further.

We codgers who check out a good number of Council’s cuts programmes cannot find another similar sized Council who needs to find further efficiencies this year following a budget increase from Government on the scale of Slasher Sanderson’s cohort.

If we take a little cursory glance at Councillor Sanderson’s 2020  project when he named himself the ‘Climate Champion’ for Northumberland. His list of projects he was going to deliver stands as a testament to spin and no substance.

1 Mines water district heating schemes     Not delivered

2 Carbon heat networks Not delivered

3 Battery storage site for energy storage Not delivered

4 Restoration of peat bogs and plant more trees
Other organisations have ditched his Council and begun this work without him.

5 Renewable energy funding from Borderlands Not delivered
In fact Borderlands may be an incredible risk for the next Council

6 Supporting potential on land solar hydro and wind sites. His group are and have been set against on land wind and solar arrays are only just rearing their heads while stuck in the planning mire of Northumberlands Local Plan.

7 Increase access to affordable warmth to reduce fuel poverty

Not delivered

8 Increase waste reuse and recycling Only hot air from County hall has been delivered so far on this commitment.

9 Schools go smarter travel initiative. It's a good job that's now the responsibility of Labour’s North-east Mayor who is delivering on this issue.

10 increase the number of vehicle chargers by 2021 Delivered, but only because he didn’t issue a percentage target or numbers involved.

11 Identify Cycling and walking infrastructure plans.

Cycling and walking plans have been a well advertised failure and their construction has caused four years of road closure in the town of Blyth, Northumberland’s largest enclave.

Slasher’s future plans include the narrowing of Northumberland’s busiest and most congested highway Cowpen Road, the removal of pedestrian safety islands and all right turn pockets leading to traffic chaos.

The opposition to this project which its expected has been designed to further increase shopping footfall outside of traditional South East Northumberland and increase unemployment as Cowpen Roads shopping areas suffer the same blight as Blyth Town Centre must have caused Slasher’s grey matter to twitch a bit as at the Council’s budget meeting Slasher passed cycling and walking responsibilities over to Northumberland Conservatives spin master Councillor Richard Wearmouth. 

Local Tories have also spun out a story that the Cowpen Road project has been halted. Halted but not stopped according to Labour Councillor Eileen Cartie who is running a petition supporting a Sustrans designed safe route from Blyth Town Centre to Bebside Station known as the ‘Academies Route’ that will halt the increase of road closures, stop the closure of Cowpen Roads shops, save jobs in Blyth and allow people to cycle in safety, bypassing Northumberland’s busiest road.

Its still essential that local people sign Councillor Carties' petition now that the Tories have moved the responsibility for Cycling and Walking over to the ‘dark side of politics’.

We codgers who also support Councillor Cartie and her road safety challenge would like to ask our readers to support this petition as if you have ever driven on Cowpen Road you will understand why an alternative cycling and walking route away from this highway and its dangers is essential.

Her petition can be found here:

https://www.change.org/p/keep-traffic-flowing-rethink-the-cowpen-road-cycle-plan?utm_medium=custom_url&utm_source=share_petition&recruited_by_id=74701380-0cee-11e5-95e2-f19e0f73231e

A reminder of how Blyth fell to bits under a Tory County Council

 

 ‘Blyth Matters’ It's time we called out the gentrifying town planners and remind them that we (the town's residents) don't want a flash market square with the rest of Blyth becoming a ghost town?

As a well established blog group we codgers have always believed we should not name contributors on other sites but sometimes we need to guide readers towards other opinions to garner support for other causes than the Murky.

Blyth, for our international readers, is being stripped of its Commercial Heart by a Tory County Council in the name of ‘LEVELLING UP’. using cash set aside by Government to keep Conservative MP’s in Red Wall areas in the local limelight coupled with the economic crash driving many towards poverty in a Town with some of the highest deprivation levels in England pre Liz-Truss.

The Article we will reproduce here is from a Top contributor on the Blyth Matters facebook site:

Is it me  or has our Council been going around with rose tinted glasses on.

Investing money in another way to destroy Blyth market place.

Millions (being spent) on so called beautifying the town centre whilst driving out the last of the market traders.

More Traders were turning up over the last year finally giving Blyth another chance only to be sold out by a blind council full of planners with big ideas but deaf to the people.

Yes we’ll have a beautiful market square but it will be surrounded by empty derelict shops.

Wilko’s are gone, bargain buys and Argos gave up with Blyth.

I drove down Waterloo road Saturday and can only say that I’ve seen better Sundays.

The Council are leaving it to individuals to invest in our future like Gordons cafe, Pretty Shabby and the new owners of Dollys.

The only other investors are greedy landlords who are doubling the shop rents as they can use them as tax breaks when they are empty to cover their property portfolios in the south.

Even the old Spartans club has been left to rot  as a tax dodge by its midlands owners.

It's time we called out these so-called gentrifying town planners and reminded them that we don’t want a flash market square with the rest of Blyth becoming a ghost town.

I have been pushing for a Christmas market celebration with entertainment and a Santa with goodies for those struggling this year.

I was shot down in favour of market gentrification.

We need to organise a more powerful chamber of trade who will work with other Blyth groups to save our town.

Top Contributor (TC), got most things right and the anti-Northumberland County Council feeling is growing rapidly in the town as the work commences on the market place, following the announcement that the Conservatives who set out to support their red wall MP in the Town now own the Keel Row shopping centre and want to close it and demolish it. That news has gone down like a lead balloon right across Blyth and in its place Blyth will be left with a Community Cinema and Conservative Culture Centre just as people can't afford to go out as the Conservatives economic shambles bites really hard in Towns like Blyth.

TC also understands that market trading is growing for the first time in many years, which is correct according to the trade press, as small traders abandon shops with massive business rates bills to work less days for the same returns on a market stall.

What TC didn’t get right was that his idea of an xmas celebration and a santa giving out presents to children already takes place in Blyth sponsored by the Labour led Town Council who have nothing at all to do with the carry on that's destroying Blyth Town Centre and even less to do with Town Planning.

But both Blyth matters and the Murky codgers have noted that the Town Centre is to be bypassed by traffic in the run up to xmas for 17 weeks from October 2nd, whoopee the tories will have Blyth on its knees even before their culture centre gets a top Tory Councillor to open it now that their red wall MP is no longer standing in the Town of Blyth. 

He has opted instead to run in Cramlington with Killingworth as his Government has abandoned Blyth and have decided to back a battery plant in Somerset Instead of Cambois with a £500m grant, but of Course Rishi Sunak’s billionaire mother in law was a top engineer for TATA and his father in law is a huge investor. But numbers crunched by Electoral Calculus suggest the new Cramlington and Killingworth constituency would have been won by Labour in 2019, even on the party’s then historically poor showing. And as for the present polling, the site suggests Ian Levy MP has a 96 percent chance of losing his place in parliament at the next election. 

Neither could the Conservatives find any takers for new offshore wind farms at their latest open auction last month, slowing Blyth’s growth in that marketplace.

They have not agreed amongst themselves in parliament to invest in a better power grid structure and the lack of vision and direction is stopping homes, new solar farms and onshore wind connections from happening and it's been reported that there may be an eight year wait for those connections including the huge solar farm planned near Blyth’s golf course.

The need for a new Town Centre hotel to house offshore contractors seems to have ebbed away towards the direction of a tourist hotel at South Beach with its proposed new dual carriageway from the beach into the centre of Cramlington bypassing Blyth Town Centre in favour of Manor Walks

We're sure Blyth Matters may have something to say as conservative policy from both Westminster and Morpeth appears to favour other Towns than the largest in Northumberland, Blyth!

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/tata-somerset-gigafactory-uk-governments-8616044

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leALwwjJ28U

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/26/rishi-sunak-faces-fresh-conflict-of-interest-row-over-india-trade-talks

https://www.energyintel.com/0000018a-7511-d1d3-adeb-773758610000

https://www.politics.co.uk/5-minute-read/2023/05/22/which-conservative-mps-are-first-out-the-gate-in-the-2024-chicken-run/