14,000 families desperate for social housing but we’re going to build a nice new home for rabbits?

Ashinton, the Northumberland town with the best prospects for an outstanding future is being hampered by the lack of vision at County Hall.

Sitting at the railhead of the newly reopened to passenger transport Northumberland Line, Ashington has a chance to harvest opportunities most Towns would love to grasp and its local Town Council have been first in the queue to push the life chances that can be brought to fruition with a vision that supersedes the hatred shown regularly from Morpeth based Councillors who run the Counties unitary all purpose council, a Morpeth centric debacle.

During 2016 that hatred overflowed when a progressive Labour Party ran Northumberland and wished to sell off Morpeth’s County Hall site for a huge sum of money that would have benefited the Council Taxpayers and construct a much lower cost to build and run office block in Ashington. The site for that office has sat empty since 2017 and became known as ‘the Ashington Hole’ synonymous with Northumberland Conservatives' wish to slow down Ashington’s future whilst building hundreds of new homes around Morpeth and investing millions towards the lost cause of keeping County Hall from falling down, and eight years on that building is still eating cash yet its only half modernised.

Something they couldn’t stop in Ashington was the reopening to passenger transport of the former Ashington, Blyth and Tyne Line although they did manage to change its historic name to the Northumberland Line.

Luckily other organisations have seen the opportunities this Labour begun reformation has brought to the Town with Northumberland Group of Colleges opting to build a new huge facility within a few hundred yards of the station which is situated right in the centre of town

But in Northumberland, there's a significant gap between the demand for social housing and the available supply, with over 14,000 residents on the waiting list for social housing. While the council reports meeting targets for affordable housing, opposition councillors argue that this doesn't address the broader need for social housing and points to a housing crisis. The situation is further complicated by factors like rising private rents, limited housing stock in rural areas, and the impact of short-term lets. 

Portland Burn was to be a large site of mixed housing, some private developments and some social housing. The Conservatives in 2017 tasked Advance Northumberland to do preparatory work placing the site in their newly formed planning document the ‘local plan’.

This new move by those same Conservative Councillors announced by Councillor Nick Oliver from Corbridge, whose main vision for the area he represents is a Cycle Path from Corbridge to shops in Hexham to let the more athletic of his flock tear the heart out of businesses in his own village is to ‘Sell the environmental credits developers must buy or invest in and create what's already being described as both ‘Bunny Town’ and the ‘new Ashington Hole’ at Potland Burn.

It's an abysmal move from a regularly shocking Local Authority, this Authority already has masses of environmental projects that need to be invested in, A large-scale nature recovery project is underway near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. The project, called Hadrian's Wall Wetlands Landscape Recovery project, will transform 4,400 hectares of farmland and forestry into a more biodiverse and climate-resilient landscape. This initiative is part of the broader Hadrian's Wall: Recovering Nature project, launched in 2023, and aims to enhance the area's natural and cultural heritage while tackling climate change and biodiversity loss. 

As an all-purpose Unitary Council Northumberland is actively engaged in restorative farming practices and countryside management, with a focus on integrating farming with nature recovery, climate change mitigation, and public enjoyment of the landscape. The region leverages initiatives like the Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) programme and agri-environment schemes to support farmers in adopting nature-friendly farming methods and enhancing biodiversity. Also several initiatives are underway to restore and protect Northumberland's coastline, including dune restoration, river habitat improvements, and coastal clean-up projects. These efforts aim to enhance biodiversity, improve water quality, and manage coastal erosion. 

These are the projects that deserve to be bolstered by Environmental Credits from developers but using land where a huge drainage project was commenced in in 2019 for building to be used to fill the coffers of the County Council who may cut a few walking swathes in this land and get volunteers to plant a few trees needs to be investigated both by the Council’s external auditor and the Government when 15% of the Councils families sit on the waiting list for council owned social housing with progress on any development working out at three per year and hundreds of homes which could be brought back into use being described negatively in Council minutes.

Notes: 

https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/24472231.14-000-residents-northumberland-council-housing-waiting-list/

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/potland-burn-site-in-ashington-set-to-be-turned-into-nature-habitat-after-ps75m-housing-plans-fall-through-5266712

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqle55kg6xwo

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/country-and-farming/defra-extends-scheme-supporting-sustainable-farming-in-northumberland-national-park-5161037

https://lifewader.co.uk/life-wader-project-to-bring-bamburgh-dunes-back-to-life

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/northumberland-nature-planned-stranded-asset-151702756.html

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/people/planning-application-for-99-homes-at-potland-burn-ashington-revived-after-five-years-by-developer-ascent-homes-3986551

https://ascent-homes.co.uk/news/enabling-works-start-on-potland-burn

https://www.ashingtontowncouncil.gov.uk/widescope/resources/agreed-fgs130224.pdf

Scrutiny, by both members and the general public halted through expansion of secrecy.

 

Having a Council leader who has total charge of the former democratic body, Northumberland County Council is causing great angst among both elected members and outside bodies linked with the Council.

This week illustrated that the Leader has expanded his autocracy as the Council published its statement of accounts for 2024-25, being 20 pages thinner than all of those issued since 2009, Council watchers from across the region were appalled by the actions of this council leader and its ‘secret cabinet’ members.

The council under the autocratic control of Councillor Glen Sanderson has removed all references to the Council’s Key Performance and Local Performance indicators. All reference to national performance league tables and has shown property developers that the Council isn’t willing to praise their successes in building and filling new homes across the County.

We will start this not very well organised huge change away from all criticism of Northumberland Conservatives over Key & Local performance indicator data by Council committees, the press and public and how the Leader has closed down the scrutiny of himself and his council.

Key and local performance indicator (KPI) data must be sent to the relevant government department responsible for the specific policy area or service being measured. For example, data related to education would go to the Department for Education (DfE), while data about housing would go to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Central government departments and their arm's length bodies are also required to comply with the Cabinet Office's Commercial Playbooks and related guidance. 

Here's a breakdown of where different types of KPI data might be sent:

Education:
Department for Education (DfE). 

Youth Justice:
Youth Justice Board (YJB), with data also informing the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). 

Local Government:
Data is often collected and managed by the Local Government Association (LGA) through tools like LG Inform, but may also be reported to relevant government departments (e.g., DLUHC). 

Digital Services:
Data is published on data.gov.uk in the 'Digital service performance' topic. 

General Government Performance:
The Cabinet Office oversees reporting requirements for KPIs across government. 

Other Departments:
Depending on the specific KPI, data may be sent to the Department for Transport (DfT), the Ministry of Defence, or other.

From this data input following ‘scrutiny’ by Council members and in many cases local press and public the local, regional and national league tables are formed and published. We are not accusing the council of not submitting data to Government but its rawness and unscrutinised reporting locally is seen by residents, businesses and opposition councillors as a serious flaw in procedure that’s been fully exposed in the recent release of the Councils statement of accounts for 24-25.

The reporting procedure by not being scrutinised by everyone is being seriously twisted by conservatives, how do we know that? We’ll just last week Councillor Riddle boasted that Northumberland’s recycling rates were the second best in the north-east, forgetting to say that the north east figures are the worst nationally placing the county in the last tranche at the bottom of the national league table.

Best value: as regular readers know the County can’t have the A1 dualled as it can’t prove it can deliver best value in any of the services it’s responsible for and reading these final accounts that destroy local scrutiny opportunities for opposition members we are not surprised the Conservatives have failed best value tests since 2017.

Keeping on the scrutiny issue the Council have not had the ability to fully scrutinise the effects on the Counties health and wellbeing on outsourcing  its leisure department yet in the final accounts a major drop in swims at council owned centres was reported. Members and the public need to take a very close look at this fitness failure and possibly reconsider the service as most people would agree that confidence in outsourced services sits very low in people conscious locally.

Developers, cursed by many conservatives have been thoroughly let down in these accounts as the Council doubled down on the number of dwellings it attempts to harvest council tax from publishing the 23-24 figures as 24-25 numbers as 146,922 households showing further that these figures had not been issued to either housing or planning scrutiny committees or this would have been spotted. It has been picked up by developers who do like to be recognised for their work in revised numbers of homes on an annual basis. But with a failure like this sitting in the final accounts it shows that the well established secrecy of what happens to your very expensive council tax payments is being Pooh poohed by the ‘secret leader and not bothered cabinet’ model that appears to be in place in Northumberland.