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.