After eight years languishing under the handle of ‘Conservative financial guru’ at Northumberland County Council, Corbridge Councillor Nick Oliver is now asking for public help now that the massive cash reserves left by the Labour Party in 2017 are finally frittered away.
When Labour was ousted from office in Northumberland and self proclaimed financial guru Nick Oliver took the reigns of Corporate services and cabinet secretary whose role it was to monitor the Council’s finances he was presented on a silver platter a usable cash reserve of just under £200m with the councils assets with its debts covered standing at £340m.
The solid work of the Council's head of finance Steve Mason who was immediately sacked by Oliver’s team in office and all of the good work on prudence from the outgoing Labour administration even after facing the wrath of George Osborne’s austerity programmes was for Northumberland Conservatives like letting your kids loose with the sweetie jar.
Northumberland Conservatives heads began to spin and looking at them they all showed signs of rapid eye movement when asked about their embarkation into a spend, spend, spend culture likened by folk and protest singers across the Counties rural pubs and country fairs to Michael Holliday’s ‘runaway train’.
The Council’s wasteful expenditure, uncontrolled by the one party cabinet and its guru began by stopping a new office block at the planned by Labour railhead in Ashington then blazing £millions on half modernising the far too large and costly to run County Hall in nearby Morpeth.
They ditched Labour’s council house building scheme to spend millions on an A1 highway scheme not supported at all by the Conservative Government in Westminster ignoring the demands of various Transport Ministers and not backed even when one of Northumberland’s own ‘Tory pin up girls’ held the ministerial post.
Mr Guru employed a myriad of different financial officers and it was rumoured one only lasted a single day as unbelievable sums were poured into academy schools even though the National Conservative Government warned all Councils that their funding was to be spent on improving Council Owned and managed schools. Northumberland Conservative spend, spend, spend heads were turned as wasteful headlining scheme after wasteful scheme became the norm and the overspend of reserves and the dwindling asset base was only held up because of damaging inflationary policies from central government, and it's gone on for the last eight years with Council Tax and retained business rates going through the roof each and every annum.
Even after being slated nationally as being a dysfunctional council and promising their own Government they would change their ways, prudence was slaughtered on the altar of mammon and the pockets of locals were drained ever more with lower band homes in Northumberland paying a ‘mansion tax’ years before it became Government policy for more expensive high value homes leaving Council Tax along with the social services precept climbing dramatically each and every year.
So why is their panic among the Tory ranks this year?
Well that's down to the spiral of anxiety from the last Conservative Government who decided that raging inflation would keep up the value of Council assets to enable balance sheets to look a little better to local voting residents. But the constant falling rates of inflation since May 2024 and a change in the way constituencies are collated all into the same average size is another panic matter designed by the Tories in a hope it would keep them in office, (luckily their plan failed). Has led to a change in the way government grants to councils are viewed.
Mr Guru has now been asked to balance the Councils books and has given out the ‘CUTS FIGURE’ this year as £8,000,000 blaming the loss of rural services grant as Labour way of damaging Northumberland County Council. Mr Guru’s wrong of course as when all grants are put together just as their one time newly married former leader Councillor Peter Jackson said from 2010 until 2019 “the total grant is always the same” when delivering his Council budget speech or attacking the budgets set by the Labour Party.
But the out of the blocks before getting out of bed Mr Guru has even destroyed the financial reputation of Peter Jackson as his Corbridge based Nelson’s eye didn’t notice the Labour Government’s 25% increase in grant to Northumberland County Council.
So with huge falls in inflation and the same Guru sitting on almost £1,000,000 of parking fine income from the last 12 months, his £8m figure is a blind to get some weird weld in on his damaging spin to get headlines where none exist in case people forget who he is. The 25% increase in Government Grant levels out at £102 million this year so all his whinging and bleating on is really in vain.
Northumberland County Council is set to receive a £102.8 million increase in Core Spending Power over the course of this Parliament, representing a 25% uplift in funding under the new Labour Government.
The increase marks a major turnaround after years of underfunding under the Conservatives. During the last Conservative multi-year settlement between 2015/16 and 2019/20, Northumberland’s Core Spending Power rose by just £15.1 million – a 6% increase, which failed to keep pace with inflation and growing demand for services.
Core Spending Power is the Government’s main measure of how much money councils have available to deliver vital local services, including social care, children’s services, highways, and community support.
The new funding settlement provides Northumberland with greater financial stability and the ability to plan ahead, protect frontline services and invest in communities.
The Government's increase has left Mr Guru on the floor with the need to apologise for leading the public astray in order to shine a gloomy light on himself, but failure in public office is failure in public office and he needs to accept that and ask to be removed from the cabinet of the County Council or resign to save face.
Dysfunctionality, overspends, and loss of public trust mainly due to the secret way this Council is managed along with the hammering of staff jobs, the very expensive privatisation of Leisure Services, the need to support its arms length company Advance Northumberland the runaway costs of the new theatre build in Berwick, the long wait for Blackstone help to bail out the Guru’s accumulated debt, not cutting back on the Cabinet glamour schemes and the pathetic need for constant headline making has led to so many people forced out of the door. To cover off this mess the Cabinet is advertising everywhere for volunteer labour to keep services open and running. This all adds to the maelstrom that has damaged this Council not just for now but for years to come. But asking the public to design its damaging cuts after hammering them for eight years is taking the biscuit surely?
Our bet as codgers is that the spin statement from Mr Guru will be swept under one of the unmodernised half of County Halls aged carpets and he will let his untrue statement that “doesn’t feel like rural communities are the friends of Government at the moment” sit on the record of the Hexham Courant in a possible stab to let them take some of the blame as Labour pushed by their four MP’s have dealt a fantastic hand of cards to improve things across the board for the residents of the whole of Northumberland.
Notes:
https://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/25692305.northumberland-county-council-warn-8m-cuts-next-year/
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/northumberland-county-council-warns-it-must-find-ps8m-more-cuts-after-government-funding-reforms-5439170
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z36JE3RGXVM
https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/about-council/working-northumberland-county-council/volunteering
