It's 8 years on, NCC must renew their forward & corporate plans.

 

     Will they miss the BIG ISSUE again?     

One of the very first things Northumberland Conservatives did following their win in May 2017 was to bring in consultants linked to their government in office to rewrite the Council's forward and corporate plans in-secret.

The changes embedded into the new plans include breaking up the Council's arms length company ARCH into separate trading units, changing long established pre- unitary working areas that kept functions grouped into economically viable spaces based on demographic similarities and moving towards private first public second, dumping as many functions as they could onto town and parish councils to offset the austerity programs of an utterly chronic and totally distant from reality government.

Later they adjusted those plans further to break up beneficial partnerships with local primary and secondary care trusts causing regular rises in Council tax social services precept, forcing tax up by the maximum each and every year.

That last act of public piracy by Northumberland Conservatives forced a major change to family inheritance on the County’s non-farming public with demands to sell family homes and assets to pay for their loved ones' care issued to families days after care being identified. The value that disappeared into the massively deep pockets of the County's private sector massively outweighs the minor burden locked into the 10 years to pay farmers inheritance tax scheme.

Neither plans favoured the achievement of Best Value and a Government inspector Max Caller labeled the Council as ‘dysfunctional’ and members of the public certainly know his judgement was true.

The Council now has the opportunity to correct many of its past wrongs but with its massively bloated communications section missing the value of good staff stories whilst bullying up the Leader of Council, making up headlines where non-exist, we codgers expect the opportunities new plans could achieve will probably be missed.

For eight years the Council has missed its social housing targets with their plans, preferring to only support private sector affordable homes that in reality are completely unaffordable for two thirds of the Counties population.

The Labour opposition Leader has brought up the need to change on a regular and ongoing basis to assist the out of kilter needs ratio for social housing to drive down the numbers in need and assist the huge numbers who are homeless or are left without any surplus income after paying huge rents to in many cases distant landlords.

Even the new Reform & Independent opposition Councillors have questioned the use of section 106 funds which assist the funding of some elements of social housing.

We, the general public, will have to keep a weather eye on the make up of the new plans as the current Labour Government is determined to assist the development of Council housing, a policy it's expected Northumberland Tories will turn Nelson's blind eye towards.

But is up to local people to ensure they ask their local councillor about the way the Council forms its policies and following recent announcements ask should we as residents support a new flashy purple bin outside your homes worth £21m or should that level of Council borrowing be used to bolster the creation of new Council homes and repair the dozens of Council owned empty single persons units standing empty right across it's largest town, Blyth.

Housing, the real BIG ISSUE!