Northumberland County Council, defined over the last 14 years of a Tory Government in office as a ‘rural all purpose local authority’ even though 54% of its population live in the cramped urban South-east of the county, have been complaining about the change in funding with the Government of the day steering increases in spending power to help reorganise and smarten up urban areas everywhere.
Northumberland County Council pre 2009 was a strategic County Council level authority and lived up to that name very well indeed during the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic. Then a creep by national governments to integrate levels of local government to try to manage local government cost factors changed the face of strategic need leading to District Council services being integrated into the slimmed down highways, education, health and social care Counties and strategy slipping over to regional based ‘Combined Authorities’ utilising the skills of the private sector to try to improve the new conglomerate councils and get them moving at all levels.
Eventually regional mayors were brought in to help the whole public sector work together for the benefit of residents thereby easing the strategic burden even further from your local elected representative to enable them to concentrate on local needs and issues.
That change appears to have been grasped by most North-east Councils with the exception of Northumberland County Council which since 2017 has been attempting and failing to ‘hark back’ to the good old days when landlords, ladies and farmers ruled the roosts and the County spent its cash on improving their lot.
With the national picture changing through the Tories in office slashing budgets and grants each and every year in an even more rapid attempt to bring the ‘old ways’ under more modernistic control,Northumberland were inspected by Max Caller, a government economic wizard and labelled dysfunctional in his final report.
With that in the background and the dysfunctional Tory-led County rarely sharing its position on the national league tables or leaking any information on its decision making into the public arena or even accepting the mayor for the region now runs strategy and direction they came out against the latest grant settlement from the Government in office who are trying to improve run down low income urban areas and level up society with local government’s help.
The leaning poured out with tongue in cheek vitriol gaslighting the residents of the county was that this change from rural to urban which gives a massive lift in spending power to the Council meant the Council couldn't deliver services in rural areas. With the shift of the £3.5m rural services grant being moved to an increase in spending power to manage an urban refresh over the next three years being pushed by Cllr. Nick Oliver as a disaster.
‘Wor Nick’, well named, showed no remorse when agreeing with his cabinet cohorts that 7,000 mainly urban families should be slashed from the Council social housing register as the Council whose finances he looks after wants to be seen as strategic, leaving delivery to others, effectively doing nothing.
The tales being told to the public exuding from County Hall in Morpeth forget that rural projects are now handled by the Mayor for the region and the combined authority or that care in now slipping further further towards being managed by the NHS and in that issuing gaslighting publicity covered in crocodile tears has been exposed as ‘affordable’ by their own hand as Northumberland County Council did not apply to be considered for ‘exceptional extra funding being offered by Government to those who need it’ exposing their vulnerability towards being caught out (Boris Johnsoning) the public and they have.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptional-financial-support-for-local-authorities-for-2026-27
https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/economy-and-regeneration/projects-and-programmes/rural-growth-and-innovation/rural-asset-multiplier#:~:text=Applicants%20to%20submit%20applications%20by,wants%20to%20quickly%20get%20a
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5z7w9ez28o#:~:text=16%20March%202025,more%20to%20deliver%20council%20services.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e9zn6502jo
https://realnorthumberlandmurky.blogspot.com/2026/02/council-housing-chaos-across.html
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