North East Mayor Kim McGuinness has announced a £22 million investment aimed at driving the development of over 1,100 new homes, including a significant proportion of social and affordable housing across the region.
The sites her combined authority have announced are primarily brown field and former public use land with services either on or sitting close by. You may wonder why we have mentioned services in this way? The reason is that current accepted planning permissions in the region will suffer long waiting periods due to Northumberland securing 10 Data Centres and the top planning advisors Litchfields leafleting homes in West Sleekburn regarding their plans to site some more on land designated for industrial and commercial development.
The sites at Cambois and the Sleekburn area are ideal for Data Centre use although they don’t provide many jobs. The area is home to the river blyth and sleek burns for cooling water along with the National Grid and a transformer plant that can manage oodles of power, currently coming in from Norway through the international link and about to accept offshore power from the Berwick wind farms and overspill from the Scottish wind and solar plants currently being built in the Firth of Forth/Fife areas as Scotland can’t use all of the power it will produce domestically.
The Housing federation has concerns regarding the growth of Data Centres as even with the Scottish and Norwegian incoming power the current and future plans set in place by the Tories
Northumberland Conservative led County Council who swamp the public in the County with glamour statements each and every day never ever backed up with medium and long term plans backed by the whole Council, as every cabinet decision is delivered in secret along with the Chairs of Council and scrutiny highly trained to kill off speeches and questions from opposition parties stifling debate at every turn, are unable to deliver on their promises but could if they change their ways?
The latest promise is that they have developed plans to deliver 11,000 new jobs across the County over the next nine years. This is the third time those same councillors have issued similar statements since 2017 and the plans have fallen by the wayside each and every time.
The main reason for potential failure isn’t just the lack of backing from all parties on the Council, its the lack of Council and affordable housing all over the County, a county filled with elderly people, care homes, second homes and nimbyism way beyond the norm with class hatred sitting alongside racism as always high on the development agenda of the Tories in office. The class hatred the farming leader of council displays is clearly shown on the national unison website “UNISON are deeply concerned over the statement made by the leader of the council in relation to staff wages. The comments made by Councillor Sanderson are wholly unacceptable and gives the impression that staff are unvalued and over paid. Jobs within Northumberland County Council are fairly evaluated through the nationally agreed job evaluation”.
Northumberland Conservatives whose overspends on social services on a regular and ongoing basis, the rundown of schools through the lack of children and the reason they struck 7000 applicants for Council housing off their lists is why they need to turn their second faces and look to see why housing shortages will deny them the opportunity of delivering their yet to be seen in public plans for those jobs and keep Northumberland locked in as a six week summer economy council for holiday makers for evermore.
This week the BBC issued this story: Grid connection priority needed to stop housing stalling: The Home Builders Federation has urged the Government and Ofgem to ensure that AI data centres are not given priority over housing developments in the queue for grid connections. Executive director Steve Turner said that as proposals are considered to prioritise "strategically important" projects - potentially including AI infrastructure, electric vehicle charging hubs, and industrial sites - it is "frustrating that regulatory, planning and policy arrangements effectively prioritise energy intensive data centres over energy efficient homes for families". Failing to prioritise housing, he said, would result in an "effective moratorium on new homes in areas where capacity is constrained".
In order to get around that Northumberland in particular among those members of the combined authority need to borrow and increase their Council housing stock by bringing empty properties back into use so that grid connections do not become and issue for them since they will be raking cash into the Councils coffers from the Data centres already underway at Cambois as well as the future plans from Litchfields.
With a housing waiting list topping 14,000, the affordability of social services adult care in negativity each and every year, Schools short of 12,000 pupils, 2000 recorded empty homes sitting across the County and a black mark sitting over the heads of the council from the housing inspectorate, the Council needs to u-turn to resolve it problems. Firstly they need to develop older persons Council housing on the North-east Mayors sites as all consultation with the elderly of which Northumberland has far more than others through historical population drift, lack of jobs since the Thatcher years etc., wish to stay in their own homes until the end of their lives if possible. An extended District Nursing and Care service already planned by Northumbria Healthcare foundation trust working in conjunction with the Council on new bungalow sites would be a start.
Developing and bringing 2000 empty homes back into use as part of the housing stock will allow families to settle and have children in a safe long term environment then the building of some Council housing in each and every village would keep the schools alive close to other homes so that grid connection isn't a problem could help save Northumberland from the clearances that have made it so costly to develop jobs in Scotland pour over the border into England's most northerly County and the Tories long term plans need to recognise this!
The new motto for any incoming administration in the County needs to be ‘Develop for needs or die’.
Notes:
https://www.northeast-ca.gov.uk/news/housing-and-land/north-east-mayor-announces-22m-to-build-1-122-new-homes-across-the-region
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/council-approves-ambitious-plan-with-potential-to-create-up-to-11000-new-jobs-5627646
https://www.easterngreenlink2.co.uk/
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/jobs-blyth-employment-northumberland-cars-19435348
https://www.politicshome.com/members/article/the-innovation-premium-how-the-net-zero-transition-is-driving-economic-growth
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dn2znzez7o
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