Since 2022 scrutiny of Council decisions made by the secretive Conservative Cabinet at County Hall in Morpeth have been challenged by experienced Councillors from all directions with the Labour Leader on the Council being extremely vocal in his criticism calling the Council leaders “ a dictatorship” on several occasions in particular on the Tories failure to give true background information surrounding those decisions.
This secrecy began almost a decade ago when the Council kicked out its Conservative Leader and the Tories replaced him with a team of very illusive ‘secret society’ type regimists.
If northumberland county council made a decision previously it was always backed up with figures, copies of the Council’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and the series of Local Performance Indicators that backed up the KPI information with the KPI’s being open public documents ensuring transparency in decision making. Since 2017 this process has been gradually reduced down the ‘twelfth of never’ route with information released to the public only through well managed, non-critical press releases, in other words ‘spin’.
Following Northumberland County Council’s apparent success in this field it was picked up by a number of other Conservative led Councils and seemed under the Boris Government and later to ‘the accepted norm’.
Since the 2024 General Election and Labour entering Government to find the national coffers empty with friends of the Conservative Government sitting with pockets full of publicly funded cash things have changed, with the funding by Government of Council spending necessarily shifting to an ‘open book policy’, with the department for transport leading the field to ensure the public purse is safe in this Government’s hands.
The Department for Transport, one of the nation's big spenders who bankrolled the Northumberland rail line decided that if Council’s arent at the forefront with locally scrutinised decision making then funding will be withdrawn until Councils can show they will manage the Government's cash safely on the public’s behalf and a colour coded system of measurement of policy was devised.
Although the Council has through its spin machine blamed the Government for not funding the two Blyth bypass roads the Council weren’t clear enough why? Blaming the Labour Government and covering their backs with glory.
The reason why is, obvious Northumberland County Council is one of those who are not as open as required by Government with the Department for Transport rating them in the AMBER category showing that with its failed scrutiny policy and spin only press releases they have not reached the trusted status to handle projects on the Government’s and therefore the public’s behalf. The completion of the Northumberland Rail Line was a strategic decision made by the Mayor for the region who was backed by the DfT over the delivery, handling and scrutiny of this spend.
According to the Department for Transport framework, an Amber rating indicates that the council is successfully patching up roads and has fundamental preventative measures in place, but still has considerable room for improvement regarding overall road conditions and long-term asset strategy of Council spend, with new strategic decision making taken from the Council’s hands and given to the regional mayor's office whose strategic decision making is scrutinised by elected representatives from nine Councils along with auditors and civil servants monitoring the spend.
That long term asset strategy failure by Northumberland County Council cannot be changed until the Council can illustrate that the whole Council backs its decision making process and an ‘open book policy’ to assist Government auditors is adopted with much greater public access to knowledge regarding public spend at County Hall.
On 14th April 2026 the Government in the shape of the DfT issued documentation that stated Council’s must issue ‘Mandatory Transparent Reports’ surrounding decisions taken which affects highways spend then told affected Council’s they would hold back over half a billion pounds in pothole repair funding until councils satisfactorily changed from behind closed doors to open and transparent.
During Late October 2026 the Labour Government stated that an additional £220m would be released to ensure winter maintenance of potholes in England this is in addition to the £4,9bn spent on resurfacing 7000 miles of highway this year.
Will Northumberland ‘Open the Door’ and let opposition parties receive full and unquestionable information about what needs to improve to become a trusted Council in Government's eyes or will the Conservative’s ‘secret society’ members keep the door tightly shut?
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/concerns-raised-over-manner-of-scrutiny-on-key-council-decisions-in-northumberland-4843683
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/how-well-does-your-council-fix-potholes-tough-new-guidance-for-councils-will-end-patch-up-fixes-and-lead-to-smoother-safer-journeys
https://www.localgov.co.uk/Councils-risk-losing-funding-under-new-pothole-performance-rules/64196
https://fixtyer.co.uk/authority-ratings
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