This week, Councillor Gordon Castle from Alnwick, a shifter from independent to the Tories following the formation of the Unitary County of Northumberland in 2009 embarrassed himself by asking a question of his one party cabinet in full Putin style regarding new future numbers for housing across England's most sparsely populated County.
Well known as the Duke’s man, Councillor Castle dwells in an area where workers find it hard to get housing and those who can afford to live here find it hard to get people to work for them. The rush for second homes from those selling up and planning to move up from the South to Northumberland when they retire is causing huge unrest county-wide yet Northumberland Tories regularly put Nelson’s eye to the glass.
Councillor Castle of course fully supported the collapse of the Council’s social housing list and the removal of over 7,000 people who dream of living in a secure safe social home in the County they were born and brought up in.
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Following Councillor Castle’s now well voiced shift to full capitalist even though the NHS saved his life in 2020 following a huge motor cycle accident an official press release has been pushed out via the local government press this month to ensure the spin being circulated by both Conservative and REFORM UK run Councils is able to be challenged openly by the public and Trade Unions representing hard pressed planning staff.
With the nation being forced to accept a 6% drop in housing development in its first year in office and the needs surveys of the previous Tory government showing that the nation urgently requires an additional 6.5m new homes in England and Wales.
Those homes which many need to be social, council or affordable are required to house families sharing accommodation, people with complex needs, overcrowding and suffering poverty driven homelessness as well as the continued although greatly reduced need for slum clearance in areas where its unsuitable to modernise to the Government’s new ‘Decent Homes’ standard applying to privately let properties as well as Council and Housing Association homes.
In the recent budget John Healy promised £1Bn boost of funding to ensure the development of Council, Social and Affordable housing taking the future funding for housing to £40Bn with the budget addendum promising ‘very preferential rates of long term borrowing’ to finance the development of those homes. Yet Councillor Castle/s question this week shows that Northumberland Conservatives are stuck in the ‘NOT IN MY BACKYARD’ category.
New home registrations fell by 13% year on year, proving to the local government industry that social housing needs sit in their brightest spotlight for years particularly among those who were struck off the register by a wave of the Tory Council leaders hand. A leader who for a decade has ruled over an empty County asking those who live here to pay additional council tax each year to support service delivery as negative housing growth across Northumberland is keeping council taxable property numbers static with almost 3,000 homes sitting empty for more than five years, yet he whines on to have the A1 made into a dual carriageway when no one lives in the County he lords it over to effectively use that highway and deliver the value for money proof that the Department for Transport needs.
More Homes = More People and More People is better to prove VfM when arguing for better and ever More Highways.
https://www.localgov.co.uk/21-council-areas-named-as-green-belt-planning-battlegrounds/65133
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/northumberland-row-over-cruel-plans-33049611
