Has infighting left your Council ill prepared for October high tides?

 

With high level reports and estimates from the Environment Agency, the website Confused.com and a detailed study in the journal, Oceans and Coastal Management has led to Councils nationally changing core strategies and local planning documents to guide developers into ‘planning for the future when it comes to coastal and riverside erosion.

 

Many councils, although taking the recently released data on board have produced unmapped reports sent to elected members detailing the next 100 years land erosion forecasts and some Councils are planning to strengthen the natural environment to help protect land from further erosion as the joint reports predict an average 14” or 35cm of sea level rise by 2050 and further rises to at least 1M by the end of the century.

 

In Northumberland the local press have taking up the warning mantle and shown that almost 1400 homes are ‘at risk’ in the Town of Seahouses, and the ‘braid’ in Amble along with the road to Warkworth also face challenges in the very near future but the reality of their news stories is that the whole of the coastline is invariably at risk and plans need to be adjusted not just by insurance companies charging more but by the Unitary County Council itself but those Councillors representing mile after mile of coastline and river estuary can’t get the issue raised for discussion due to the secretive nature of the Conservative led Council and its agenda falling under a one party Cabinet structure that's dogged by splits and divisions.

 

It's been pointed out by experts that locally in Northumberland the man made inshore reef at Newbiggin by the Sea over the last twenty years has brought immense amounts of drifting sand onto its beach areas to protect that town very well indeed in future but it would improve even further if also ‘seeded’ with protective oysters. With students studying its success it may be the future for many areas particularly locally, as Tyne and Wear has been highlighted in reports in having to develop land erosion methodology quite rapidly indeed.

 

Labour Councillors particularly Newbiggin’s Liz Simpson have raised the issues of the reintroduction of shellfish around the Northumberland coastline and the development of fishing reefs to break the waves further out at sea whilst increasing opportunity for the Counties inshore fishing industry is the way forward while Northumberland is starved of infrastructure investment from the nations Conservative Government.

 

Their pleas in the press and on social media have been largely ignored by the Conservatives in charge at Morpeth, but with a local environmental expert unhappy with the raised water levels of natural water in Cramlington North we expect a splinter group of local Conservatives to approach Labour and coastal based Independent Councillors to force the issue out into the open but are concerned that the internal battles at County Hall in Morpeth have not died down following the ‘Caller Report’ and may worsen to the detriment of all before 2024.

 

Ignoring these problems will not make them go away but it appears that the County Council is ill prepared for the first test of these predictions when the massively high tides expected in October hit the County’s coastline and river estuaries. 

Councillor Alex Wallace urges Northumberland Conservatives to take a trip to Barnstaple to change their minds about Bedlington Leisure

 

Almost a decade on after the ‘Make a Noise’ for Bedlington event when Northumberland Conservatives stirred up the local population to ensure that Bedlington received a better commercial deal for local shoppers and demanded a leisure facility was built in the town to rival the local towns of Cramlington, Ashington and Morpeth who had new or improved leisure facilities either planned or in train.

 The then labour Council went full steam ahead and produced plans for both the town centre revitalisation to be known as Pipers Place and a study to build a leisure facility at Gallagher Park a site shared by both Town Councils, East and West Bedlington to ensure parity between the areas after the dry side facility built by Labour at Bedlington high school was heavily criticised by West Bedlington Town Councillors.

 Labour lost control of the Council in May 2017 and the incoming Tory council have, covid apart, dillied and dallied on the Town Centre plans and have not taken up the mantle for planning a Leisure facility.

 Councillor Alex Wallace is very concerned at their lack of initiative and is pointing the way to a new facility as an idea for Bedlington which has been developed at a cost effective £15M in Barnstaple by North Devon Council, £6M cheaper than the Ashington and Morpeth developments.

 Councillor Wallace said: “Its been well reported that Eddie the Eagle Edwards has opened a new leisure centre in Barnstaple, home of Tarka the Otter with a 25m 8 lane competition pool, a 20m 4 lane learner pool a sports hall with space for 4 badminton courts, a large gym, 2 exercise studios a spinning area and play areas for young people and to top it all off is complete with an endless ski slope”.

 
He went on to say: “This sounds like a very affordable proposition that would become an unmitigated success in Bedlington, as we have the site and have the will of our residents who want facilities of this nature and with the rising ground of the old pit heap sitting alongside the site we could power this facility sustainably using a solar array also sitting on County Council land". 

 

"I urge the current administration to go and visit this facility taking local Councillors with them and view what on paper seems an excellent use of levelling up, infrastructure and section 106 funding that will come our way as developments begin in earnest around the River Blyth Estuary and housing follows the growth of industry.”

 

 

Tories Public Sector Pay Decline Will Unlevel Northumberland!

 

The recent announcements from Westminster that the Government wants to see austerity measures and pay restraint applied to public sector pay immediately and unlike Northumberlands neighbours in Scotland are not interested in any catching up exercise to help patch over the current period of rising inflation and growth stagnation which will damage rural counties like Northumberland says Councillor Lynne Grimshaw.

“Northumberland’s market towns outside the main tourism areas will be hit badly by the Government stance against its own civil service, NHS staff and Local Government. Northumberland’s three largest employers sit in these sectors and with spiraling household budgets and family costs already damaging business spend, decline is around the corner for many.”

“One of the shocks to me is that a small amount of help has been offered to Universal Credit claimants (and rightly so), that's larger than the 2% pay rise being offered to many lower graded workers in the public sector. So I need to ask does this conservative Government with a small c have any monetary policy in place at all other than lets make the mega rich richer and leave workers, pensioners and those struggling on benefits striving both financially and mentally as the everyday pressure is enormous particularly with rising mortgage rates, uncontrolled fuels costs and companies using the situation to force up profits for their shareholders”.

“ The BBC has reported that eight out of ten people questioned by them are seriously concerned about the current cost of living crisis in rip off Britain. Petrol pricing and energy costs are areas where people talk about their problems all of the time, so let's have the Government on TV to explain their current policy to us all because what I hear is weasel words from top Tories to cover up the truth”. 

“The Government places a windfall tax on energy giants and gives it to people to help offset their bills which to me is simply borrowing the money as the energy giants get it straight back; but not only do they get it back those same giants on a falling market for crude oil and gas push up petrol prices at the pump to stretch their shareholders profits further what if any faith can we have in a Government which allows this to happen? Get talking truthfully Tories or resign from office.

“I completely agree with Labour's vision for Local Government” Councillor Eileen Cartie.

 

Having read Keir Starmer's speech to the Local Government Association Councillor Eileen Cartie of Wensleydale Ward in the Town of Blyth told us that: “I completely agree with Labour’s vision for the future of Local Government, single year funding program’s and all decisions made secretly in Whitehall to ensure that control of local issues are not managed locally and councils are forced to vie with each other to secure funding for infrastructure projects is no way to gain traction towards levelling up England”.

“With the local government pay mechanism being wholly centrally managed by the vagaries of austerity’s working class ‘Project Poverty’ were now leaving employees 20% worse off in real terms than in 2010. Its making recruitment of the highly skilled workforce we require to ensure we can move forward as an industry almost impossible and when we recruit, many of the plugs of the projects we have recruited for have been stripped from the government’s completely negative agenda, take the A1 updating in Northumberland as a prime example, its on, its off, its on, its off its seems we have Government directing local government by whichever way the wind is blowing on Wednesday’s, not for and by what local people need”.

In Keir’s speech he points towards the Government dooming its own levelling up ambitions leading to failure of local ambition and "squandering" the potential of much of the country. Decisions should be made "as locally as practicable" as part of a new partnership between Labour and local government. "A new wave of powers devolved to help grow local economies".

He also said  "An end to the uncertainty of one-year funding settlements, and more stable funding to allow councils to plan. More discretion for metro mayors and local government to spend their budgets how they see fit. No more pitting council against council for pockets of cash."

“I fully agree with Keir’s and Labour’s vision for a fitter, better understood by the electorate and visionary future for Local Government where council’s can work together to benefit people and not have to work undercover to ensure the council next door doesn’t get the funding before you do”.

Don’t be conned by the Tories into accepting a rise in the pensions age, the policies driving their social destruction are not based on equity or equality.

 Councillor Margaret Richardson who is a new pensioner who was caught up in the WASPI debacle has been researching whether the latest announcement of a rise in the pensions age is necessary or if it's Conservative idealism?

She told us that on the back of Brexit “I believe that Boris Johnson’s government is wrangling over how do we maintain a workforce large enough to grow the nation's economy yet still pander to those who want to stop immigration unless they are investors in in the gangmasters agencies and get a cut of workers wages, and they came up with let's keep the baby boomers working longer”.

“The baby boom generation, people born between 1946 and mid 1964 will all be of pensionable age sometime by mid 2031 and the current expression of spin by the Tories is of ‘how can we support such a large pensionable cohort?’ is another con and an element of what's becoming known as ‘Project Poverty’ to ensure we as a nation tip up £billions to investors and bankers while leaving ordinary people in dire jeopardy of starving or freezing to an early death”.

The pressure on Government finance to look after the elderly has been stripped away and DWP economists must have been crunching figures and data as fast as possible at the number of elderly deaths the Government inaction on the early pandemic period and the link with the extension of the pension age from 60 to 67 and then the disastrous for working class areas of the Government’s care and well being package that still forces people who live in towns with low value (by London standards) to have to sell their homes to fund their own care even though National Insurance payments have risen sharply under Boris Johnson.

Councillor Richardson went on to say”raising the pension age to 70 will certainly shorten working peoples lifespans even further than at present with health data showing how people who work on physical jobs such as the building trade, their upper body strength which enables them to perform at the rate employers expect falls away around 55 years of age and people working in the arena of public transport both eyesight and hearing essential faculties to safely deliver people to their destinations drop off at the same age so for many working until  age 70 is simply impossible leading to people being destitute by the time their state pension arrives to bail them out a little bit.”

“ The suggestion from the Tories fits neither equality nor equity legislation as it currently stands and it's something even if you're currently in your twenties you should think about when you cast your ballot for the next Government.”  

I noticed how the state pension age increase saw a rise in poverty in Croft Ward and the Tories want to stretch it further.

 

Councillor Kath Nisbet of Croft Ward in Blyth with one of the highest number of privately let homes in Northumberland agrees wholeheartedly with the recently released view from the Institute for fiscal studies who have looked at the early rise of the pension payment age.

Their research found that the increase in the state pension age from 65 to 66 resulted in a 14 percentage point increase in the absolute poverty rate for 65-year-olds - with 24% of 65-year-olds in income poverty in late 2020. 

Councillor Nisbett said “The research that was undertaken found that the massive increase in poverty was concentrated amongst those who rent their homes privately, single people and those with literacy and numeracy problems. With the high levels of private letsand people with problems concentrated in Croft Ward I noticed the changes first hand yet help is just not available to stop the problems people face growing daily” 

The IFS associate director Jonathan Cribb told the press that a "key takeaway for policymakers is to ensure the working-age benefit system appropriately supports those approaching the state pension age, with this being increasingly important as the state pension age increases further".

Councillor Nisbet said that “it certainly isn’t adequate but neither is the help people need to try to budget without enough cash when not only do we have rising pension ages but we also have the economy spiraling out of control and local people worried sick about how they will survive from week to week and that group will grow as this Government sucks ever more people into the poverty trap of their making”

Northumberland Labour Concerned about Rural Fuel Prices

The Labour Party has warned that households in rural areas like Northumberland are worst affected by rapidly rising energy bills as Labour accuses the government of allowing taxpayers to bear the brunt of spiralling costs leading to additional expenditure over its Tyne and Wear neighbours of almost £2000 per year”.

Commenting on the analysis, Councillor Liz Simpson who represents Newbiggin by the Sea where more than 40% of children are living in deprivation said: “Living standards are currently falling at the fastest rate since the 1950s. The energy price cap, council tax and National Insurance contributions all rose at the start of April. An estimated 1.3 million people, including 500,000 children, are expected to be pushed into poverty over the next few months and what's this Government doing? other than clarting on with Brexit in Northern Ireland and building scaffolding to support a failing Prime Minister”.

Analysis by the Labour Party highlighted that 28% of rural properties were classed as low efficiency in 2019, compared to just 9% of those in suburban areas and 12% in urban areas, and that the average rural efficiency rating was 59 (on a scale from zero to 100) but 66 and 65 in suburban and urban areas respectively.

The Conservative cuts to energy efficiency programmes over the past 12 years have seen home insulation rates plummet while household energy and motorists costs soar”.

Cavity wall insulation rates fell 97% in 2013 after the coalition government introduced its ‘green deal’ that saw previous energy efficiency programmes, which made the installation free or heavily subsidised, replaced with a loan scheme.

Last Year Keir Starmer promised to bring the Labour Party closer to rural areas like Northumberland and farming communities emphasising that “farming matters to Labour”, in the first speech by a Labour leader to the National Farmers’ Union conference since 2008.

Councillor Simpson also told us: “Labour launched its rural England policy review in April last year, outlining a plan to become ‘the party of the great British countryside’ as data revealed that Conservatives cuts in rural areas would cost rural communities £255m a year leaving a wasteland of second home villages as a blight on our landscapes’.

“Labour’s rural England policy review will ensure that our next manifesto provides as much hope and opportunity to rural communities as it does to those living in towns and cities,”

 

 

Labour, keen on bringing Clean and Green Hydrogen Plant to halt the need for a nuclear power station in Druridge Bay.

 “Nuclear power plants whether we like them or loathe them are not the most people friendly when it comes to tourism” is high in the thoughts of Northumberland Labour Councillor Lynne Grimshaw as we move on towards receiving Boris Johnson's Site list for his planned nuclear power plants one of which has been mooted for Druridge Bay for years due to its remoteness, sitting at the clean end of South East Northumberland in the old rural coalfield.

Councillor Grimshaw said: “My dogs and I love Druridge Bay and would hate to see the tourism element of it ruined through a nuclear power plant being sited within its dunes”. “Its not many years ago that people from all over Britain came to protect the area from coal extraction to keep ‘Britain powered up’ but the thoughts of a nuclear plant is certainly a visitor distraction and many would simply bypass its natural beauty and head for the well publicised North Northumberland or the Borders of Scotland, their pockets full of tourism gold would drift past areas of high need such as Lynemouth, Hadston and Amble”.

“My thoughts to help Northumberland lean more towards greeness would be to follow Manchester’s lead and site a Hydrogen production unit on the former old  industrialised Alcan site to turn from high carbon domestic gas burning in homes to clean and green Hydrogen.”

“ I am not a technician but I do know that many of these plants are required nationally to ensure the nations gas grid gets greened up ASAP and it would help replace the highly paid jobs that went when Alcan backed out of its Northumberland site to enjoy the investment Scotland’s regional development area status could offer it”.

“Although not in the same position as an RDA the North-East regions Local Enterprise Partnership should pressure the government of the day to try and get stuck in and bring a much needed future Green Energy scheme into an area that still requires revitalising thirty years after its heavy industry was lost”. “Not all new jobs need to sit in the River Blyth basin with its already huge traffic problems and we don’t want to revive our area with a nuclear power plant”.

Levelling Up? Councils eroded as Mayors to make decisions over their heads.

Michael Gove's new ‘Levelling Up Bill’ appears to be on the face of it the complete loss of local democracy turning decision making on everything from ‘the local share of opportunities’ to planning and infrastructure over to Mayors.

Councillor Kath Nisbet a person who has been involved with local civic mayoralty for a number of years is not happy that democratic decision making is to be removed and is being placed in the hands of one single person, a Mayor, she said “Over the last twelve years we have seen decision making at a local level destroyed by the Tories and centralisation becoming the norm, leaving this nation open to corruption and the stupid acts of demigods”.

“I fully support the role of civic mayors whose role it is to bring the council into the public domain and for the regional ‘shared mayors’ position of chairing and ironing out the differences in regional politics, but all powerful mayors is about removing democracy and leaving the public nowhere to turn to resolve their local issues Councillors will sit and preside over empty agendas whilst those who vote us into office will be fed the lines that Councillors are to blame for everything that goes wrong in society a true Orwellian change, ‘the ducks in a row are to blame’”.

“The Levelling Up Bill to me is about spin,spin,spin with the hard work of revitalising and filling empty shop premises being dumped on Councils after 200years of commerce and market forces has led to their eventual decline whilst mayors will sit pretty and preside over anything new, it's looking ever more like the USA and not the UK and if I wanted to live in the USA I would move”.