Northumberland News: Blyth’s Labour Team and Residents aren’t after town spend equalisation they simply need a better team time allocation!

Councillor Glen Sanderson and his Deputy Councillor Richard Wearmouth, will go down in history as the pair who destroyed Blyth Town Centre unless they change their stance on Blyth now.

Their regeneration and remodelling scheme supported from a small portion of the Government and Councils £70m energy central pot is decimating, not improving the lot for residents of the Town with its market place being destroyed to develop a community centre and cinema run by a private contractor and not the Council, the very rich indeed Duke of Northumberland being compensated for an undisclosed sum for the sale to the Council of the Towns shopping mall. The mall is to be torn down this year and an Energy Institute is to be built in its place.

Residents of the Town and the local Labour Party are set against the closure of their Town Centre and they look towards Labour’s purchase of Manor Walks in Cramlington one of the regions most resilient and popular shopping malls as the way forward for Blyth and not the development of educational facilities that can be found elsewhere and a cinema which may affect the Town's current cinema and community centre offers or end up like many others in ex-industrial areas, closing down and becoming an eyesore very quickly indeed without huge cash input from Councils, cash which Councils simply don’t have.

Manor Walks, is managed by the Councils company, ADVANCE Northumberland and is an unmitigated success in today's economic climate.

Pressure is on at Northumberland County Council as the Tories have spent the Councils reserves and pushed up borrowing beyond the pale with every area trying to get a bit of anything that's left in the Council’s coffers with a very bad tempered Councillor Sanderson gifting £8M to Berwick Upon Tweed from cash he hasn’t actually got to give away.

In Blyth, opposition Labour Councillors, workers who have lost their Jobs through Councillor Sanderson’s Town Teams decision making, commercial property owners in Blyth and local residents are becoming ever more vocal against the prospect of not having any ‘Heart of Blyth’ to shop and spend leisure time in in the very near future.

What they are after is not equalisation of spend in the Town its equalisation of ADVANCE Northumberland commercial and retail time to revitalise their Town. ‘If they can keep Cramlington’s shops full they can certainly do the same in Northumberland’s largest Town of Blyth’.

They see that Woolworth and the Co-op are growing their estates, M&Co/Yours group are coming back to high streets and the Town having shops galore that could be matched with these and other retail outlets, Blyth’s position and being the major bus terminus for travel from Newcastle and all over South-east Northumberland and North Tyneside should be exploited by ADVANCE Northumberland to bring additional retail into the Town Centre and in the case of Co-op food, equalise its activities with other parts of the Town, such as Newsham and South Beach.

The time is right and cash from the Towns fund and accelerated growth funds is available to ADVANCE Northumberland in Blyth so lets hope local people pleas are heard and instead of destroying the Town Centre the Tory run County Council can instruct its own company to get their thumbs out and crack on improving Blyth and not wrecking it.