Its also why Bill and Peter have been in negotiations with the Liberals on a bid for joint local governance – not even your executive knew about that now did they Billy?
This week saw unedifying spectacle of a lone County Council Deputy Leader presenting, or rather sending off his and Bill 'The Bullet' Brooks’s vision of what a brand new Council fro Northumberland would look like.
Forget that, in their world new means a council the same size as the County run with the same councilors by the same leadership, elected under the same rules.
It is a vision that does not have any support in Northumberland sorry stakeholder support such as Sage from Newcastle and the NECC from Durham is evident, only just.
We also saw this week leaders from all 6 Districts united in their vision and bid for a whole new system of governance in Northumberland, lead the ‘Peoples Choice’ bid away to London, to be met by all four MPs who support the two council bid.
It is now up to Government to announce which bids get through the first tests in March before the Ministers take it up to the final decision in July.
But we didn’t have to leave it to the Government did we.
All 7 Councils support the two council bid so the County Council could have put just the one bid forward…..but it doesn’t work like that does it?
With The Bullet and Peter The Great still in awe of their Senior Officers they will do what the officers tell them to do.
Just a couple of things to come over the desk.
We understand now the reason for the gap in expected savings at County.
They plan to install parking charges in South-East Northumberland at £1 an hour.
Its no wonder that businesses and organizations are now backing away from their support at County.
Its also why Bill and Peter have been in negotiations with the Liberals on a bid for joint local governance – not even your executive knew about that now did they Billy?
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Northumberland Today, Massive backing for a rural authority
Robert Arkless, Northumberland County Council, & Amble ward councillor
Massive backing for rural authority
DISTRICT leaders have overwhelmingly backed the creation of two unitary authorities for Northumberland.
Alnwick District Council voted 24 to two in favour of supporting One Northumberland Two Councils, in line with the other five district councils.
Only Couns Robert Arckless and Betty Gray, who both represent Amble, voted against.
The submission calls for two bodies to serve the county – Rural Northumberland Council, encompassing Alnwick, Berwick, Castle Morpeth and Tynedale districts, and South East Northumberland Council, covering Blyth and Wansbeck districts.
The Government has given councils in Northumberland until next Thursday to respond to its White Paper which paves the way for reform.
Tuesday night’s vote followed the failure of Northumberland County Council on Monday to back a single unitary authority, as first indicated, over fears of an uprising.
The county council will put forward the option of a single authority for Northumberland but will also endorse the two-council option.
District leader Coun Heather Cairns said: “We have hit all the markers put in the White Paper. We believe this submission to be financially viable, we believe it demonstrates strong leadership, we believe it will deliver services at a local level and we believe it will be democratically accountable.”
Council chief executive Bill Batey told members that he had received more than 30 letters of support from local organisations for the two-council plan and a number from individuals.
Coun Gordon Castle said: “There is no groundswell or clamour for a single unitary authority by people. We know that because we are close to the people.
“Currently there are no members on the county council’s executive from Alnwick district or Berwick borough so what representation do we have now?
“A single unitary authority would be cast on exactly the same way with exactly the same imbalance.”
Supporting the two-council bid, Coun Jeff Watson said: “It was a complete cop-out by the county council. I’m pleased we will almost be unanimous.”
He told members he believed the Government would reject the reform.
He said: “Why choose Northumberland to impose a new form of government when there isn’t a consensus. I hope and trust this Government – which I don’t support – come back to us and say ‘get on with what you’ve got’.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
More on the Debate from Hansard
I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), and I want to present what is a rather simpler picture in Northumberland than the complicated cross-currents of opinion that exist in Carlisle. I have been helped in what I am about to say by an earlier intervention from the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), who, in a slight slip of the tongue, referred to a two-tier option when he meant the two-council option; however, he made his position very clear.
Like the hon. Member for Carlisle, I believe that unitary local government has considerable advantages, not least because it is easier for the electorate to understand, and because local authorities then tend to have a bigger critical mass of services and staff within which they can make changes and adjustments denied under the two-tier system. It is difficult, however, to implement unitary local government in Northumberland; indeed, we have found it difficult every time such a reorganisation has been considered. At the moment we have a county council and six districts, but the size of the county makes things very difficult. It is more than 100 miles from end to end, and contains two very different types of area: a highly concentrated urban south-east core, and a large rural area stretching from Berwick, in the north of my constituency, to Haltwhistle, which borders on Cumbria.
I want to suggest to the Minister how he might consider the bids that will emerge from Northumberland. To start with, he should remember that when the unitary question was put to a referendum at the time of the regional referendum, there was a clear vote—some 56 per cent.—in favour of two unitary authorities for Northumberland, not one. The votes were broken down according to the way in which the regional referendum was conducted, and in my own rural area the majority in favour of two authorities was much higher even than in the referendum as a whole. It was clear that there was no consensus for a single county-wide unitary authority.
The Labour leadership of the county council simply ignored that fact and decided to go ahead and put to the Minister a proposal for a single unitary county authority—against the wishes of many of their own councillors. Indeed, the leadership did not even seek the council's support for the proposition until last week. The Minister will have received letters, deputations, visits and all sorts from the Labour leadership of Northumberland county council, but they never sought the support of the council for their proposition.
Meanwhile, the Northumberland districts showed surprising consensus. Bearing in mind all the past difficulties, I was surprised that all six districts agreed that a twin unitary authority solution was the right way to go.
Add your comment
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source
The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention the decision that the Labour group took last week. In fact, it was a very narrow decision; the leadership were about to lose the vote, until they reached a compromise. Labour councillors were not going to vote for it, which shows how far apart the leadership were from their own council.
Add your comment
A J Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed, Liberal Democrat) Link to this | Hansard source
Indeed, and I shall deal with this point in a little more detail in a moment. Perhaps both the hon. Gentleman and I should declare an interest, in that both our wives happen to be members of the county council. We both disagree with the view that the county leadership have been putting forward. [Interruption.] We both agree with our wives about this issue; indeed, all four of us agree with each other. In fact, all four of the county's Members of Parliament agree on this issue, as I shall shortly explain.
The districts put together a proposal for two unitary authorities which is an impressive feat of consensus. What really struck me was the fact that they had recognised that different issues would confront the two authorities. The more urban of the two authorities, they said, would primarily face issues such as health inequality, low educational attainment, access to employment, crime and disorder, and synergy with the wider city region based in Newcastle, whereas the dominant issues for the more rural authority would be access to services, market town sustainability, tourism and economic diversification, affordable housing, transport and the condition of the highways. There were different strings of issues, from which I have merely cited some examples.
That was a revealing analysis. We are talking about two different areas that face rather different problems. They obviously have some problems in common with other parts of the country, but there are some striking differences. The financial calculations, which are notoriously unreliable in any local government reorganisation proposal, did not show huge differences between what could be achieved by having two authorities and by having one.
I turn to the point that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley so vividly portrayed. When the county leaders put their single-council plan to the council, they realised in the end that they could not win—that they simply did not have the votes—although extremely strong letters had been sent to Labour councillors, saying that if they did not toe the line they would be expelled, and would not be allowed to stand in the district council elections later this year. That was a pretty serious threat, which they nevertheless continued to withstand. I should explain that in the meantime, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) had written to Conservatives in the area, saying that they should not support any change at all, although quite a number of them were by that time firmly committed to the two-council option.
The council's Labour leadership realised that they were not going to get their proposal through, so at the very last minute a revised motion—it was not on the agenda paper; councillors did not have it beforehand—was produced, containing the following wonderful words:
"Council...Endorse the submission of a single unitary proposal in the context of county support for the submission of both a single unitary by the County Council and two unitary councils by the district councils."
In other words, they could take their pick. As the county leader said at the meeting, the Government are going to decide which one to have, anyway. So the council leadership could not get their own proposal through their own council.
The bid was very complex, involving adding 22 neighbourhood structures. One factor that influenced a lot of people was the county's failure to deliver for rural areas. Opinion probably swung even more behind the two-authority solution when it was realised that the county had an institutional inability to cope with some of the rural problems. The Minister for Schools has taken a close interest in a very vivid example of such problems, and he has recognised that further work needs to be done. In trying to deal with school transport issues, the county ended up imposing a very high charge for school transport for over-16s. It decided to charge £360 per child aged over 16 for transport to school in the rural areas of the county. That does not happen in Cumbria. The council also withdrew train passes from students from Berwick who were travelling to college in Newcastle and told them to go on the bus, which took one and three quarter hours. The usage of the bus has fallen to five people, because it is such an impossible way to travel to college. That is one example of how the decision-making structure of the county did not enable the rural aspects to be considered.
Another example is the executive, which does not have a single member from either the Alnwick district or the Berwick borough, and has only one from Tynedale. That reflects the partisan differences between the different areas, but those differences would be writ large in a single unitary authority. Whichever part of the authority managed to gain control of the executive, the rest would feel very left out. The two-council alternative is more attractive and more popular.
Add your comment
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if we were to have a referendum, support for the two unitary authorities, in his area and mine, would be overwhelming?
Add your comment
A J Beith
Like the hon. Member for Carlisle, I believe that unitary local government has considerable advantages, not least because it is easier for the electorate to understand, and because local authorities then tend to have a bigger critical mass of services and staff within which they can make changes and adjustments denied under the two-tier system. It is difficult, however, to implement unitary local government in Northumberland; indeed, we have found it difficult every time such a reorganisation has been considered. At the moment we have a county council and six districts, but the size of the county makes things very difficult. It is more than 100 miles from end to end, and contains two very different types of area: a highly concentrated urban south-east core, and a large rural area stretching from Berwick, in the north of my constituency, to Haltwhistle, which borders on Cumbria.
I want to suggest to the Minister how he might consider the bids that will emerge from Northumberland. To start with, he should remember that when the unitary question was put to a referendum at the time of the regional referendum, there was a clear vote—some 56 per cent.—in favour of two unitary authorities for Northumberland, not one. The votes were broken down according to the way in which the regional referendum was conducted, and in my own rural area the majority in favour of two authorities was much higher even than in the referendum as a whole. It was clear that there was no consensus for a single county-wide unitary authority.
The Labour leadership of the county council simply ignored that fact and decided to go ahead and put to the Minister a proposal for a single unitary county authority—against the wishes of many of their own councillors. Indeed, the leadership did not even seek the council's support for the proposition until last week. The Minister will have received letters, deputations, visits and all sorts from the Labour leadership of Northumberland county council, but they never sought the support of the council for their proposition.
Meanwhile, the Northumberland districts showed surprising consensus. Bearing in mind all the past difficulties, I was surprised that all six districts agreed that a twin unitary authority solution was the right way to go.
Add your comment
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source
The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention the decision that the Labour group took last week. In fact, it was a very narrow decision; the leadership were about to lose the vote, until they reached a compromise. Labour councillors were not going to vote for it, which shows how far apart the leadership were from their own council.
Add your comment
A J Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed, Liberal Democrat) Link to this | Hansard source
Indeed, and I shall deal with this point in a little more detail in a moment. Perhaps both the hon. Gentleman and I should declare an interest, in that both our wives happen to be members of the county council. We both disagree with the view that the county leadership have been putting forward. [Interruption.] We both agree with our wives about this issue; indeed, all four of us agree with each other. In fact, all four of the county's Members of Parliament agree on this issue, as I shall shortly explain.
The districts put together a proposal for two unitary authorities which is an impressive feat of consensus. What really struck me was the fact that they had recognised that different issues would confront the two authorities. The more urban of the two authorities, they said, would primarily face issues such as health inequality, low educational attainment, access to employment, crime and disorder, and synergy with the wider city region based in Newcastle, whereas the dominant issues for the more rural authority would be access to services, market town sustainability, tourism and economic diversification, affordable housing, transport and the condition of the highways. There were different strings of issues, from which I have merely cited some examples.
That was a revealing analysis. We are talking about two different areas that face rather different problems. They obviously have some problems in common with other parts of the country, but there are some striking differences. The financial calculations, which are notoriously unreliable in any local government reorganisation proposal, did not show huge differences between what could be achieved by having two authorities and by having one.
I turn to the point that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley so vividly portrayed. When the county leaders put their single-council plan to the council, they realised in the end that they could not win—that they simply did not have the votes—although extremely strong letters had been sent to Labour councillors, saying that if they did not toe the line they would be expelled, and would not be allowed to stand in the district council elections later this year. That was a pretty serious threat, which they nevertheless continued to withstand. I should explain that in the meantime, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) had written to Conservatives in the area, saying that they should not support any change at all, although quite a number of them were by that time firmly committed to the two-council option.
The council's Labour leadership realised that they were not going to get their proposal through, so at the very last minute a revised motion—it was not on the agenda paper; councillors did not have it beforehand—was produced, containing the following wonderful words:
"Council...Endorse the submission of a single unitary proposal in the context of county support for the submission of both a single unitary by the County Council and two unitary councils by the district councils."
In other words, they could take their pick. As the county leader said at the meeting, the Government are going to decide which one to have, anyway. So the council leadership could not get their own proposal through their own council.
The bid was very complex, involving adding 22 neighbourhood structures. One factor that influenced a lot of people was the county's failure to deliver for rural areas. Opinion probably swung even more behind the two-authority solution when it was realised that the county had an institutional inability to cope with some of the rural problems. The Minister for Schools has taken a close interest in a very vivid example of such problems, and he has recognised that further work needs to be done. In trying to deal with school transport issues, the county ended up imposing a very high charge for school transport for over-16s. It decided to charge £360 per child aged over 16 for transport to school in the rural areas of the county. That does not happen in Cumbria. The council also withdrew train passes from students from Berwick who were travelling to college in Newcastle and told them to go on the bus, which took one and three quarter hours. The usage of the bus has fallen to five people, because it is such an impossible way to travel to college. That is one example of how the decision-making structure of the county did not enable the rural aspects to be considered.
Another example is the executive, which does not have a single member from either the Alnwick district or the Berwick borough, and has only one from Tynedale. That reflects the partisan differences between the different areas, but those differences would be writ large in a single unitary authority. Whichever part of the authority managed to gain control of the executive, the rest would feel very left out. The two-council alternative is more attractive and more popular.
Add your comment
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if we were to have a referendum, support for the two unitary authorities, in his area and mine, would be overwhelming?
Add your comment
A J Beith
Taken from Hansard
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention the decision that the Labour group took last week. In fact, it was a very narrow decision; the leadership were about to lose the vote, until they reached a compromise. Labour councillors were not going to vote for it, which shows how far apart the leadership were from their own council.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)