Labour’s help for employers to increase the pool of industry workers

 

Ever tried to bring in new workers and can’t get any with the skills you need?

It's a major factor in all industries especially craft industries now that the migratory workforce has dried up following Brexit.

Train your own is now the only way and it doesn’t need to stretch your profit margins.

Here’s what the Government and Local Mayors can offer to you as a business.

1. Help with Training Costs

• Small to Medium Employers: If your pay bill is under £3 million (non-levy payer), you will generally only pay 5% of the training and assessment costs. The government covers the remaining 95%.

• 16 to 21-Year-Olds: The government will pay 100% of the training costs if your apprentice is between 16 and 21 years old.

• Levy Payers: If your pay bill exceeds £3 million, you can use your Apprenticeship Levy funds to cover training via your digital account. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

2. Financial Incentives

• Cash Payments: Non-levy paying employers can get a payment of up to £2,000 when hiring new apprentices aged 16 to 24.

• National Insurance Relief: Businesses do not pay employer National Insurance contributions for apprentices aged under 25 who earn under £50,270 per year. [1, 2]

3. How to Access Help

You can find approved training providers, check funding bands, and manage your advertising through the official Apprenticeships.gov.uk portal. If you need step-by-step assistance, you can use the Get help employing an apprentice service. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Labour, set to save Councils millions as getting closer to Europe requires the use of ‘Free Euro-Software’?

 

Oh Dear! Say technology billionaires.

Getting closer to Europe the Labour 2024 manifesto focuses on "resetting" the UK-EU relationship to deepen ties and reduce trade barriers, while explicitly ruling out a return to the single market, customs union, or freedom of movement. The goal is to "make Brexit work" through a new security pact, a veterinary agreement, and mutual recognition of qualifications.

Making it work has taken on a totally new look on the back of Trumpism splitting the ultra right from 71% of the British Public, an unwarranted and possibly illegal war in the middle east, huge tariff swings on goods inward with dreadful language used if retaliation from affected Governments and nations places America second.

The European Union appears to have had enough and they have decided to lower the huge drain on their own Government budgets but the announcement by the EU was simple indeed ‘If you wish to trade in any way with the EU you use ‘our’ FREE software.

After the announcement it was rapidly picked up by African and South American businesses and Asia appeared to follow suit as day dawned.

In a very short period of time to trade with Europe, firms selling or delivering services to the EU will have to use their free Euro-software.

The savings for British public institutions are immense. The Government struck a deal to try to cap Microsoft licence costs down to £9 billion over five years. The European Government wants to slash bills of that size down to zero and are now set on the path towards delivering their aims. Those aims will drag UK public bodies along with them. Including the NHS the nations largest licence user.

Microsoft whose hardware changes towards universal changeover to Windows 11 haven’t been a success at all right across Europe with home users lost both financially and technically in the changeover may have been the catalyst as people approach their elected representatives for help and advice on what they should do in these cash strapped times. It looks like in Europe passing complaints up the line has been delivered from the top on their behalf.

Europe LAUNCHES Microsoft Killer - Free Euro-Office Goes Live, US Software Control ENDS

Town Markets and Food Halls on the up Where is Blyth Town Council on growth for Blyth?

 

Northumberland’s largest Town with a REFORM UK led Council appears to local social media commentators to have ignored the needs of residents.

Blyth is not only the largest town in the County of Northumberland its also the poorest, a fact that was never ignored by this Council’s predecessor Blyth Valley Council who ensured the essential needs for the community market were always met with its market full of traders at least three days each and every week.

The BBC recently reported on the recent growth in this sector as Unitary Councils press businesses to pay ever increasing rates on their bricks and mortar high street shops. Market stalls and multi-vendor food halls are proliferating across the UK as rising business rates and high costs pressures bite. Pushing traders to move to markets and away from traditional high-street retail ahead of 2026 revaluations. This shift represents a move toward lower-cost, flexible, and high-footfall alternatives for businesses struggling with increased overheads

The FT as well as the BBC has reported growth in the sector at 26% in February 2026 rising rapidly to 31% in March 26. Councils are also seeing shops returning to high streets where footfall has increased through better markets with all current retail staying put in many of those same towns as they enjoy similar footfall growth and stronger passing trade.

Where is Blyth Town Council on this?

It appears Northumberland County Council, the current market managers where most of Blyth Town Councillors are also members have outsourced its market management to a once a fortnight Craft Market run by a company ‘wavelength’NE. 

It's being said by locals that to get a stall in Blyth your business must engage with wavelength NE. Wavelength appears to have set up an exciting market for early June in Cramlington Northumberland but in Blyth they may need to seek help from the Town Council to attract the stalls Blyth folk want and need.

Many Blyth commentators believe that REFORM UK Blyth branch are up to help the market and partner with the current organiser as they have been photographed as a group of politicians at Amble Market, one of the county's most successful ventures. They have also commented on social media that they have asked stallholders about coming to Blyth.

It appears that the new market place, now built on by Northumberland Conservatives does not pass the weight test for market traders to park their vehicles near the stalls and many fear they will have to hire porters to bring stock to the stalls which would be a huge drain on their profits. Blyth Town and County Councillors from REFORM UK and the Conservatives could iron out those problems and improve the retail off for the whole of the largest Town in Northumberland.

Blyth Reform’s hack back on shared streetcare services Solingen Estate suffers the pain

County Councillor Natalie Rolls represents Wensleydale Ward

 Blyth Town Council, a Reform run local authority, has decided to cut back on its partnership with Northumberland County Council for streetcare services.

It may be a money saving exercise by Farage’s right wing gang in the Town but those who voted them into office are livid with the state of grass-cutting, a streetcare service that is one of the first to be cut back.

Prior to the May 2025 Town Council election, Blyth Reform Candidates made public complaints almost every day about the enhanced grass cutting services especially on Solingen Estate in the south of Blyth town.

Blyth is Northumberland’s largest Town and this complete destruction of a partnership locked in place since 2009 and bringing vast improvements to the service delivery right across the town has now spiralled into a chaotic mess and the Reform Councillors who have been taking photos of themselves replacing street cleansing operatives picking up litter don’t appear to be able to get improvements to services they have stopped paying for.

If this is meant to be a REFORMED way to deliver services they haven’t taken Blyth’s residents along with them.

Town, Parish and Community Councils Offer Great Value for Money.

 

Across Northumberland where the all purpose unitary County Council has been labeled by Local Government Experts as ‘dysfunctional’, is dogged with a Council housing crisis, admits its recent budget process was flawed three weeks after pushing it through, expecting another huge overspend on social services and children's services including education as its short of 12,000 pupils in its schools has decided to run a review into how Town, Parish and Community Councils are run.

The scope of the review is laid out on its website as: We are inviting you to take part in a county-wide Community Governance Review. The purpose of the Review is to enable ‘the Council’ to consider what changes are needed to our parish electoral arrangements. All residents have been sent a leaflet along with their Council Tax papers inviting them to take part in this review.

In support of Town, Parish and Community Councils we need to ask the question of why should a County Council that hasn’t delivered ‘Best Value’ in a local government sense since 2017 offer to be judge and jury over a series of democratically elected local councils who deliver services they can’t and won’t as their prime function at creation in 2009 of ‘all purpose’ unitary council are not a set of functions they can deliver on.

Looking at Northumberland’s largest Town Council as a base measure, for on or around £2;25 per week (depending on your council tax band) they deliver an enormous amount of value for money services that the County Council can no longer deliver due to cost pressures from failing services plus regular public events such as the Town Fair, very popular Music Festival, xmas lights, Blyth in bloom, floral breaks on public open space across the town and other events for children and families during out of term time, as well as supporting community groups survive cuts imposed by County Council budgets including Blyth’s very necessary food bank.

Some Town, Community and Parish Councils keep the area's history alive, Berwick's world famous ‘Riding the Bounds’ celebration has become a huge tourist draw for it and surrounding parishes. Along with other services, they also assist with the ‘Berwick Hoppa’ bus service to help ease parking problems across the Town at peak periods, dealing with matters locally and not relying on a distant County Council very much at all.

Some parishes may need to rethink and enlarge to soak up more public services ensuring equity across the geographically large and predominantly rural county that is Northumberland, numerous small ancient parishes do not have any volunteer councillor members nor parish clerks and a number feels pressurised by the successful parish along the road leaving community activists in limbo on how to alter to attain similar levels of services for their locale or communities.

So, to ensure your area gets the ‘best deal’ out of this review ensure you complete the survey, encourage your neighbours to do the same and in areas where parishes aren't working offer change that your community can line up with and don't let the supposedly Unitary all purpose council deliver its wants and needs to prop up other communities and not yours.

Councils | Northumberland Association of Local Councils https://share.google/Ua7r7nwXNIJA5v8F6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=terUy6tbPHY

https://www.blythtowncouncil.gov.uk/services

https://www.berwick-tc.gov.uk/local-services

After eight years of false promises its time Northumberland County Council planners began to develop their ‘night time economy improvements in Blyth’.

 The turmoil caused by so many false starts in improving the lot of businesses in Blyth Town Centre is being attacked on social media by residents of Cowpen and commented on with fear from residents of Blyth’s beach area.

 This latest debacle has been caused through McDonalds restaurant making an application to the County Planning department to extend its opening hours at its Cowpen Road franchise. This fast food depot has plagued folk living in this residential area with late evening trade blighting homes with noise from revving service users' vehicles, headlights shining directly into some local people's homes and revelry seemingly unending.

     

Since Covid the enormous growth of home delivery has also been a cause for concern by residents as delivery drivers race away from site to ensure food is delivered hot to their customers.

    

 In the knowledge that any objection to this planning application may be a catalyst for McDonalds to take a view on re-siting, homeowners in the Blyth Beach area of the Town have taken to social media to ensure that County Hall planners don’t deliver  those changes anywhere near their homes as the business growth in that area would look quite inviting to McDonalds investors.

   

People from both residential areas believe its time the Blyth Town Team led by Alan Ferguson OBE and Cllr. Richard Wearmouth began to deliver on their long promised improvements to Blyth Town Centres local and in particular night time economy.

    

 Developing a new fast food range of restaurants including a drive through McDonald's restaurant in the Town Centre would ensure evening trade growth in an area almost completely made up of commerce with great car parking access enhancing other surviving businesses who may also wish to open later at weekends to bring new life into a town that's suffered more than most.

    

 Think again Northumberland before blighting areas that aren’t able to take any more commercial abuse.

Between 2010 and 2023, the Conservative Government cut funding to Northumberland by £130.18m in real terms. Sanderson’s Tory’s in Denial.

 

Blyth and Ashington MP Ian Lavery told the press: “For months now Tories in the council have been scaremongering suggesting that the government were taking finances away from our county.

“Today’s Local Government settlement proves that this was always nonsense. A nonsense peddled by those who have slashed services and diverted resources from communities who needed them.

“Whilst we have a long way to go to reverse the damage done to our communities from nearly a decade and a half of Tory misrule, this is a welcome start. Northumberland has unique challenges with a blend of rurality and hardship, making delivering services expensive and complex.

“I am very happy to see deprivation put back at the heart of the funding formula and to see the council getting a significant uplift in finances from the Government. We now need a commitment that the funding we receive is properly allocated.
“The funding injection is aimed at restoring pride and opportunity in places that have been left behind, to get back what has been lost. Councils will have more resources available to bring back libraries, youth services, clean streets, and community hubs.
“With the uplift in financing driven by deprivation in South East Northumberland, and our communities having suffered most from a decade and a half of austerity we need to see a huge chunk of the additional funds spent here.”