The north east mayoral combined authority is having to persuade Councils across the region that they are no longer able to influence strategy or draw down funds to be used outside the influence of the Mayor and in this case her office.
Set up by the Conservatives in 2016 via the cities and local government devolution act of that year, fully introduced on May 4th 2017 the act took powers from Council’s constrained by George Osborne's various austerity programs and put infrastructure improvements in the hands of regional mayors.
It's been a difficult process for some old Councillors to understand who have been used to pressurising their leaders into delivering this and that for decades. Those leaders are now toothless, yet many have not yet grasped the fact that they must now ensure service delivery meets ‘best value’ standards and that their books lie open to scrutiny at all times. This is to ensure officers don’t worm-away funds to make their life easier and financial targets are fairly met across the board and that all areas get a fair-share of the available workforce.
The loss of strategy and the adjustment of Councils plans to accommodate the needs of a wider region is now underway across the North east but the old dogs still have all of their old tricks up their sleeve to make life as easy as possible but this week's announcements may have severed their long term goals.
In Northumberland, the Tory led council has been exposed this week by both their pie in the sky infrastructure investment pricing to get projects on the ‘next delivery’ list and the exposure of the secret decision making by Northumberland tories that is letting down the public when Councillors from outside the one party cabinet arrangement are scrutinised by the voters from the wards they represent.
Those two matters have been issued out into the wider community by the Northumberland Gazette and the Leader of Northumberland Labour Group Councillor Scott Dickinson.
The Northumberland Gazette have shown that better checking of infrastructure programs by fully qualified quantity surveyors before being placed before the regional mayor for approval is a must; as Councillor Glen Sanderson the Leader of Northumberland Tories has tried to show up the Mayor by stating he needs an extra 29% rise in the funding to deliver a cycle track from Old Hartley to Blyth even though it already has two cycle/walking corridors covering that journey including the wonderful Eve Black Way through the dunes between the two enclaves when he announced a rise in delivery cost from £9.7m to a massive £13.5m.
Then, Councillor Dickinson drove hand cut nails right into the floor through Glen Sanderson's feet at full Council this week when he exposed their ‘secret cabinet’ in the public domain and the hidden future of the Tories arms length in trouble company Advance Northumberland who they pulled back from borrowing £80m to fund its future but the rumour mill is saying that this huge debt program is secretly back on the cards at the expense of service delivery county-wide everywhere but Cramlington and Morpeth.
https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/cost-of-planned-seafront-active-travel-route-in-northumberland-jumps-to-over-ps13-million-8785032
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