Historical Factoids 7:

[Mal]

While we are at this sort of point worth mentioning what Bedlington Forum used to get up to. This was an open Forum so people in Bedlington could come along and have their say on things that concerned them.

The Forum came out of a meeting Wansbeck District Council set up, (supposedly to further the interest of Bedlington) well one of their officers really, who got admonished I believe for actually doing it! At the very first meeting around 200 people turned up at the Community Centre to be told we would see great things soon. First job elect a chair so they could oversee what was going on. A local councillor, who was famed for his penchant for white suits, jumped up and proposed another local councillor to chair the thing. I remember speaking at the time saying we seem to be handing out the medals before we run the race because nobody knew what this was all about so explain what this is all about and we can then elect a chair who we feel best fits the role. At the very next meeting a chair was imposed who was actually a councillor from Newbiggin! It took about a year to get rid of him!

4 sub-groups were set up, transport/roads, Conservation area, events and publicity/promotion. I was in two of those the Conservation one, because we had several shops being prosecuted for fitting shutters and the transport one because that was kinda my business at the time. We managed to hold off the shutter problems, and actually commissioned a ‘shop front design guide’ for Bedlington. On the transport side I well remember a questionnaire which the council wanted people to fill in with their requests for Bedlington. I asked everyone I came into contact with to fill one in and I knew the vast majority had mentioned the need for more parking on the Front Street. I handed in 80 responses off everyone who I had asked to fill one in and when the officer reported back he said there had been just over 100 returned and the main topic had been to pedestrianise the Front Street? I questioned that saying I had a pretty good idea what most people had wanted given the amount I had returned and was told I must have writer’s cramp filling in all those replies. Expletives!

I think that was my first experience of the powers that be asking a question and not liking the answers so they just disregard them and do what they wanted to do in the first place!

The main meetings started going the same way and eventually the council pulled the plug saying they were getting beat up at every meeting! Strange that for Bedlington…….not!

The Chamber of Trade stepped up and paid to keep these public meetings going and that’s how Bedlington Forum was born.

The chair, deputy chair and secretary of the Bedlington Forum attended every Area Meeting always lobbying for the things members of the public had brought up at their meetings. This brought recognition off NCC officers and downright distrust off the elected members of NCC! I remember going to one Area meeting where there was a presentation of the Local Plan, called the LDF at that time. I had read through all the 1780 pages and had reams of question about it. When I started asking questions about stuff that was included in the document I just couldn’t get an answer because all the councillors just looked blank? I had to ask if they had actually read the document through and was astounded when they said no we just read the chapter titles? So these people were getting paid to make decisions on stuff they hadn’t even a cursory knowledge about.

On top of that at some of these meetings certain councillors nodded off in full view of the members of the public who had bothered to turn up.

Some of the stuff and the way members of the public were treated sometimes was quite simply, shocking!

Getting back to the Forum, (which was usually quite lively!) one item came up about the possibility of fitting defibrillators in the Town. We had a presentation off a Nurse working in the NHS and following that support off the likes of our local nurses working in our local health centres. Looked a no brainier to me so we just needed the funding. We asked the NCC councillors to back the idea with some funding and the answer was no. In fact one said absolutely no way!

I never forget that and as soon as I became Chair of the Town Council we fitted 3 in the Town!