Historical Factoids 16:

[Mal]

One enduring question, and I’ve asked it many many times myself, why has the needs of Bedlington been ignored for so long?  First under Wansbeck District Council and then latterly under Northumberland County Council. 

I don’t know the answer and I’ve never had that question answered, but we can delve a little under various blankets. 

Back in the day we had Bedlingtonshire Urban District Council.  A council many look back on fondly for one reason or another but principally because we were in charge of our own affairs. 

We then had the Local government Act 1972 and in 1974 Ashington, Bedlington and Newbiggin became Wansbeck District Council.  I was told that BUDC was given a choice to go that way or form one with Cramlington, an emerging newish Town at the time with huge commercial infrastructure.  I know which way I would have gone! 

So again by word of mouth by people there at the time, one of the first decisions made by WDC was to make Ashington the ceremonial and commercial head of this new entity.  By that very act I would argue it relegated Bedlington into at best second place if not third place in the pecking order of WDC!  As far as I could see that continued throughout the life of WDC, the council that was once described as “making decisions in smoke filled rooms behind closed doors!”

We then again had the structural changes to local government in 2009 which saw the creation of Northumberland County Council as a Unitary Authority and I’ve already written a piece about that. 

As I said at the time, playing third fiddle under Wansbeck District Council would seem a pipe dream now as so many other towns and villages were added to the list to compete with. 

I now have to delve into the heady world of politics in search of the answer. 

We saw WDC 100% controlled by a single political party.  As I have already written about some of the decisions they made were unbelievable to me!  I think out of 42 councillors there 19 were from Bedlingtonshire.  I even said to one or two if you get your act together you could force WDC to invest this side of the Stakeford Bridge, you have nearly 50% of the votes so it wouldn’t take much to push something through.  I was laughed at and told it didn’t work like that.  Took some time to find out how it did work and as far as I could see it was about furthering the interests of a political party not the people who they were supposed to be working for.  That is the same across all political parties BTW and anyone can see it time and time again when their ethereal Whips impose control on voting.  The voting patterns in Bedlington were taken for granted and so why give yourself work when the elections were a forgone conclusion. 

Ramping that up to a county level and we saw the same and I see it at just about every full council meeting to this day. 

That’s a cycle we have to break and we made a good start by electing some independent councillors which believe me sent ripples throughout the political establishment!  Just to demonstrate, and it’s plain to see, at most if not all major NCC meetings it’s the independent councillors asking the really ‘difficult’ questions.

As far as I can see the only way to get decisions based on merit instead of political expediency is to elect more independent councillors, at least we can vote with our conscience instead of being told how to vote on certain issues! 

I now want to look at budgets and how they work.   The council has, by law, to pass an annual balanced budget so if we see schemes included, like for the sake of argument the Bedlington Regeneration funding, which fail to get started in a year that funding is basically lost.  There are options to keep it but essentially 99% of funding which falls into this category is lost.  So we saw funding allocated to Bedlington of between £6-£12M over about 3 budgets.  Each time failure to realise that project meant the funding was lost, that’s why it had to be reinserted into the next year’s budget.  Covid finally stopped any major funding for Bedlington being included and by major I mean 10’s of millions.

Bearing in mind that something approaching 90% of the NCC budget goes into the social side of things like adult and young people’s services, and with a large county like ours where towns up and down are equally screaming for investment it’s not hard to see pressures building up. 

It is easy to see why external funding for various projects is so necessary for NCC, like Levelling up funding, High Street funding, Borderlands etc.

Whilst I understand the constraints I still cannot excuse the fact that Bedlington is only included in the smallest pot!  That’s seems to me to be a mixture of political pressure and easy options. 

There are a few of my thoughts, if anyone can give me a definitive answer please do!