Northumberland Conservatives will soon publish their first budget for the county and Leader Peter Jackson and Cabinet Member for Corporate Resources Nick Oliver have been presenting the headlines to Local Area Councils. Full details will be published shortly and there will be opportunity for the people of our county to comment on the draft proposals. Nick Oliver gives a summary of the current position:-

“When we formed the new administration back in May it didn’t take us long to realise that Northumberland’s financial situation was pretty dire. It did however take us longer than we expected to get to the bottom of why. The peculiar budget presentation and consultation of the previous administration didn’t paint a clear picture i.e. only showing the changes to the previous year’s figures rather than the whole picture, running with continuous overspends in key social care areas rather than restating the costs, some mystifying uses of reserves and contingencies etc… The list goes on. We are presenting our budget in a clear and open way: We were left an extortionate black hole in this year's budget and we will make sure Northumberland isn't sucked down as a result.

In a highly unusual step the Council’s auditors EY (formerly Ernst and Young) refused to sign off the previous administration’s final accounts without the qualification because “there were some significant weaknesses in proper arrangements for acting in the public interest” and “evidence that the principles and values of sound governance were not appropriately applied for decisions taken for the year ended 31 March 2017”.

There was also £1.5m wiped off the value of the councils assets when auditors EY insisted that the £1.9m valuation of an ‘asset’ was reduced by a massive £1.5m. That asset was Ashington Football Club which is chaired by Labour Party National Chairman Ian Lavery MP.

The budget we inherited included £450m extra lending (of borrowed money) to unspecified third parties over 3 years – “delegated to the Chief Executive in conjunction with the Leader of the Council”. No proper scrutiny to take us £450,000,000 further into debt. We have reduced Labour’s irresponsible capital programme by £500m – protecting £30m per year in front line services.

We are taking action to make sure that the council does not run out of money for essential front-line services. Our primary responsibilities are to make sure the bins get emptied, the roads are gritted, our leisure centres remain open, we provide social care where it is needed and much more.

We hope you will engage with our budget when we publish it soon."