Northumberland Labours aim is to maintain and further improve the quality of our towns, villages and

Our aim is to maintain and further improve the quality of our towns, villages and countryside, making it easier for residents to access services, high-quality and affordable homes, and to travel freely.

● Over the last 12 months 1,200 new homes have been built in Northumberland and we’ve invested over £20 million in the sector.

● Northumberland County Council has placed a strong emphasis on building new council homes and has financed the build of around 300 properties over the last three years. Around 180 affordable family homes have been built in Blyth at South Newsham, Tynedale Drive and Hodgson’s Road and over 80 new homes in the north, across Amble, Shilbottle and Embleton.

● A new £1.9 million, 16 home development in the coastal village of Embleton opened in 2016 meaning local people can rent affordable homes in their local community.

● In July local residents moved into a new 20 property affordable housing development in Shilbottle which has been funded and developed by the Council.

● In April 2016 work started on a £2.8million Council funded scheme to build

26 new affordable bungalows in Morpeth Road, Blyth. The new housing development was finished in October 2016 made up of two bedroom bungalows, two of which have been built to accommodate wheelchair access. The dwellings are also built to Lifetime Homes Standard and include direct access ‘en suite’ facilities and provision for future hoists as well as level access showers. There are also dementia friendly elements such as glass fronted kitchen cabinets.

● A major £700,000 scheme to refurbish some of Alnwick’s oldest council houses in the heart of the town has been completed by the Council. The interiors of 20 council properties in Kings Street have had new floors, walls, doors, insulation, heating and energy efficient boilers installed. At the same time they have been rewired and given new kitchens, bathrooms, blinds and carpets, with the tenants choosing their preferred colours, styles and materials.

● Council housing tenants are benefiting from a five year £31 million housing improvement programme to upgrade properties. The work includes kitchen and bathroom replacements, electrical rewiring, new heating systems, replacement roof coverings and windows.

● £2.9 million has been invested in environmental improvements at our 350 home estate at Newsham and New Delaval. The work has included rendering, improved pathways, garden walls and roads and is due for completion at the end of the 2016.

● In September 2015 Homes for Northumberland, the arms-length organisation that has been managing the council’s portfolio of over 8,000 homes , was transferred back into the council to reduce running costs and save money.

● 2016 was the 5th year for the annual Spirit of the Community awards. They are held to celebrate and recognise council tenants and community groups who have helped other residents to enjoy life or who have made a difference to others.

● Our ground-breaking work around tenant involvement was the focus of attention at the prestigious national tenants conference in Blackpool in June 2016. Representatives from the council and the tenants forum were invited to speak about the new Tenants Voice sub committee that had been set up and which puts tenants at the heart of decision making. The committee, the first of its kind in the country is made up of four tenants and four councillors and gives tenants a seat at the table with key decision makers and a direct voice and influence over decisions affecting housing services.

● In March 2016 Northumberland County Council launched a campaign to bring vacant properties back into use and help ease the county’s housing shortage. In the first quarter of 2016, 64 properties were brought back into use.

● In July 2016 the council submitted an ‘Expression Of Interest’ to central government for support in developing proposals for a new garden village on land owned by The Dissington Estate, north of Darras Hall, Ponteland. It includes proposals for a garden village of approximately 1,800 dwellings with associated local services, facilities and infrastructure provision. While physically separate from Ponteland, the proposed development would be capable of delivering “significant benefits” to the town. These would include the provision of more than 500 affordable houses, delivery of a Ponteland Relief Road, enhanced community transport and infrastructure, and delivery of a flood alleviation scheme for Ponteland.

● We’ve installed over 1200 solar panel arrays on social houses, giving tenants access to free electricity during daylight hours.

● With the new streamlined planning committee system we are seeing an increase in approvals of applications for new housing development across the county.

● We were awarded Bronze in the prestigious ‘National Clean Britain Awards’

large council category for our care of the local environment.

● Hexham’s iconic bandstand is back in place after being restored to its former glory in May 2016 and work has started on the Sele Fountain following

£125,00 from the county council, Hexham Town Council and a number of private donors.

● We have completed work to refurbish Berwick Breakwater at a total cost of £2 million, providing flooding and coastal erosion protection to 145 properties.

● We continue to support those in need through the local council tax support scheme (£23 million) despite significant cuts in funding.

● Through the £721,000 Supporting Families Programme, we have turned the lives around of hundreds of families who have needed our support, and due to the success we’ve been invited to take part in the next phase of the programme.

● Our children’s centre services (which cost £4.2 million net to run a year) have supported 84% of children under the age of five in our most deprived communities.

● Our performance in placing children who are aged five years and over is almost twice that of the national average.

● Our £1.2 million annual expenditure on maintaining and protecting our parks has resulted in many of our parks across the county being awarded the prestigious Green Flag status – that means they're rated amongst the best in the UK.

● Our county won more gold awards than any other council in the latest Northumbria in Bloom awards – a credit to our local services teams and local parish and town councils who work so hard to keep our towns and green spaces clean and tidy.

● We launched ‘Bin it for Good’, our anti-litter campaign; around 250 people have received fines ranging from £50 to £400 for littering so far this year.

● In 2015 we launched a ‘Love Northumberland Hate Litter’ campaign. The campaign involved a combination of littering enforcement, community group litter picks, a programme of school engagement and over 300 visits to food businesses, with the campaign being highly commended in the prestigious

‘Keep Britain Tidy’ campaign of the year awards. In the first 12 months over

350 littering fixed penalties were issued, 42 of which resulted in prosecutions,

400 tonnes of fly-tipped rubbish has been removed and 17 cases of fly-tipping

have led to prosecutions. In May 2016 Northumberland County Council became one of the first councils in the country to use brand new legislation to tackle fly-tippers on the spot. The council’s environmental enforcement team made quick use of the new powers by issuing a £200 FPN to a Lynemouth man for tipping four bags of garden waste onto a grass verge - just 25 yards from his house.

● In 2015 we trained our civil enforcement officers to begin taking action against dog fouling and litter and since in the first 12 months a total of 1,612 waste control investigations were carried out, along with 1,885 for dog fouling. A record 54 successful prosecutions for environmental offences were taken by the Council; including 42 for littering, six for fly tipping and eight for dog

fouling. Along with the prosecutions, 455 fixed penalty notices were issued for littering and dog control offences. This is the highest number ever issued by the council in one year and represents a 37% increase from 2014.

● All of our street lights will be modernised within the next three years – a £25 million project replacing 17,000 lampposts and 29,000 lights – ultimately it will save £300,000 a year in reduced energy and maintenance costs. Free wi-fi is also being fitted onto lamposts as part of the project. Pilots in Blyth,

Ashington and Berwick could be extended to other parts of the county. As well as the streetlights, around 500 illuminated signs will be replaced, and all 1,207 illuminated traffic bollards will be changed to use the new efficient lighting.

● Our frontline staff have new mechanical sweepers and ride on mowers to improve our street cleansing and grass cutting services thanks to £1.75 million being spent over the last three years.

● Northumberland suffered substantial damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure during flooding and severe weather in December 2015 and January 2016 – leaving it with a repair bill of more than £24 million. Firefighters, local services teams and other staff worked tirelessly to support communities affected, in particular Corbridge, to keep them safe during the worst floods in the Tyne Valley since 1771. Almost 200 homes were flooded across the county and in Corbridge more than 50 homes were evacuated as the swollen River Tyne burst its banks. Staff also worked hard as part of the clean-up operation afterwards. In March 2016 confirmed it would provide

£14.6 million from the Department of Transport towards these repair costs. The allocation will allow the council to progress work on a number of vital schemes in the county, including repairs to Ovingham Bridge, landslips at Bywell and Widehaugh and works in Corbridge. 23 small and medium sized businesses with up to 250 full time equivalent employees successfully applied for flood recovery grants and so far 102 householders and businesses that were flooded in December 2015 applied for a property level resilience grant of up to £5,000. In addition to the larger projects planned, a programme of minor works has also been produced - with £4m scheduled to be spent on over 57

works across the county to roads, bridges, fords and drainage systems, and

£300,000 repairing the numerous footpaths, bridleways and footbridges impacted by the high winds and heavy rain.

● The council also received £1.1m funding towards pothole repair costs. Before the storms in early December, the county’s pothole backlog had been eradicated – but a combination of heavy rains followed by sub-zero temperatures have led to further problems. In January 2016 figures showed almost all the potholes reported to the over the previous two years had been repaired. Between November 2013 and November 2015 a total of 12,500 potholes were reported to the council and of these 12,472 were repaired – which equates to 99.775%. During the same time a further 50,605 potholes were identified and repaired during routine inspections by the council. A massive £1m repair (March 2016) programme is getting underway to repair the county’s roads damaged by the winter weather in 2015/16. Jetpatchers can each repair around 145 potholes a day, at an average cost of less than

£10 a hole. Meanwhile “hotbox teams”, a more traditional method of repairing potholes, will be repairing a further 60 holes a day at a cost of around £12 a hole. Extra staff have been drafted in to repair highway drainage systems which have affected by the prolonged periods of heavy rainfall and flooding including clearing debris from gutters, re-cutting verges and digging out ditches. In addition, the council will be carrying out patching works ahead of the annual road surface dressing programme, to repair the extra damage caused by the extreme weather.

● Between 2013 and 2017 £75.3m is being invested in the county’s infrastructure through the Local Transport Plan programme. This included the B6344 road at Crag End, near Rothbury, which had been closed completely after a land slip and was re-opened in March 2016 after nearly

three-and-a-half years and £10million spent on repairs. The physical construction work involved driving hundreds of concrete filled steel tubes up to

80 feet into the ground, with a large concrete beam across the top and 144 ground anchors connected around 100 feet into the ground to stop the land from moving. A length of approximately 400 metres of road has also been fully rebuilt. The project won an Institute of Civil Engineering (ICE) North East Award.

● Working with partners across the county we are investigating the feasibility of reopening a train station at Gilsland; providing a gateway to Hadrian’s Wall.

● Hirst Park in Ashington is being restored to its former glory following development funding of £139,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Big Lottery Fund, and £12,400 from Northumberland County Council and Ashington Town Council.

● Bolam Lake near Morpeth is celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2016 with

help from a £55,000 grant was awarded to the Council by the Heritage Lottery

Fund.

● Butokokan Judo Club which teaches the art of Judo to students aged five onwards from Newbiggin Sports Centre and Ashington have new sports mats after being awarded a grant of £3,167 from the Council’s Community Chest Scheme to purchase new equipment for their club. The Council has given

£1.78m in grants since 2013 to support xx voluntary and community groups and organisations through its Community Chest Scheme.

● £4m has been invested by ward councillors in schemes in their wards and local areas over the last four years.