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Talk of levelling up and supporting our schools is talking the talk and far from walking the walk.

Jonathan Gullis, Conservative MP for Stoke North, has written about the good work being done by a local charity, the Hubb Foundation, providing food and activities for children in school holidays.  He presents this as if he and the government are supporting people.  He says nothing about why these children need this help, because this government is not interested in structural changes that will redistribute wealth. Recently in Newcastle under Lyme, the Alice Charity was reported being sad about the growth in demand for their work to help families. The Trussell Trust reported 74% rise in food parcels in the year before the pandemic took hold and keeps saying they want  “a UK without the need for food banks”. On behalf of Church Action on Poverty, a group of 4 academics spent three years researching “Life on the Breadline” and concluded this year that charities “should not simply fill the gap but encourage policy to develop structural reforms”. An all-party charity called ‘Feeding Britain’ has called for “systemic change to eliminate hunger in the UK”.

With cuts to Universal Credit, increases in fuel costs, increases in other prices (due to Brexit and Covid), and inadequate government support for affordable rented accommodation, this government’s policies are making matters worse.

Conservative MPs all voted against a motion to provide for children in school holidays; they correctly say “it is the role of the school to educate, not to be the welfare state”, yet are not in favour of proper welfare.  In spite of Boris’ words, this government has still to provide properly for better youth services, just one of many factors causing lack of achievement in school by some of our children. One report (as well as 2 others) in 2019 by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said that factors outside the school account for nearly 90% of the lack of achievement of pupils. So when are we going to get the systemic change to prevent children from living in poverty and under-achieving  in our schools ?

Nigel Jones (August 2021)

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Thank you to all who voted for a Liberal Democrat Team in the County elections. Unfortunately however, we have a heavily dominated Tory County Council elected  here in Staffordshire. It is never  healthy decision making when one party has a huge majority. It is very tempting for them to ignore debate from other groups, and rarely do they amend good proposals by other parties.

Local Plan for Newcastle 2021-24.

The Council have decided to submit a Borough wide plan for Newcastle, led by the Conservatives. This is a major piece of work and includes sites we want to build on for housing or industry and how we address the transport mechanism associated with development and our vision for developing business opportunities. £ 550,000 will be needed extra to ‘go it alone’ rather than with Stoke. Another minus sign is we obviously will not have the opportunity to use brownfield sites in Stoke so more land to build will have to come from within the Borough. The plus side is that we will be steering what we want for this Borough and progress with a joint plan with Stoke was painfully slow. Many are divided about what should have happened, I personally see the benefits to steering our own borough, but it does come at a cost. In 2018 the Liberal Democrats locally put forward our own comments, little happened to them but they can be viewed on the web. If you want to see more please visit the planning policy pages on the web under current development plan page. A public consultation takes place in Sept. The plan needs to be accepted by government  by 2024.

Good News

We are delighted that at last a long time investment by the government is coming our way. Not before time, Liberal Democrats have long fought for improvements to town centre. £23.6M has been awarded to Newcastle, £16.9M to Kidsgrove and a further £11M for Newcastle Future High Street fund. Some of the projects which will benefit from this money include Kidsgrove Sports Centre renovation which is now well underway and they hope to open by June 2022. Kidsgrove station is to have its long awaited lift, a hugh milestone if you are carrying suitcases and/ or children, or if you are  physically disabled.

Other projects in Newcastle include efficient LED lighting for 40 stalls on THE STONES market , Lib Dems are very supportive of plans to redesign the market.

A unit in the Lancaster building has been refurbished to house a new community/employment  skills hub. I look forward to this opening soon.

The old civic offices will be demolished from early August, taking 44 weeks to complete. Plans are in place to restart the development of the whole of the Ryecroft site and Merrial Street, with links to the Ironmarket and High Street. Traders in Ashley way are being consulted to see where they will be relocated to. A new car park is envisaged in Merrial street and the Midway car park will be demolished. The days of department stores in the centre of Newcastle are long gone but I am excited to see the centre of town being revamped and coming alive again. Please look out for the Artisan market which is growing in size and very popular It is good to see Zanibars site being built on again, this is an important gateway site to town, similarly we wait with eager anticipation to see how Aspire housing develop the Ashfields site.

We are asking major questions about the Councils plan to deal with Climate change and Pollution. Liberal Democrats have lead the agenda on Climate change notionally and locally. The Tory Government appear to be slow to act and there is little progress being made locally. We need to understand more about where the emissions are coming from and make radical changes, in order to reduce to zero emissions. When will we get a better transport links and buses and cars being run by electricity?

4489 trees need attention within the Borough and 80 woodland sites need maintaining properly and trees pruned. This is in addition to trees which are in the ownership of County Highways. Money is not there to do this work and so Parish Councils and individuals are being asked to contribute to the cost! Government cuts to local authorities are now showing their effect visibly as well as affecting the quality of life. We as Liberal Democrats want to maintain our trees, environmental issues are high on our priority list, however we think it is wrong that individuals are being asked to pay for work which should be done by councils and have said so.

Walleys Quarry: The Environment Agency say conditions are improving and they have increased their monitoring of the site. Walleys Quarry Ltd say they are working within the guidelines. We say it is not enough because the stink remains just as annoying. Local LDs join in the protest campaign and we will continue to work hard on this important issue; we see little progress on reducing the smell and conditions are still unacceptable. Play your part by reporting the smell – tel  0800 807060 or e-mail ics@environment-agency.gov.uk 

Covid-19: The vaccination programme has gone well, however we need to continue to be vigilant. WARD LEVEL DATA is updated weekly on https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-workareas/covid-19-vaccination/, have a look at it. If you find yourself having to self isolate and are struggling please contact staffordshirecares@staffordshire.gov.uk tel 03001118050 for help or ring the council on 717717. Liberal Democrat Hilary Jones is also willing to help, email her on HilaryAJONES@outlook .com, tel 632895

Marion Reddish (tel 613265).

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I am so pleased I have now had my second vaccination, but I remain frustrated with this Government’s handling of the pandemic. In the first wave, the social care sector suffered from government mistakes, hospitals only coped by stopping non-covid treatments, we went 2 weeks late into lockdown and people continued to enter via Heathrow in thousands each day.  Everyone was feeling their way at that stage, but in June, when the Liberal Democrat leader called for a speedy inquiry to learn from that, Boris refused.  Then in the Autumn, when experts warned of a second bigger wave, government were still deceiving us  by talk of concern when they most wanted to revive the economy.  Now we have confirmation of an exceptionally high England death rate of 1901 per million people, compared to Germany’s death rate of 97 per million, higher than most developed countries, higher even than Brazil.  This is according to the recent John Hopkins University world-wide report on 21 April.

Over half of our deaths came from November onwards, showing clearly the huge mistake government made. If we had gone into lockdown more severely and sooner before Christmas we would almost certainly have had less deaths (as we should have learned from the first wave) and emerged sooner from lockdown.

But is that the end of the matter ? Far from it. We have continued to allow even tourists to come into the country in their thousands every day.  On 24^th March the Indian authorities warned of a surge of a new variant and cases here began to emerge. We still continued to allow tourists from India to enter our country freely. Boris got elected on a promise to stand up for our nation, but now his claim that we had very strong curbs on people coming here from India was yet another deception.  His complacency is unforgivable.  Restrictions on people from India start on 23 April, that is 30 days after the warning.

He has learned nothing from the mistakes made last year and it is costing us dearly.

Nigel Jones

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The quarry actually sits in the Thistleberry ward, contrary to what you will have heard in the media.

Planning Permission for the quarry to operate was given in 1996, despite opposition from my Liberal Democrat predecessors in Thistleberry.  Permission was finally granted by the Secretary of State following refusal at local level. As part of that permission a condition was put in place that the quarry operators had to set up a liason committee to enable stakeholders to raise concerns. This committee has met for over 20 years now and we as the Liberal Democrat ward members have been active within that group which meets at least 4 times a year, throughout that period. At the start it was a productive committee and issues raised were thoroughly discussed and mediation took place, but latterly due to a change of operator at the quarry, useful discussions have broken down and Red Industries refuse to admit it is the quarry which emits the odour. It is hard to believe that the smell can be coming from anywhere else. The Environment Agency officers, Environmental Health team, Police, Highways Team and residents are all present at this forum.

So what happens next?

Regular meetings with management take place on site, raising your concerns, pressure is put on to get Red Industries to co operate better.

A report is about to be published at the end of March by the Council EH department following a member scrutiny committee which looked at all concerns independently, I sat on that panel. Recommendations are in that report about what we to improve. Odour is the major concern, but we are also looking at the route of travel, mud on the road, litter caused by the landfill site, excessive parking of lorries in the layby used by visitors to the cemetery and how we can prevent gulls becoming a nuisance to nearby residents. In that report we are saying very clearly that we think operations should be suspended until all mitigation measures are addressed, better care needs to be taken with regard to netting on site. We are asking for better monitoring of the site, particularly by the EA who have been slow to respond to complaints but are now more proactive following pressure from the public and agencies.

We are working with our MP who has now successfully managed to lobby colleagues for support in erasing the problem. That has only happened due to pressure over a number of years by faithful campaigners who have continually put the pressure. Much of my time has been taken up supporting them, time well spent.

I am disappointed that this has now become an election issue and folk are joining in on the band waggon, many of whom have been silent for years. Pity those people have not been active before, but I suppose we must be grateful they are joining us now, and I hope they continue to shout post County elections! I am supporting a motion put forward by the Labour Party to have an extraordinary full council meeting in order to debate the subject further. I am always disappointed that I cannot put forward a motion myself, but two Liberal Democrat councillors cannot get the necessary signatures to enable that to happen and opposition parties are reluctant to cooperate and so put in their own motions under their party brand.

MORE COUNCILLORS ARE REQUIRED so we can make our own mark. Do your best to support candidates in what ever way you can.

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Medium Term Financial Strategy 2021- 2026.Budget Savings. ONE COUNCIL. Tory Cabinet have now endorsed this strategy, introducing yet more budget savings. The Full Council will approve or not the budget on 24^th Feb. My concern is we are cutting services so much, can we continue to be efficient.

Kidsgrove Town Deal investment plan has now been submitted to the government in a bid for £25m to improve health and wellbeing, and regenerate the town centre. Kidsgrove welcomes this and I am very pleased to endorse it. A video showcasing the schemes can be viewed at hhps://youthtu.be/Kfw635lijlo (Liberal Democrats have a long history of being involved in the interests of Kidsgrove).

The Council have secured two short term contracts for temporary accommodation with Open door  to support the homeless during this cold period. More work needs to be done to address the needs and problems across the Borough with regard to rough sleepers.  Some we assume to be homeless in fact do have accommodation or have been offered accommodation but for reasons of their own decline to use it.

Jubilee 2. Morgan Sindell are now resolving the ongoing building defects at  J2 with regard to the leaking roof and leaks in the sauna and swimming pool area. The Council are not responsible for the bill.

Proposed Resident Funeral service. The Council have approved a residents funeral service which will include more affordable options for both cremations and burials. We recognise the potential hardship some families experience at a very stressful time.

North Staffs Local Air Quality Plan . A plan has been submitted to government including the preferred option for delivering compliance with statutory limits on roadside nitrogen dioxide concentrations in the affected areas in the shortest time. Basford bank and Barracks road are two areas of particular concern. The Council are requesting a consideration of an exemption for electric and ultra low emission vehicles from the proposed bus gate restriction on Basford bank.

Knutton masterplan has gone out for public consultation.  Joint piece of work between the Council, Aspire and Staffs County Council. The aim is to  outline opportunities for new housing investment and improvements in the quality of community facilities.

Proposed extension to Newcastle crematorium grounds and development of land in the Chatterley close area. A controversial proposal which is out to consultation. We await findings before any final decision is made.

Brampton Museum Redevelopment Project. A contractor has been approved  for the redevelopment  project. Work includes the creation of a new dedicated temporary exhibition space, reconfiguration of rooms to expend the capacity of the archives and the creation of a dedicated research area and improvements to the ground floor galleries to better showcase collections and engage visitors of all ages.

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