Wansbeck District Council

Wansbeck District Council and bit of one of my unbelievable experiences as a Wansbeck District Council, Councillor.

Having begun to be involved in local politics on my return to Newbiggin by the Sea in the late 1970’s I soon found myself campaigning on several fronts. The politics of the Wansbeck area governed by Wansbeck District Council can only be described as bizarre.

One campaign resulted from the pleas for help from residents living on a relatively new council housing estate in Ashington known as Woodbridge. I was approached by a group of tenants who wanted the Council to address the problems they lived with. I quickly became immersed in the problems associated with the awful problems experienced by the tenants of Wansbeck District Council who lived on the Woodbridge estate.

My enquiries showed that the houses built on Woodbridge had cost much more than the houses built by a leading house building company called Willian Leech who were selling houses on a nearby housing estate that were far superior. As my enquiries continued, I began to receive telephone calls at my home from the Wansbeck District Council’s Chief Executive. He wanted to meet with me to discuss my activities. I refused, stating that if he wanted to address the identified problems then the tenants would be pleased. I was very wary about meeting him because when he phoned he was polite with a tinge of menace. He knew that I was concerned about the financial circumstances of the contracts surrounding the construction of the hundreds of homes built by the contractor.

The telephone calls ended when Mr Nuttall called at 11 o clock at night demanding that I cease to represent the tenants. When I refused, he said ‘do you know I am a solicitor’. I replied by saying ‘Mr Nuttall, I do not care if you are the Attorney General, you would not be phoning me if there wasn’t a problem’.

Shortly after that I received a phone call from a Woodbridge tenant saying, ‘Mr Thompson the fireplace is gannin up the wairl’ (going up the wall). I thought the man was possibly drunk or deranged or perhaps it was a trap, so I ignored it. Then a second call came from a lady who, was my main contact saying, that I should go and see the house in question. When I got to the house the man said: ‘the kitchen cupboards are gannin up the wairl an airl’. I could hardly believe what I was seeing because I was witnessing a sink hole in the living room, the concrete floor had dropped some three feet leaving the fireplace suspended on the wall. I was then taken to the kitchen where the floor units were several inches clear of the floor.

Other tenants had similar problems and it became clear the foundations were inadequate???

Within a few years most of the Council houses on Woodbridge were demolished and eventually the land was sold to a developer who built private housing to a suitable standard.

The deal and financial arrangements surrounding the Woodbridge housing estate was never properly investigated. My own investigations suggested that the average cost of each of the Woodbridge properties was over £13,000.00 at a time when a new property on a nearby Leech homes estate were for sale at about half that price???

In 1978 a bye election was called for the Bothal Ward in Ashington that was thought to be a Labour stronghold.

The same Chief Executive was the Returning Officer who presided over the election. The count was held in the Bothal School. Our candidate was George Robson who was well known and a hardworking volunteer who won in a landslide. The Labour Councillors and supporters numbering about 40 people were enraged and so they stood in one corner of the room where the count took place and sang ‘The Red Flag’.

During the Count the rules affecting election count procedures and laws were ignored.

It was a frightening experience and the Liberal supporters were escorted out of the building under police protection.

Alan Thompson .  15th December 2018