About John
Although not from here, I have spent virtually all my working life in North Tyneside working and serving my community. In the 1980’s I worked in, then managed a number of welfare rights services in the Borough. Following the Meadowell riots, I helped set up training and apprenticeship programmes for our vulnerable young people and remained the Chairman of the North Tyneside Motor Project for the first 5 years of its existence. Now called Northumbria Youth Action that organisation has provided apprenticeships to hundreds of our young men and women.
During the 1990’s, I was employed as a Principal Officer advising North Tyneside Council and Councillors on various aspects of policy in relation to housing, poverty and crime.
In 1995, I left to become a barrister, and spent the next 28 years specialising in employment, discrimination and local government law. I have been on both sides of legal arguments in representing local authorities, including cases involving North Tyneside Council. I know this Council’s strengths and weaknesses and I have the skills to restore it to one of our great Councils.
MY PLAN FOR NORTH TYNESIDE
North Tyneside has so much potential but has been failed by weak local leadership. Labour’s promise not to increase Council tax was a lie. Our Labour Council has raised Council tax by 4.99%. It has also cut the workforce by 200 staff – equivalent to 5%. On the 22 March 2025, The Times reported that north east households are now paying a record £444 per annum more in council tax that those in central London. Yet our public services are in decline and our roads are a disgrace. In her letter to households, the outgoing Labour Mayor states that further council tax rises and ‘efficiencies’ are predicted, and there is still a £14 million gap on the Council’s finances up to 2029. It is abundantly clear that Labour cannot manage our finances and its record is embarrassing.
As of September 2023 North Tyneside council was £403 million in debt, today that figure is even higher, interest on these debts is over 50K per day.
It is time for a new approach. It is time for Reform.
Sound Financial Management
Council tax is amongst the highest anywhere in the UK. Yet our roads are crumbling, our public services are underfunded, and businesses struggle with red tape.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
To review all capital and revenue expenditure to ensure all current projects are necessary and the expenditure is proportionate.
To scrap vanity projects. One example, is the £1.5 million Dutch style roundabout at the top of Rake Lane, which represents no value for money whatsoever.
Reform How Our Council Runs
It is proven that in organisations such as our Council, it is a small proportion of the workforce that do most of the real work1. There is significant under-staffing in some areas, and overstaffing within others, and even within the same areas there can be both. Job losses achieved through voluntary redundancies fail to address these fundamental imbalances, which cause low morale amongst the workforce to suffer. Myself and my cabinet will work with the trade unions to create an environment where our very best staff are retained, and not encouraged to leave. To create an environment where all staff are doing worthwhile jobs and operate in a culture where staff want to work, and work hard to serve their communities.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
To review all public sector contracts to ensure value for money and to ensure that bureaucracy, unnecessary red tape and incompetence is not preventing the most productive use of public money
Net Zero Madness
The UK contributes only 0.88% of carbon dioxide to the world’s atmosphere, and North Tyneside’s contribution to that is virtually nil. Reform UK agree we should move away from less sustainable forms of energy, but only as the technology and infrastructures develop, and economics permit.
Our future economic prosperity should not be sacrificed at the altar of Net Zero.
Net zero policies are crippling North Tyneside’s economy—driving up energy costs and killing jobs. It is estimated that net zero will cost us £50 billion per year until 2050. That expenditure will be recovered in taxes, council taxes and higher energy bills. Our industries will become uncompetitive, investment in industries will go elsewhere and our economy will become unsustainable, leading to high unemployment, inflation and recession.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
To stop all non-essential expenditure on these programmes unless they can be shown to be financially proportionate and meet a compelling need. The first priority is to retain jobs and services. For that to happen, we first need to balance our books.
Jobs Training for the Young
We should prepare our children for the future and not just talk about it.
I have been instrumental in setting up skills training and apprenticeship programmes in North Tyneside. North Shields based ‘Northumbria Youth Action’ is a fabulous example of a training scheme, which I developed with the police and the probation services, which has given hundreds of apprenticeships to our young people, in a real world business setting.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
To set up an employer led ‘Skills Board’, and provide incentives to local businesses to offer apprenticeships and training opportunities to our young people on an scale not seen before locally.
HMO`s
The Government wants to move away from using hotels to house migrants and asylum seekers towards using Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMO's). This has serious implications for North Tyneside, which so far has avoided the problems experienced in Newcastle with large numbers of migrants being housed in city centre hotels at enormous costs to the tax payer. North Tyneside has a significant number of large 4 - 6 bedroom houses for rent and would be an easy target for the Home Office. The legislative change will make it easier for HMO accommodation to be used to house asylum seekers. This is a 'two tier' approach that favours asylum seekers and if allowed will increase to the resentment and lack of cohesion within our communities
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
As your Reform UK Mayor I will ensure no HMO licenses are granted by North Tyneside Council to house asylum seekers, and will ensure that all other measures possible are taken in relation to any other properties being used for these purposes.
Potholes
Labour is failing in its pledge to fix a million extra potholes a year. Of a total of 47.1 miles of minor road deemed in need of maintenance, North Tyneside Council has only carried out repairs on 10.8 miles – equivalent to only 22.9%. This is not a Governmental problem, but a failure by the leadership of North Tyneside Council. Whilst the Labour Party boasts it has set aside £1.6 billion to fix the UK’s roads, a report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) has said the cost of bringing Britain’s road back to a good condition has now reached £16.8 billion – a record high.
Whilst the Labour Party are prepared to see billions spent on developing electric vehicles and network links, it cannot maintain the roads on which they will travel.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
To reverse this neglect, by ensuring our existing local authority standards and procedures are not operating to prevent basic repairs being undertaken in a timely and efficient manner, and if necessary, diverting existing human resources to this long neglected and now critical area.
Central Policy
The current waste of Officer’s time writing documents on equality, diversity and inclusion, will be stopped. All employers are equal opportunity employers and this is not a particular virtue of North Tyneside Council. Reform UK supports equality, however, we fail to see how Officers spending time writing and reading policies on subjects that North Tyneside Council have no jurisdiction over is time well spent. This pattern can be repeated over a number of areas, such as the environment and energy for example, and represents no value to the council tax payer.
As your Reform UK Mayor, I pledge:
I will stop the current obsession with matters which have no direct bearing on the work of the Council. As a Council we will continue to promote ourselves as an equal opportunities employer, and provide links to the many plain English guides to the legalisation published by the Government and its departments, and use the existing grievance procedure to ensure alleged breaches are dealt with.
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