Job losses and millions of pounds worth of cuts to services have been announced in North Yorkshire. North Yorkshire County Council’s chief executive Richard Flinton said the authority had to save £37m in the next financial year. As well as axing 330 jobs from the council, the body has proposed to close nine elderly people’s homes, plus cut grants to the county’s theatres.
Remploy – which has factories in Gateshead, in Spennymoor, County Durham and other sites in the region – is looking for employees to take severance packages. Bosses said Remploy is not fulfilling its mission to provide sustainable employment opportunities for disabled people.
Violent crime will go up due to deficit-busting measures – this warning came from police forces across the North-East. The North Yorkshire force will lose 200 officers and 350 support staff.
Cash-poor Durham County Council is still paying staff to work at Glendale House, in Blackhall, County Durham, even though its last resident departed nearly a month ago. One worker, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “Everybody’s fed up.
The Otter Hotel, in West Auckland, remains in ruins after it was destroyed by fire more than a year ago. Local people and officials are concerned the site will continue to be an eyesore as there seems to be little prospect of the debris being cleared.
Steelmaking could gain a symbolic boost in the North-East after the deal to reopen the redundant Teesside Cast Products plant edged closer to reality. Thai company Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) is poised to buy Tata Steel’s facility at Redcar, east Cleveland, which was put on hold for development last February. If that opening can be confirmed, it would mean a tremendous turnaround in the fortunes of the plant.
Although unemployment figures showed that in the North East between July and September, there were 4,000 fewer people out of work than in the previous three months, the region still has the joint highest unemployment rate in the country (nine per cent) along with Yorkshire and Humberside.
Sunderland and South Tyne councils could merge as a way of preparing for tens of millions to be axed from their budgets. Sunderland Conservatives have suggested the two bodies could have one set of top paid officers and combined centres for some operations.
Newcastle City Council has defended shelling out £40,000 on a new Audi car for the Lord Mayor, Brenda Hindmarsh amid a climate of cuts and projected hundreds of job losses.
The North-East region is literally counting the cost of the tatters left behind by a bogus airline