https://southtyneside.greenparty.org.uk/matt-blair-west-park-south-tyneside-green-party/

Cllr Matt Blair, South Shields Town Hall, South Shields (2026)

01/11/2026

I was having a chat with a mate about the Budget. He’s pleased that business rates for his gym are going down, and rightly so.

We agreed there was some genuinely good stuff in there.

But for me, the biggest thing missing was a wealth tax.

Since becoming a councillor, I’ve been genuinely shocked at how much we’re expected to do with such limited resources.

From maintaining parks and public spaces to supporting vulnerable residents, housing, highways and essential services, local authorities have enormous responsibilities.

Yet we’re constantly being asked to do more with less, fighting over what often feels like scraps.

And it got me thinking about something I don’t believe enough people fully appreciate.

Just how extraordinarily wealthy the ultra-rich actually are.

When politicians talk about those with the “broadest shoulders”, the conversation often turns to higher earners. Someone on £100,000 a year, for example.

Now, that’s unquestionably a very good salary.

But consider this:

💷 Someone earning £100,000 every year would need to work for 10,000 YEARS to accumulate £1 billion in gross pay.

That’s assuming they never paid a penny in tax and never spent anything!

We’re talking about completely different levels of wealth.

Researchers at King’s College London and their collaborators recently proposed a minimum effective annual tax equivalent to 2% of the wealth of households worth more than £100 million, taking account of relevant taxes already paid.

Their research estimates this could raise £10.4 BILLION a year in the UK, affecting fewer than 1,000 households.

Meanwhile, the Local Government Association projects that councils in England face a £7 BILLION funding gap by 2028/29.

Of course, these figures cover different years and areas, and I’m not suggesting that hypothetical tax revenue has been allocated to councils.

But they certainly illustrate the scale of the choices available to us.

“But won’t the wealthy just leave the country?”

It’s a fair question, and one we should take seriously.

Interestingly, an October 2026 study examining wealth-tax reforms in Norway found that some wealthy people did move abroad.

However, the researcher estimated that wealth-tax revenues still increased by 71.5% between 2021 and 2024, after accounting for reform-related emigration.

Norway’s reforms weren’t identical to the proposed UK tax, but the findings suggest that people leaving doesn’t automatically make wealth taxation unworkable.

The King’s College proposal also includes a safeguard that would keep affected households liable for up to ten years after leaving the UK. That’s a proposal, not existing law.

I’m not suggesting any of this would be straightforward. There are legitimate questions about implementation, fairness and unintended consequences.

But surely it’s a conversation worth having?

This isn’t about punishing people for earning a good living or being successful. It’s about whether those with extraordinary levels of wealth should contribute more to the society in which that wealth is created.

And while councils struggle to deliver the services our communities rely on, I think it’s a question we can no longer afford to ignore.

⸻

🗳️ POLL — I’D LIKE YOUR VIEWS

Should the UK introduce a 2% minimum effective wealth tax on households worth more than £100 million?

✅ YES — I support it.

❌ NO — I oppose it.

🤔 UNDECIDED — I’d like to know more.

Comment YES, NO or UNDECIDED below.

And if you’ve got a minute, tell me why.

I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives, particularly from those who disagree. Good policy should stand up to scrutiny, and I’d much rather have a constructive discussion than an argument.

Matt Blair
Green Councillor | West Park | South Tyneside

Research and sources:

📚 King’s College London — Two percent minimum tax on richest households, July 2026
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/2-minimum-tax-on-richest-households-could-raise-10-billion-a-year

📚 Local Government Association — Autumn Budget 2026 briefing
https://www.local.gov.uk/autumn-budget-2026

📚 Marius A. K. Ring — Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from Norway, NBER, October 2026
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35854

29/10/2026

West Park Ward Surgery – this Saturday 🌳

A quick reminder that our next West Park ward surgery is taking place this Saturday.

📅 Saturday 31 October

🕙 10:00am–11:30am
📍 West Park Bowling Club, West Park

It’s an informal drop-in for residents from across the whole ward to come and speak to us about any local issues, concerns, ideas or Council matters you’d like help with.

No appointment needed - just come along and have a chat.

We had a really useful first session last month and came away with plenty to follow up, so we’re looking forward to hearing what residents want to raise this time.

Just to avoid any confusion, this is a councillor ward surgery and is separate from Friends of West Park meetings.

See you Saturday. 🌱

25/10/2026

Passing the motion is only the start.

On Thursday, South Tyneside Council unanimously backed the amended motion I proposed on the Tyne nurdle spill and a cleaner river.

Greens and Reform worked together on the wording, and councillors across the chamber backed it.

As I said in the chamber: “The end of a contractor-led clean-up cannot mean the end of responsibility.”

Now comes the follow-through: pressing for transparency about remaining pollution, clear rules on when professional clean-up restarts, and ring-fenced funding from those responsible or their insurers for future recovery and monitoring.

My next step is tomorrow, Monday 26 October, at the elected members’ briefing on Littlehaven bathing-water quality with the Council, and the Environment Agency. I’ll be asking for evidence, clear responsibilities and a timetable for next steps.

If South Tyneside Green Party and Reform can work together for a cleaner Tyne, Andy Burnham needs to take note.

15/10/2026

My motion on the Tyne nurdle spill has now been accepted and will go before Full Council.

We’re now almost three months on from the spill, and this still isn’t finished.

New modelling from Newcastle University suggests that around 2.2 tonnes of nurdles may still have remained within the Tyne estuary on 30 August, six weeks after the incident. With autumn and winter bringing higher river flows, some remaining material could be remobilised and carried further downstream.

That reinforces one of the main points I’ve been making throughout this: scaling down the contractor-led clean-up cannot mean responsibility for the pollution simply ends.

My motion calls for an independently chaired multi-agency review of the response, clear recovery and reactivation thresholds, transparency around remaining and buried material, and ring-fenced funding from those responsible and/or their insurers for future recovery, monitoring and remediation.
It also asks that wider compensation is considered separately, including environmental, community, amenity, tourism and economic impacts.

And I want us to look beyond this one incident. The motion calls for a regional Cleaner Tyne approach, working with neighbouring councils and the North East Mayor on water quality, environmental resilience and preventing this happening again.

Thanks to the South Tyneside Green group for supporting the motion, and credit to other councils along the Tyne who have already pushed this forward. North Tyneside and Gateshead have led the way with their own motions and calls for stronger regional action, and thanks to Cllr Tom Bailey and many others who have kept the issue moving across the river.

I’m meeting the Council Leader on Monday ahead of Full Council to discuss the motion and hopefully get Reform UK - South Shields on board as well. I’d like to see this go through with broad cross-party support. The Tyne doesn’t stop at council or party boundaries.

There has been a huge amount of work by volunteers, council teams, contractors and researchers. We now need to make sure the long-term response matches that effort.

🎥 Modelling/video credit: Newcastle University

13/10/2026

Cllr Chris Eynon described a proposed memorial to Sunderland’s International Brigade volunteers as “absolute nonsense”. These were people who had the physical courage to go to Spain and fight fascism.

His council has also withdrawn support for Show Racism the Red Card’s Wear Red Day, citing its chief executive’s criticism of Reform.

I see a pattern: ridicule for remembering those who fought fascism, and hostility towards a campaign challenging racism today.

It takes no courage to make cheap jokes from a council chamber about people who risked their lives.

Now he’s celebrated South Tyneside supposedly cutting funding. The council says it wasn’t providing funding to withdraw, and its support for the campaign will continue.

All that swagger over a funding cut that the council says didn’t happen.

Correct the record, Chris. Your decision in Sunderland is yours to answer for. South Tyneside continues to support this campaign; don’t put our borough in the same basket.

02/10/2026

“Enough scrutiny”? Really?

We tried to call in the decision to close all ten STANLEY nurseries.

The call-in was blocked.

Under South Tyneside Council’s current Constitution, three councillors are not enough to call in a Cabinet decision. You also need the support of both the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Co-ordinating and Call-In Committee.

Cllr Shirley Ford, the Chair, supported the call-in.

The Vice-Chair, Cllr Jason Diamond, refused to support it.

Cllr Ford confirmed to colleagues that because his agreement was mandatory, the call-in could not go ahead.

I am also told that during a telephone conversation with another councillor, Cllr Diamond said there had already been “enough scrutiny”.

A lot of people will beg to differ.

Just days earlier, the Council’s own Education and Skills Scrutiny Committee recommended that Cabinet defer the decision until after its meeting on 8 October, specifically so outstanding questions raised by committee members and Save Our STANLEYs could be answered.

Cabinet refused.

So the scrutiny committee itself was saying there were still unanswered questions.

Then councillors attempted to use the formal call-in procedure to secure further scrutiny.

The Vice-Chair refused and, because of the way our Constitution is written, that one refusal was enough to stop the process.

Then there is the evidence itself.

An FOI request asked the Council for the reports, business cases, financial models, options appraisals, comparisons with alternative delivery models and detailed occupancy and demand analysis underpinning the financial case for STANLEY.

The Council confirmed that it holds information falling within the scope of that request.

It described material including draft proposals, options appraisals, internal discussions, officer advice, legal advice, financial assumptions and information concerning alternative childcare providers.

Then it withheld those records. No documents were attached.

So some very basic questions remain:

Has the Education and Skills Scrutiny Committee actually seen those underlying documents?

Did the Cabinet members who voted to close the nurseries see them?

If so, when were they provided?

If not, how can anyone possibly say there has been “enough scrutiny”?

There is now another governance issue that needs answering too.

Council’s own minutes show that in May Cllr Diamond was formally appointed by the Council to the Boldon Community Association Management Committee.

Boldon Community Centre Committee is also the registered provider of Sunshine Nursery Boldon, a nursery registered shortly before the STANLEY decision.

The STANLEY Cabinet report relies heavily on the availability of alternative childcare. It specifically identifies a need for 13 FTE under-two places in the Boldon area and says that since the childcare sufficiency review “a new 24 PTE place nursery has opened.”

I do not yet know whether that nursery is Sunshine. I have asked the Council to confirm it.

I am also not claiming that Cllr Diamond has breached the Code of Conduct. That is for the proper process to establish.

But even the Chair of the Call-In Committee had concerns. Cllr Ford told colleagues that she considered Cllr Diamond to have a conflict of interest and had asked him to declare it and state that he was unable to participate in the decision over the call-in.

That leaves an important question:

If the Vice-Chair had an interest which meant he should not participate, how were councillors supposed to exercise the call-in procedure when his personal approval was mandatory and the Constitution provided no substitute?

The call-in deadline has now expired.

I have asked the Monitoring Officer to establish the position, explain what remedy is available if the call-in procedure could not properly operate, and clarify whether irreversible implementation can be paused while this is resolved.

And there is another part of this story that should not be forgotten.

These call-in rules were not always this restrictive.

Under South Tyneside Council’s May 2022 Constitution, a decision could be called in either by:
• five councillors representing at least two political groups; or
• three councillors together with the Chair of the relevant Scrutiny Committee.

That gave councillors an alternative route.

Those rules were changed while Labour ran South Tyneside Council.

The system the previous Labour administration left behind is much more restrictive. It requires three councillors and both the Chair and Vice-Chair, meaning either of those two individual office-holders can prevent a Cabinet decision ever reaching the scrutiny committee by withholding their support.

Whatever the intention behind that change, we are now living with the consequence of it.

Labour may have been voted out, but this is part of the constitutional system their administration left behind.

And with STANLEY, we have now seen exactly what can happen:

Education & Skills Scrutiny asked for more time.

Cabinet refused.

Councillors attempted a call-in.

The Chair supported it.

The Vice-Chair refused.

The call-in was stopped.

Meanwhile, underlying records which the Council itself says exist still have not, as far as I have seen, been made available for public scrutiny.
Scrutiny should scrutinise.

One councillor should not be able to prevent a scrutiny committee from even considering a major Cabinet decision.

A decision affecting ten nurseries, their staff, hundreds of children and their families deserves a process that is transparent, evidence-led and capable of genuine challenge.

I’ll publish the Monitoring Officer’s response when I receive it.

28/09/2026

West Park Ward Surgery Update 🌳

Md Jasim Uddin and I held our West Park ward surgery at West Park Bowling Club on Saturday. Thanks to everyone who came along, raised concerns and shared ideas.

A lot of the discussion focused on the park itself, and we came away with plenty to follow up:

✅ ASB: clearer reporting options, including possible QR code signs, and better links with young people using the pump track.

✅ Accessibility: wheelchair access to the community garden, accessible planting areas and whether CAF funding could help.

✅ Public toilets: raising accessible toilet provision, especially given the investment in the pump track, tennis courts, seating and picnic areas.

✅ Grass cutting: concerns about standards, clippings affecting wheelchair access, trip hazards and how completed work is checked.

✅ Lighting: identifying where additional lighting could help, while considering wildlife.

✅ Investment: asking for clearer information on spending in West Park, including comparison with Marine Park, and exploring the case for dedicated park staff.

✅ Fly-tipping: Jassim is following up an issue on West Park Road. I’ll also ask whether figures show any change since the recycling village booking system began.

✅ “Come and Chat” benches: looking into replacement plaques and suitable locations.

✅ Green Flag: residents are looking for the bowling green flagpole key so the flag can go back up. I’ll also explore a flagpole at the Stanhope Road entrance.

We also discussed getting more young people involved in bowls, improving accessibility and strengthening links between groups using the park.

This is what we wanted these surgeries to be: informal, face-to-face conversations where residents raise what matters and we leave with things to follow up.

Thanks again to everyone who came along and to West Park Bowling Club for hosting us.

📅 Next surgery: Saturday 31 October, 10am to 11.30am

No appointment needed, just come along and have a chat.

23/09/2026

STANLEYs: tonight was one of the most depressing meetings I’ve sat through since becoming a councillor.

Cabinet has now decided to close all ten STANLEY Daycare Nurseries.

I expected to disagree with the decision. What I didn’t expect was to come away feeling quite so insulted by the process used to reach it.

The questions from Cabinet members appeared staged. The answers from Cllr Fascione appeared equally rehearsed. It felt less like people genuinely testing an enormous decision and more like everyone taking their allotted turn to justify a conclusion that had already been reached.

The public gallery saw it too. Families who have spent months fighting for these nurseries were understandably furious, and I don’t blame them.

Yesterday, councillors from different parties worked together to secure a special Education and Skills Scrutiny meeting because there were still serious questions that needed answering. Questions about the finances, the previous 2019 review, occupancy, SEND, local gaps in childcare provision, whether alternative models had genuinely been exhausted, how hundreds of children would transition into other provision, and why councillors asking for information throughout this process repeatedly ran into the words “need to know”.

Then today we got Cabinet.

We were told again about 107 childcare providers, 97% rated Good or Outstanding and a borough-wide vacancy rate of 28%.

What those headline figures don’t answer is whether there is a suitable place in the right area, for the right age child, with the right hours and the right support.

The Council’s own work identifies localised gaps. It identifies particular pressure around younger children. It acknowledges that overall “sufficiency” does not mean every family can access the provision they actually need.

We were told STANLEYs has averaged around 72% occupancy over five years. I keep hearing that figure presented as though it proves the service has failed.

I hear something different.

I hear that a publicly owned early-years service, employing an experienced workforce and caring for some of the children and families who need support most, is operating at roughly three-quarters capacity.

Instead of asking how we improve it, modernise it, make it more flexible and build on what already works, the answer is to abolish it.

That is a political choice.

The Council has spent an extraordinary amount of energy explaining why it is not legally required to directly provide these nurseries. That was never the real question.

The question was whether South Tyneside should choose to keep providing them.

Tonight I still did not hear a convincing answer as to why it should not.

What really stayed with me afterwards was the difference between the people making this decision and the people who now have to live with it.

Cabinet members cast their votes and go home. Parents went home wondering where their children will go. Staff went home wondering what happens to their jobs.

Families who have built trust with these nurseries over years went home knowing that somebody else has decided that relationship has an expiry date.

I had to look distraught parents in the face tonight.

That is considerably harder than looking at a spreadsheet.

When people in positions of power make decisions like this, they should be absolutely certain they have exhausted every credible alternative first. After everything we have learned during this process, I am not convinced they have.

And after watching tonight’s performance, I’m not convinced Cabinet ever seriously expected to be persuaded otherwise.

Consultation should be capable of changing a proposal. Scrutiny should be capable of changing a proposal. Evidence should be capable of changing a proposal.

Otherwise, what exactly are we asking the public to participate in?

I hope every Cabinet member who voted for this can look themselves in the mirror tonight and honestly say they did everything they possibly could to avoid taking this opportunity away from children and families.

I couldn’t make that claim on the evidence I’ve seen.

The parents, children and staff of STANLEYs deserved better.

And frankly, they deserved better than what they got in that chamber tonight.

22/09/2026

What I hope STANLEY scrutiny gets into tonight

I'm not on the Education & Skills Scrutiny Committee, but having gone through the Cabinet papers and the Save Our STANLEY questions, these are the main things I really hope members get into tonight:

• Have we genuinely exhausted the alternatives to closing all ten nurseries? The Council's own modelling says a combination of the staff and union proposals could potentially save up to £1.039m a year. What would a realistic version save, what subsidy would remain, and what provision could be retained?

• Why does it have to be all ten or none? Has there been proper site-by-site consideration of partial retention? And has a CIC, social enterprise, staff/community mutual or other not-for-profit model actually been explored?

• What happened to the two external providers who expressed an interest in taking on aspects of STANLEY? What did they propose, how far were discussions taken and was the market actually tested?

• Why weren't the recommendations from previous reviews fully implemented? The report itself acknowledges that staffing, management capacity and project resources have constrained STANLEY. Before closing it, what would it actually cost to properly try to fix it?

• How reliable are the occupancy and capacity figures? The report acknowledges STANLEY occupancy has itself been constrained by staffing. So how much of the reported 70–72% occupancy represents lack of demand and how much represents places the Council simply couldn't staff? Likewise, are vacancies elsewhere genuinely staffed and available places, or just theoretical capacity?

• Where are the 123 additional PTE places needed for transition? How many exist and are available now, by age and locality, and how many depend on providers expanding or recruiting staff in the future? What happens if that expansion doesn't materialise?

• SEND and safeguarding need to be about more than finding another vacancy. STANLEY supports a disproportionate number of children with additional needs, and the papers identify 37 children already on Early Help, Child in Need or Child Protection plans. What happens to the trusted relationships, early identification and day-to-day safeguarding role that experienced STANLEY staff currently provide? Who replaces those trusted eyes and ears on the ground?

• What happens between January and July 2027? Nursery Assistants are proposed to leave in December while the nurseries remain open until July. How will that affect capacity, ratios, SEND support, safeguarding and staff workload? And could reducing staffing itself force occupancy down further?

• The inconsistencies and finances need ironing out. We have 72% described as both vacancy and occupancy, different SEND and staffing figures, and several different financial figures. What is the definitive evidence base and, crucially, what is the actual recurring net cash saving from closing all ten nurseries once all consequential costs are included?

• What happens if the assumptions are wrong? If provider expansion doesn't happen, staffing shortages continue or suitable SEND places can't be found, is there a point where closure can actually be paused? Has a realistic worst-case scenario been modelled rather than looking at each risk individually?

And finally, does Cabinet need to make an irreversible decision now?

Could there instead be a time-limited rescue and transformation plan that brings together the staff proposals, partial retention, external-provider interest and potentially a CIC/social-enterprise model, with proper commercial support, clear financial targets
and a deadline to prove whether it can work?

For me, closure should be the last resort, not the starting point.
This can't just come down to whether a spreadsheet says another childcare place exists somewhere in the borough. A place isn't automatically equivalent in terms of SEND expertise, accessibility, continuity, safeguarding or trusted relationships.

These are children and families, not just numbers on a spreadsheet.

Cllr Matt Blair

01/11/2026

29/10/2026

25/10/2026

15/10/2026

13/10/2026

02/10/2026

28/09/2026

23/09/2026

22/09/2026

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