County Council Results May 2025

After taking a couple of personal days to recover from the campaign (and a very late night!) I would just like to offer my sincere congratulations to Rachel and her team and wish her the very best in her future as Haltwhistle’s County Councillor. I hope she does well, and as a member of our Town Council I will do everything I can to help her improve Haltwhistle - although the political reality now is that it is going to be a very difficult project for us all. Labour did their homework in the General Election and threw the kitchen sink at Haltwhistle and it has paid off for them.

Of course I am disappointed, but more so for Haltwhistle than myself. Labour fought a very good campaign based on bringing local issues to the fore and promising to find public money to focus on developing our overlooked corner of the world. Unfortunately, the reality is that as the excitement fades and the dust begins to settle, instead of having a councillor who is a member of one of the controlling parties in County Hall, we have a councillor who is one of a very small fringe group that will once again mean that Haltwhistle is at the back of the queue when it comes to funding or decision making for the area. I genuinely do not envy Rachel in her task. I would not like to be a Reform councillor against 49 Labour or LibDem councillors from the other end of the county. The Conservatives are concerned with Morpeth and its surrounding areas and Reform will rightly fight for investment in the south east and coastal areas of the county where we are strongest and have most of our councillors. Haltwhistle is now peering over the garden fence and has the lowest chance in a generation of getting the County Council support we so desperately need.

In this challenging environment, it is essential for Haltwhistle that the ideological divisions that dominated the campaign are put aside and we all work together to further our ambitions for our area. I am not in County Hall but I am in Reform and will use whatever influence and contacts I have to help with the Town Council business and offer my assistance to the parish councillors in the rest of the ward should I be of any use in this regard.

Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to the small group of volunteers that worked so hard to get our message out during the campaign and the slightly larger group of quiet supporters who may be emboldened enough by our results to be a bit more vocal in the future! Finally, to the 471 people who out their X in the box on polling day. 29% is still a great result from a complete standing start (Reform only got 14% nationally in the General Election remember) with no team in place or assistance from the party at large so I am proud of that and will look to build on this for 2029.

I am still about, and this page and the supporters group will stay up. I am keen to hear your input on both local and national issues and if this campaign has inspired you, get in touch as I build the team for our next Council and the General Election to come.

Adam