Green councillor slams NE authority’s response to nurdle environment disaster

Coun Tom Bailey who quit Labour to join the Green Party last week.

A North Tyneside councillor has accused the area’s council chiefs of ducking their duty to lead the clean-up effort after July’s plastic ‘nurdle’ spillage into the Tyne – claiming that communities on the coast felt “very, very let down”.

Instead, he claimed, volunteers had been left in the risky position of having to take the lead in trying to tackle the environment disaster.

Coun Tom Bailey made the comments as he reflected on his decision to leave the Labour Party and later join the Greens, saying the response to the plastic pellet spill was a significant breaking point.

He criticised what he described as an absence of leadership from the council’s mayor and cabinet, arguing that councillors and volunteers had been left to take on risks while trying to respond to the pollution affecting local beaches.

He said: “If people aren’t prepared to lead, then what are they doing? Why are they in office?

“What we saw, essentially, was an absence of leadership from those who are supposed to run the council and are paid to run the council: the mayor and the cabinet.”

Coun Bailey said the response had left him concerned about the lack of clear responsibility, saying the council had an attitude of “hoping this would go away”.

He said he was unhappy that councillors and volunteers had been expected to independently organise the clean-up operation.

“If you call out hundreds of volunteers to do an activity when the government’s telling you no, you can’t do it, and you’ve got no insurance in place and no structure behind it, that actually could have rebounded on myself, could have rebounded on members of the public who were involved in organising in a kind of informal way,” he said.

“And it’s just unacceptable that we were put in that position.”

Coun Bailey said the experience had taken a personal toll, describing the stress involved as a factor in his decision to break with Labour.

He said he had hoped things would improve after the council agreed to take control of the clean-up, but added: “Frankly, they haven’t.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “If, after everything we’ve heard coming out of Green Party conference last weekend, he still thinks that’s the political home for him, then frankly that tells you everything you need to know.

“Labour is getting on with the serious business of governing and delivering change. Tom has made his choice. He’ll have to own it and everything that comes with it.”

Coun Bailey quit the Labour party last month after being suspended for comments made about “armed patrols” on beaches at the height of the nurdle crisis.

He served as an independent councillor a month before joining the Green party last week, after an estimated 850 million plastic pellets, known as nurdles, spilled into the Tyne in July.