Council leader’s reshuffle as he expands cabinet
NEWCASTLE’S council leader has added two new names to his cabinet – including the man who unseated former city Labour chief Nick Forbes.
Nick Kemp has included Abdul Samad, whose dramatic selection to stand for the party ahead of Mr Forbes in his Arthur’s Hill ward in February 2022 ignited a Labour power struggle that continues to this day, in a reshuffle of Newcastle City Council’s top political table. He is being handed responsibility for culture, sport, leisure, libraries and parks within the local authority cabinet, while Callerton and Throckley’s Adam Walker comes in to oversee adult social care services.
Coun Kemp, who narrowly survived a leadership challenge earlier this month and whose party suffered a net loss of two seats at the recent local election, vowed to make the city “fairer, healthier, and better off” as he enters his third year in charge at the civic centre. But the council’s Lib Dem opposition accused Labour of creating “jobs for the boys” in an expansion of the cabinet from eight to 10 people.
Coun Walker takes the adult social care portfolio from deputy council leader Karen Kilgour, though she will continue to oversee public health issues and the council’s anti-poverty plans. Responsibility for housing has also been moved from Irim Ali to Paula Maines, as the council prepares for the abolition of Your Homes Newcastle and control over the city’s council houses being brought back in-house for the first time in 20 years. Coun Ali will now be given a broad portfolio that includes waste and recycling, car parking, licensing, community cohesion, and refugees and asylum seekers.
Announcing his new cabinet, Coun Kemp said: “I’m pleased to welcome Abdul and Adam to cabinet and look forward to working alongside them and the rest of cabinet. Together we’re keen to listen to, stand up for, and work with residents to build a Newcastle that is fairer, healthier, and better off for everyone who has a part to play in our city.”
Lib Dem opposition leader Colin Ferguson said his party had previously criticised an expansion of the cabinet under Mr Forbes, which was then reversed by Coun Kemp two years ago, as “not a good use of taxpayers’ money” and now held similar concerns.
Coun Ferguson added: “Now we have two new ‘jobs for the boys’, covering portfolio responsibilities that remain, as ever, wholly opaque. Is this a recognition that Cabinet was not fully across the task at hand over the last two years? Or is he copying his predecessor’s apparent short-lived move to stabilise internal party dynamics after a close-run leadership election?”