West Northants Council reveals the top 10 things it has done for the area since taking over three years ago

West Northants Council (WNC) has revealed the top 10 things it thinks it has improved in the area over the past three years.

WNC was formed in April 2021 after the former Conservative-led Northants County Council went bankrupt.

So on its third birthday, this newspaper asked WNC for 10 things it has improved in the area since it took over the reigns.

The Conservative-led WNC responded with the following list, while the opposition Labour party provided its counterpoints to each of the claims.

• WNC said: “Supporting thousands of residents through the cost of living crisis, working with community partners to distribute over £11m of government funding including food and meal vouchers, hardship payments, money for food banks and larders and to help residents pay for practical measures to help reduce their energy bills such as better insulation and boilers. We also delivered our new anti-poverty strategy with partners and set up over 100 warm spaces that evolved into welcoming spaces promoting community connections.”

Labour says: “The Cost of Living support given by WNC came from the government’s own Household Support Scheme, and was no different to what hundreds of other councils have done across the country. Some voluntary organisations who benefitted from the funding also complained about a lack of support from the council itself. As for the warm places, this was a volunteer scheme that came at no cost to the council and was carried on the goodwill of the people of West Northants whose limelight WNC are trying to steal.”

• WNC said: “Saving £90m in our first three years whilst continuing to protect and deliver services for our residents by transforming the services we inherited – This has involved bringing together over 3,000 staff and hundreds of services from the four former councils, over 800 systems, four main office buildings and thousands of inherited contracts. We have kept our budget balanced and protected essential frontline services in the face on continuous financial challenges, rising service demands and inflationary pressures affecting all councils nationally.”

Labour says: “In every one of its budgets, WNC has overspent and used up all its contingency. The £90m of savings they are promoting is moot when you see the amount of our reserves have been used up already in just 3 years. We are also waiting for our audits to be completed on how much debt we’re carrying from the County Council so any celebration may be premature. The transformation from three districts and a county council has also been woefully slow and poorly executed. Many of our services and administration has been centralised in Northampton, leaving residents in Towcester, Brackley and Daventry feeling abandoned instead of embraced.”

• WNC said: “Driving forward economic growth, turning £45m of grants for regeneration in Northampton into £350million of private investment – with the opening of the renovated Northampton Museum, new Vulcan Works business space and five major town centre schemes already in progress including Market Square, 24 Guildhall Road, Old Black lion, Abington / Fish Street public realm and 35 - 45 Abington St. We have also continued the redevelopment of our other towns with the opening of the state-of-the-art Arc Cinema in Daventry and the new Sponne Arcade Car Park in Towcester, transforming a site which had stood empty for the previous four years and increasing parking spaces in the town centre.”

Labour says: “How the council can comment positively about the tragedy of Northampton Market traders and the effect that closing the square off has had on the town centre is beyond belief. Very few residents see the point of the whole project. The other regeneration schemes are typical Tory vanity projects which again seem to offer very little to the people of West Northants in the scheme of things, and very few have been delivered anyway: we’ll be waiting on 35 - 45 Abington St. until 2030! The renovated Northampton Museum is indeed a great addition to the town centre and its exhibitions so far have been outstanding, as has been proven with the PUNK exhibition being nominated for a national award. But this good work may be for naught in light of the council’s plans to lay off several of its accomplished curators, despite the museum getting in more visitors than WNC expected. The redevelopment of other towns has failed to match up to Northampton; Daventry was set for a new leisure centre in its 2020 Masterplan, only to be told by WNC last year that it’s not feasible.”

• WNC said: “Distributing around £4.2m in community grants funding for hundreds of projects, from helping local clubs and groups to improve their facilities to initiatives tackling young violence and knife crime. We have also held over 170 community events and weeks of action with partners promoting the culture and diversity of our area, from Coronation celebrations, Pride and Diwali to Black History Month, Inspirational Women’s and Men’s Awards and International day of People with Disabilities.”

Labour says: “Some community groups in West Northants operate in buildings which the council owns and gives to them on a ‘no-repair lease’. This means that groups that operate out of buildings like the Southbrook Centre in Daventry are stuck with no hot water in the toilets and other repairs which they cannot afford to fix and the council refuses to.”

• WNC said: “Emptying waste and recycling bins and caddies a massive 63 million times since our first day as a council and keeping our parks and open spaces clean and green parks with international Green Flag Award status for Daventry, Delapre, Abington and Braudlaugh Fields.”

Labour says: “Emptying bins is not something to hail as an achievement. It is a statutory duty of local authorities and the minimum taxpayers expect from their council tax. There are parts of Northampton that still leave their waste out in bags because bins haven’t been provided and still, three years on, we are operating three different waste collections; so some residents are waiting longer to have their waste emptied than others yet still paying the same rates.”

• WNC said: “Developing West Northants as a destination for sporting excellence, arts and culture, successfully bidding for the Rugby World Cup 2025 with further plans for other national sporting events – as well as progressing plans for large-scale live music festivals starting this summer with James Arthur at Delapre Abbey.”

Labour says: “It is good to see the council acting proactively to promote the area. It is vitally important that communities are involved with these events and profit from them; sporting events like the Women’s Rugby World Cup should be used to inspire local children and residents to get involved with sport and live healthy lives. The centre of these events should be enriching the lives of local residents and not the profile of the council.”

• WNC said: “Making great strides on our improvement journey for children's services, with our Children’s Trust fostering service recently rated good by Ofsted, and overall rating has gone up from ‘inadequate’ in 2019, to ‘requires improvement to be good’ following the most recent inspection in 2022. We have also supported around 12,000 adults a year to remain safe, well and independent.”

Labour says: “It is a matter of public record that our SEND children’s services are abysmal. Children are missing out on school because EHCPs are well below national averages on deadlines (5% in the last report), while parents are being fined and sent to court for not letting their child go to an unsuitable mainstream school. We were very happy to find the fostering service had improved to ‘Good’ and we must continue to work with our Children’s Trust to bring services to ‘Good’ overall, with prevention as the new priority. We believe the statement on Adult Services to be vague and the administration should provide more detail.”

• WNC said: “Working with our residents who opened their homes to nearly 1,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine, while assisting more than 500 Afghan nationals escaping conflict and persecution through providing emergency accommodation as well as support to help them settle in the UK.”

Labour did not comment.

• WNC said: “Introducing new powers to promote responsible pet ownership and ban smoking in children’s play area, launching new charters setting out our approach to tackling litter and fly-tipping in our streets and green open spaces, and protecting the public from harm through the ongoing efforts of both our Food Safety and Trading Standards teams.”

Labour says: “Food Safety and Trading Standards do a great job, but they are drastically underfunded by the council and national government to cover all areas. The new powers on pet ownership (i.e. the four dogs to one walker rule) made us a national laughing stock and had to be amended following a petition from thousands of professional dogwalkers. There are also scant resources to enforce these rules and charters because the council refuses to hire more neighbourhood wardens to keep our streets clean and safe. Fly-tipping is also no better than it was in 2021.”

• WNC said: “Starting from scratch on a bold new approach with partners and residents for responding to the climate crisis and achieving net zero by 2030, including the introduction of new electric charge points, the exploration of large-scale solar projects, the creation of new walking and cycling routes and the planting of over 1,000 trees with partners.”

Labour says: “WNC has amongst the worst climate records of any local authority in England. Climate Emergency UK placed WNC in the worst performing 15% of councils for its actions towards meeting Net Zero, 110th out of 127. There is very little promotion of active travel and we have no Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) as of yet. We are drastically falling behind other authorities when it comes to clean air and climate change.”

Labour concluded: “The council has mentioned nothing on housing or roads in its ‘achievements’, alongside several other areas which need improving.

“The council is far from delivering on its promise to build 500 social houses between 2021-2025 and we have over 4,000 families waiting on our housing list now. That is not to mention hundreds that are existing in overcrowded and unsuitable temporary accommodation because the council does not have a solid plan to solve this problem. As for affordable housing, our Joint Core Strategy says that 35% of dwellings on developments of 15 dwellings or more should be affordable, but the council has allowed developers to repeatedly haggle this percentage down to increase their own profits so that no developments in West Northants have this level of affordable housing.

“With regards to Highways, freedom of information requests sent by this newspaper showed that whilst the number of potholes reported to WNC between 2021 and 2023 increased by over 1000%, the number being repaired has fallen by 14% over the same period. This is the number one complaint of residents in West Northants, and a problem we pay KIER over £30 million a year to fix. But our strategy is outdated (we still use pothole severity guidelines from 2019) and needs updating, alongside a new funding plan to get our dangerous roads up to scratch.”