Friday brief: Another Northants woman is killed
Friday brief: Another Northants woman is killed
News of the tragic death of a woman in Corby; details of the North unitary's financial woes and the Wellingborough and Rushden byelection in this week's brief
A woman has been found killed in Corby.
The woman, who is thought to be Polish, was in her 50s and is understood to have lived in a flat above the Occupation Road shopping precinct. Her body was found at 8.30am on Wednesday morning.
Yesterday forensic officers and plain clothed officers were in the area conducting house to house enquiries. A timeframe of when she may have died has not been made public.
Northants Police say her next of kin have been informed but they are unable to confirm the cause of death until after a postmortem which was due to take place at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Martyna, who works in the Cafe Luna , one of the shops underneath the flat, said she knew the woman, who had lived in the first floor flat with her partner, who is also understood to be Polish.
She said: “She was such a lovely person, I knew her as I used to work in the Polish shop on Rockingham Road and she would come in regularly.“She was always so smart and well-dressed. She was just a normal person - this is not right. I feel so sorry for her family.”
A 63 year old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of the unnamed Corby woman.
Anyone with information about the murder can call Northamptonshire Police on 101 quoting incident number 24000019005.
News in brief
Just three years after it was established North Northamptonshire Council has brought in emergency spending measures.
As revealed by the Northants Telegraph yesterday, Conservative council leader Jason Smithers sent an email to staff and councillors earlier this week informing of plans to drastically reduce spending.
The measures - included no spending over £500 without approval and a staff appointments panel, are very similar to those brought in by the former county council’s commissioner’s after the authority went bust.
The email to staff came just days after Cllr Smithers had given an exclusive interview to the Northants Telegraph saying that the council’s future was ‘sustainable’ but would be ‘very, very challenging’,
The authority is clamping down on spending in the final weeks before the year end, indicating that it is struggling to reduce the £6.1m budget overspend that it reported to the executive last month.
The children’s services is more than £20m over its budget, due to the high cost of placements run by commercial operators.
Councils all over the country are struggling with their finances, with the Guardian reporting that across the country there is a £4bn deficit.
Since austerity the Conservative government has reduced funding to local councils, which have in turn put extra taxes on to residents to make ends meet.
However for the new unitary to be struggling so badly, in its early days will be a concern to many.
As NN Journal reported at the end of last year, the two councils still have not settled on where the almost £1bn debts of the former county council will go and now enter legal arbitration. Because of this, the North unitary has never had a signed off set of accounts, with the auditor saying last month it was ‘untenable’ that this process could take more than a year.
West Northamptonshire taxi drivers have lost their battle with the unitary authority and new stricter regulations will come into place.
Hundreds of angry drivers protested outside the Guildhall on Tuesday ahead of the licensing committee, but their protest was unheeded as the new measures will now take effect.
The meeting was called after the initial proposal in October was deferred to give committee members more time to consider the consultation response from the trade. Councillor Gareth Eales, a member of the licensing committee, described the previous meeting as “somewhat of a spiky affair” after the App Drivers and Couriers Union accused the council of “racist” and “regressive” regulations.
One of the proposals that has been highly disputed by drivers but has now been given the go-ahead is a penalty points system designed to record rule breaks and misconduct from drivers.
Where a complaint is made from the public, an investigation will then determine whether any action is taken and if points are imposed. If a driver has accrued more than 12 penalty points over 12 months their licence may be revoked or suspended with immediate effect.
Mohamed Dogan, a taxi driver at the protest, said that he was “extremely worried” about the implications of the new regulations and felt that the points system was the “biggest issue”.
He added:
“We have to be careful all the time. I have a family to support – I’ve been doing taxi driving for 18 years and we never had a problem. This policy is created to penalise us.”
Breaches include failure to comply with the dress code, not offering reasonable assistance with luggage, and turning up late to a booking without proper reason, among other measures.
Cllr Eales told the meeting that the points system was actually an “upgrade” from the previous rules. He argued that there is a right to appeal at every step if a complaint is lodged, however under the old Northampton Borough policy the first time there would be an opportunity for the warning to be challenged would be “when they’re in front of a sub-committee with their licence under review”.
Other amendments to the policy include a “certificate of good conduct” whereby all drivers must provide documents from every country they have lived in for more than six months.
Changes to requirements, for example proper signage on vehicles and more training to be undertaken by drivers, will be given a period of grace to complete. Existing licenced vehicles that don’t stack up to the new standards will also be granted ‘grandfather’ rights until a new one is purchased.
The policy will be kept under constant review to ensure it remains fit for purpose. Quarterly meetings with the taxi and private hire vehicles trade are also to be reintroduced to “rebuild working relations” and address any concerns with the implementation.
Northampton chair of the ADCU, Shafqat Shah previously warned that drivers would be forced to hold strikes if the draft policy was enforced. He said the union had been “held to ransom” by the council and that drivers were being “unfairly targeted”.
The council wrote that the new systems were seen as an “open and transparent way” of dealing with licensing issues and that ultimately each case would be dealt with “on its own merit”. It insisted that the policy was not “designed or intended to be punitive” and the main aim is to “improve safety” and provide the “best possible service to the public”.
Report by local democracy reporter Nadia Lincoln
West Northamptonshire Council’s cabinet will discuss plans to build a new £9.4m public mortuary next week. A report says the current provision, which includes the temporary mortuary set up in Wollaston during the 2020 pandemic, is ‘fragile and increasingly expensive’.
The plan is to build the mortuary on council owned land at Booth Meadow on the Riverside Business Park, and it could replace current mortuaries at the county’s two hospitals, although this is yet to be agreed.
The report, which will be considered on Tuesday, says the coroner’s service currently commissions around 1,100 postmortems per year. However the two hospitals in recent years have both decommissioned their pathologist service and so currently the service is contracted out of county. Child deaths where a postmortem is needed go to the pathologist at Leicester Royal Infirmary, however if there is no capacity Great Ormond Street is used. The report says there is a national shortage of pathologists and the LRI pathologist is retiring.
It goes on to say that by providing specialist services the new mortuary could stop some postmortems having to take place outside the county, as well as generate income by providing services for other counties.
Three teenage boys appeared before Northampton Crown Court charged with attempted murder on Wednesday.
The boys, aged 15, 16 and 17, all from Kettering, are charged in connection with an incident in Hanwood Park Avenue, Barton Seagrave, in the early hours of January 1 in which an 18-year-old man suffered serious stab wounds.
The defendants, who cannot be named for legal reasons because of their age, were released on conditional bail and will next appear at the Crown Court on April 15.
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are currently inspecting how well the special educational needs of children in the area are being met by services such as health, care and the local authority. People can fill in this online form here to tell inspectors what they think.
Westminster Watch
The Wellingborough and Rushden byelection will happen on Thursday, February 15 after a writ was issued in parliament.
Tory MP Peter Bone was removed by constituents last month in a recall petition after a standards committee found he had bullied, physically assaulted and exposed himself to a young male staffer in 2012.
At the weekend the local Conservative association elected Bone’s partner Helen Harrison as the candidate to fight the election. She stood against two unknowns from outside the county, with local members who had already been on the approved list such as Scott Brown and Lizzie Bowen (from West Northants) overlooked.
Cllr Harrison has now stood down from the executive of North Northamptonshire Council to focus on winning. She will be up against Labour’s Gen Kitchen; Lib Dem Ana Savage Gunn; Green Party candidate Will Morris; Reform UK’s Ben Habib and former Labour member Kevin Watts, who has left the party and now stands as an independent. He is the brother of Andrea Watts, who was the Labour candidate for the constituency in the last two general elections. She has now also left the Labour Party.
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Re new taxi regulations: on the whole I think this is a good idea as long as all drivers are properly informed re their rights and duties. We use taxis from the same firm and are usually very satisfied but if the driver is late, goes to the wrong place or has a filthy car I do not leave a tip and I tell the firm and the driver what I think about a dirty car and I tell them where to go should I get them another time!