Friday brief: Conservatives win North unitary byelection
Friday brief: Conservatives win North unitary byelection
Some comfort for North unitary leader as his party keeps control of Desborough, plus the usual news round up.
Later than our usual Friday newsletter, here is your regular end of the week bulletin.
Have a good weekend.
There was some good news for North Northamptonshire Council’s ruling Conservative group today as the party retained the Desborough Ward in the byelection.
Conservative Bill McElhinney (1,485 votes) beat Labour’s Rikki Tod into second place (1,054 votes), with the Green candidate Olivia Stevenson (386 votes) placed third and Alan Window, Liberal Democrats fourth (234 votes). Turnout was 29 per cent.
It is welcome news for Conservative leader Jason Smithers who recently saw two of his councillors become independent over the issue of the Rothwell temporary traveller site and another councillor Elliott Prentice joined Labour, citing issues with the national party.
The Conservatives have controlled the council since it was formed in 2021 and have a sizeable majority. Things are most quite likely to change in the local elections next year, as the Conservative party is at an all time low in the polls.
The byelection was held following the death of Cllr Mike Tebbutt.
News in brief
Northamptonshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner is using a professional networking site to look for new opportunities after being forced to step down following his misogynistic comments about a senior officer.
As we exclusively reported last month, Stephen Mold called the county’s new chief fire officer Nikki Watson a ‘bitch’ in a private meeting with firefighters. After widespread condemnation in both national and local circles, he announced he would withdraw as the Tory candidate for next month’s crime commissioner elections and is now touting for work on LinkedIn.
He posted earlier this week: “Hi everyone - I am looking for a new role and would appreciate your support. Thank you in advance for any connections, advice or opportunities you can offer.”
His status says he is looking for chief executive, chairperson or non executive director roles.
Stephen Mold has been replaced as the Conservative candidate by former fire boss Martin Emberson, with councillor Danielle Stone standing as the Labour hopeful and former senior police officer Ana Savage Gunn hoping to win it for the Lib Dems. The election takes place on May 2.
Kettering General Hospital (KGH) has placed in the top ten A&E units in England with the worst waiting times for patients, with nearly 50 per cent of people waiting more than four hours to be treated.
Kettering General Hospital (KGH) has the highest number of patients waiting long periods for treatment in the county, according to NHS data. It was also ranked as having the seventh-worst wait times across all NHS Trusts in England from October to December last year.
A spokesperson for KGH has said the A&E department has focused more on four-hour transit times over the last three months and expects to see improvement. They also said the hospital rebuild will incorporate a new Urgent Care Centre to help address the county’s demand, however the rebuild will not happen in the next three years at least.
NHS operational standards set in 2010 state that at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. In December 2022, England implemented an intermediate minimum standard, where at least 76 per cent of A&E attendances should be seen within this timeframe, until March 2024.
More than 48 per cent of patients visiting A&E in KGH waited more than four hours to receive urgent care, well above the national standard. This saw 14,000 people waiting over the NHS targeted times across the last three months of 2023 alone.
Kettering General Hospital’s chief operating officer Fay Gordon said:
“Our staff work extremely hard to maintain a safe service in A&E and over the last three months we have focussed more on four-hour transit times and expect our final quarter figures for the year to be improved.
“To cope with rising demand at KGH we have expanded our A&E department several times in recent years while at the same time planning for a major overhaul of our urgent care facilities on the KGH site.
“This has translated into well-advanced plans with the New Hospital Programme to create a new integrated Urgent Care Centre on the KGH site to help address the issue as part of our major planned hospital rebuild.”
Report by Nadia Lincon, local democracy reporter
The chief executive of West Northamptonshire Council has attempted to pave the way for a poor Ofsted report of its special educational needs services.
In an interview with the local democracy reporting service, Anna Earnshaw, who has been in charge of the authority since it began in 2021, has said inspectors looked into the service too early for the authority to hope for a ‘good result’. She said the inspection findings, which will be published in the coming months, ‘wont be far off the north’, although she hoped inspectors would recognise improvements.
Earlier this month the failing state of the North SEN service was revealed as inspectors found widespread problems and that many families were being pushed into crisis by the poor service.
The West service has faced heavy criticism from families since it began, with many children not provided with the correct education or support for their child.
Send your questions
We have an interview with the new boss of Northampton and Kettering general hospitals group Richard Mitchell next week and so please send in any questions you may have for him. Email address for reporter Sarah Ward is sarahward@nnjournal.co.uk
Mold being more active on LinkedIn explains why he keeps nosing at my profile. I do wonder with all the scandal surrounding him, that he might struggle to find any company wanting to risk taking him on. His failings of vetting will be on full display when the Adderley saga reaches the next milestone in a few weeks time, which hardly cement him as a safe pair of hands. His comments about women and appointments of 'close friends' do not exactly encourage female employees to speak up in support of him. Ah well you reap what you sow!