Friday brief: Former leader of Wellingborough council regrets backing unitary change
Plus news from across the county
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The former leader of Wellingborough Borough Council who was instrumental in setting up the new unitary system in Northamptonshire says he now regrets his actions.
Martin Griffiths was one of the eight leaders of Northamptonshire’s borough, district and county councils who worked together to close down their councils and form the two new unitaries, after a directive from the government following the spectacular financial collapse of the county council in 2018. The individual councils were all given a vote on the matter in the summer of that year, but only Labour-controlled Corby voted against the reorganisation. The unitary councils began in April 2021.
Speaking to NN Journal Cllr Griffiths, who left the Conservative party in 2021 and is now independent, said: “
“When I first became leader of BCW I was anti unitary, worried that it was being done to us for party political reasons, was being orchestrated by the county's MPs , and was not being done in the interests of our residents.
“I deeply regret not fighting it at every opportunity but was concerned that Wellingborough would be the poor relations of any large unitary, how right my concerns have proved to be. Unitary has been disastrous for local democracy and costly for the residents of the former Borough of Wellingborough but I never thought for one minute it would be quite this bad!
“Hopefully a more politically balanced council at the next elections can turn things around with the emphasis on delivering for our people and not for the interests of one political party and its long standing hierarchy.”
His comments come in the week an academic book has been published by academics Colin Copus and Steve Leach called The Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government. It looks at the current state of affairs in local government and has a section on Northamptonshire. The county council was the first in 20 years to effectively become bankrupt and since then others have followed, with Birmingham City Council collapsing earlier this week.
Cllr Griffiths contributed to the book alongside former Corby Borough Council leader Tom Beattie and now independent councillor Jim Hakewill.
Jim Hakewill said:
“I was pleased to offer up my views on the situation that the County Council found itself in in 2018. The solution to that crisis, promoted by the Boroughs, Districts and County Council, was to reorganise, which failed to analyse the deep seated problems. The same problems that are now hitting multiple councils across the country and causing the North and West councils to struggle to operate sustainably. It was a political solution backed by the local MPs with no scrutiny to find out the causes.”
The two Conservative-controlled unitaries have both had their share of issues since launching. North Northamptonshire Council faced and lost a high court legal challenge in its very early days after former pub landlord Geoff Monks sued for his treatment by the former East Northants Council which saw him bankrupted and imprisoned.
The West unitary faced a judicial review concerning its agreement to sell land to the town’s football club and deciding against a higher offer. The authority was ruled to have acted correctly by a judge earlier this year.
£50m was put aside to aid the transformation of the new councils, however there has not been a comprehensive public report on the use of the money or the outcomes. In the coming weeks NN Journal will be looking at this issue.
News in brief:
Special Educational Needs families in the West of the county held a protest outside the headquarters of West Northamptonshire Council yesterday.
The protest comes a year on from their first one, with organisers West Northants Send Action saying that more families are coming to them to say their children are being unsupported by the local education authority.
In a statement they said:
“Parent blame is still rife, with the LA having openly refused to stop fining and prosecuting parents when their children can’t attend school due to unmet needs. When we raised this issue last year, all LA had to offer as a defence was the fact they’re creating new specialist places.
“Now they are not even delivering on this promise, with the delay of the Tiffield special school and reduction in places there. The stated 500 places by 2024 has been abandoned, silently, with the LA hoping no-one would notice.”
Parent Julie Heron was at the protest. She has two autistic children and is homeschooling her youngest.
She said:
“What they need to do is follow the rules and the laws. They are still using money to fight families. That could be put into the service. I am having to fight the system constantly.”
The authority has paid out compensation to multiple families for failures to provide the service and education that children should be receiving.
A spokesman said yesterday that it is working hard with families to produce a three year strategy to improve services.
The family of a Kettering woman murdered by her estranged husband have paid tribute to her.
Marta Chmielecka, 31 was killed by Pawal Chmielecka, 40, in October 2021 after he accosted her in the street, took her to his rented home in Wood Street and brutally killed her. He stayed by her body for four days before police forced entry to the property.
During that time he had been sending messages to other men from her phone. In the year they had been separated, Chmielecka had stalked Marta.
This week he was sentenced at Northampton Crown Court to 18 years and four months.
In a statement her family said:
“Marta was exceptional. She was full of life, kind, cheerful, helpful and smart. You never had to ask for her help, she was always just there for us, whatever we needed.
“She loved our children and was a fantastic aunty to them both. Marta was definitely a daddy’s girl too, they had such a strong bond and loving relationship.
“After her death, her father began stuttering and now finds it very hard to communicate. He has really suffered, we all have.
“Marta had so many plans and dreams. She was independent and confident. We all loved her so much.
“It is never going to be the same without her. Losing Marta has changed our whole lives.”
The campaigners fighting to save Weekley Hall Wood from development are urging people to make an objection by Monday. The Duke of Buccleuch’s developers have now taken their plans to the planning inspectorate after accusing planning authority North Northamptonshire Council of taking too long to make a decision. The plan is for several warehouses to be built on the much loved and used wood. A planning enquiry will now be held at an unannounced date.
The campaign group has a guide on how to object directly to the planning inspector here. More than 23,000 signed the initial petition against the plans.
Read our story from January 2021 about the campaign
How the pandemic galvanised a town to fight to save its woodland
By Sarah Ward Looking out from the kitchen window of her cottage tucked away in Weekley Hall Wood Sue Shaw noticed a lot of new faces over the spring and summer months of the first coronavirus lockdown. Families from the nearby Brambleside estate, young couples a…
NN Events
🍰 The Big Olney Food Festival is happening tomorrow and Sunday in the town’s marketplace.
🍏 An Apple and Ale Festival is being held at Lyveden New Bield near Oundle tomorrow and Sunday from 2pm.
🐦 Local composer Nick Penny will be talking about his new book Call of the Kingfisher at an event next Friday at the Great Hall in Oundle from 7.45pm. Get tickets here.
The Unitaries are both rolling Tory-controlled disasters. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a reversal within a decade.
Cllr Griffiths must bear some significant responsibility for the destruction of Northamptonshire County Council and the Borough and District councils. As a Conservative councilor on NNC he supported the massive cuts to services, the disastrous flirtation with out-sourcing of services and expensive PFI contracting which led to the financial crisis. This was combined with financial and political mismanagement and refusal to allow effective scrutiny of council decision-making. Martin was part of all this over many years and did not object to what was happenning - rather the reverse, he was an advocate .
In addition he was leader of Wellingborough Council and failed to protect local democracy and the interests of Wellingborough people.
He now recants in respect of the latter, but is silence on his role in the former, which actually caused the crisis which led almost inevitably to the the abolitionof NCC, district/Borough councils and the formation of two equally disasterous new unitaries.
I respect that Martin is now critical of what has happenned, but unless he and others learn the lessons of the disastrous Tory politics of neo-liberalism and austerity he persued under NCC then the mistakes stand to be repeated, both nationally and locally, as indeed is actually happenning.