Friday brief: Is North unitary leader making a pitch to replace Peter Bone?
Plus resident's FOI shows that Northants chief constable was pulling pints when he claimed he was climbing the navy career ladder
The leader of North Northamptonshire Council Jason Smithers has sent a personal survey out to just residents of Wellingborough and Rushden, prompting speculation he may put himself in the running to become the area’s next MP.
The constituency is under a recall petition following the suspension from parliament of Conservative Peter Bone MP, who was found by a parliamentary committee to have bullied and indecently exposed himself to a male staff member.
If ten per cent of the electorate (just under 8,000 residents) sign the recall petition then Mr Bone will be removed from office and a by-election will be held.
The Sunday Times claimed this week that Mr Bone had tried to do a deal with the Conservative Party to name his partner Helen Harrison, who is a councillor on North Northamptonshire Council (NNC), as the Tory candidate. Mr Bone denied the allegation.
Cllr Smithers has been leader of NNC since it was formed in 2021, following political manoeuvring to secure himself the votes for leader.
The letter, which was made in his capacity as council leader but promoted and paid for by the Conservatives, asked residents what they thought the big issues in the area were. It spoke about the NHS and crime, which are not areas under the control of the local authority.
Despite his position as the unitary councillor for Oundle, the town’s residents were not surveyed, nor were residents from across the rest of the council area.
We put a series of questions to Cllr Smithers and asked if he was planning to go forward for the MP position if there was a vacancy, but have not had a response.
We spoke to Rosemary Armstrong, who promoted the letter for him and she said a survey would also go out to other areas and it was ‘just a coincidence’ that it had gone out to the Wellingborough area first.
She laughed when asked if Cllr Smithers was planning a campaign to run as a parliamentary candidate.
Under election law there are rules about campaigning during a recall. Any person or party who wishes to campaign for or against the recall needs to register it with the petition officer (who is the returning officer for the council) and there are limits on spending with anything over £500 needing to be declared.
Only the Labour party has made a registration.
We asked the Electoral Commission if Cllr Smither’s leaflet to Wellingborough constituents should have been registered during the recall period and received the following response:
“ [It} is not considered recall petition material, as it does not promote any outcome for the recall petition.
“If this material was distributed by a candidate during the period before a by-election when spending is regulated, then it would count towards the candidate’s spending limit as election material. The earliest someone can become a candidate for a by-election is when the vacancy arises. In this case that would be the day that the result of the recall petition is announced, if the current MP is recalled. The regulated period runs from the day after that until polling day.”
The recall petition period ends on December 19. As that is the same day that the parliamentary session ends, any result will be made public in early January when parliament recommences.
News in brief
A resident has received information from the records and archives officer at Wirral Council that proves Northamptonshire Chief constable was running a pub for a period in the late 1980s rather than being in the Navy as his CV stated.
Simon Tilley received an FOI response yesterday which states that between 1 June 1989 and 18 July 1990 Nick Adderley was the licensee at the Hooton Arms in Birkenhead.
According to his CV presented in 2018 to the panel involved in deciding whether he got the top police job, he said he had been serving in the navy from February 1981 to February 1992. His pint pulling days were not mentioned and the CV also said he had risen to the rank of commander. However there appears to be no naval record of this. After he left the navy he joined Cheshire police and worked in various forces before joining the Northants force.
Adderley was suspended from his position in October by the police, fire and crime commissioner and is under investigation by the Independent Officer for Police Conduct. If he has committed CV fraud he may be liable for a custodial sentence and have to repay salary earned.
A focus was put on Nick Adderley’s career history after he was pictured at a police function this summer wearing the South Atlantic Medal, which was awarded to Falklands veterans. He said the medals were given to him by his brother and has made no further comment since.
Police, fire and crime commissioner Stephen Mold said ‘lessons had been learned’ following the scandal over his appointment of close friend Nicci Marzec to the role of chief fire officer. Marzec stood down from the interim position and also her role as the chief executive of his office after the spotlight was put on their relationship. Earlier this summer the police fire and crime panel, which is weighted in favour of the same political party as commissioner Mold, found he had made ‘an error of judgement’ and made a series of light recommendations which included training on the code of conduct. At yesterday’s meeting the commissioner said he had learned from the experience and wanted to have a good relationship with the panel, whose job is to hold him to account.
Labour councillor and committee member Zoe McGhee however did not appear to accept the contents of a letter the commissioner had written to the panel and said:
“I don't know what other job in the world you can make mistakes like that, write a four page letter and its all done and dusted.”
Labour councillor Winston Strachan said the Fire Brigades Union should be able to have a representative on the panel so they can have an input. Chair David Smith said the public could speak at meetings so there was the mechanism there already to include the FBU, but Cllr McGhee interjected to say the public had been blocked from speaking at previous meetings.
In an email sent to panel members this week David Smith said members of the public would no longer be able to speak at meetings in which the panel was confirming top jobs within the fire and police service.
A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to 13 years in a Young Offenders Institute for the murder of teenager Rohan Shand, who was killed on his way home from school in Kingsthorpe, Northampton.
Affectionately known as Fred by his family and friends, the 16-year-old died after an incident near the Cock Hotel in Harborough Road at about 3.35pm on March 22.
The teenager, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of Fred’s murder at the conclusion of a four-week trial at Northampton Crown Court in August.
During the trial jurors heard how the attack on Fred was plotted on Snapchat and an electric scooter was used to find him.
The attack was planned in response to a dispute between local schoolboys which had occurred the previous two days at McDonalds and Taco Bell.
The 15-year-old approached Fred and stabbed him in the chest causing catastrophic blood loss, before fleeing.
A 17-year-old boy, who stood trial alongside the 15-year-old and who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found not guilty of murder and manslaughter. However, he received a youth rehabilitation order for 18 months in court today after pleading guilty to the charge of being in possession of a knife during the incident.
An independent councillor at West Northamptonshire Council has put the spotlight on information revealed in the political donations trial regarding a serving Conservative councillor.
Cllr Paul Clark said he was at Warwick Crown Court during the trial and heard the defence counsel for Sixfield’s businessman Howard Grossman say in open court that a Conservative bank account had received a payment of £22,250 from a charity of which Suresh Patel was trustee. He said such payments from charities to political parties is unlawful.
Cllr Clark said:
“It was said in court that the funds were paid into a bank account of the Conservative group at Northampton Borough Council and allegedly used by Cllr Patel for his own purposes. The funds were said to have been paid into this bank account in 2016 and repaid in 2019.”
Cllr Clark also said he saw the council’s monitoring officer Catherine Whitehead in the public gallery on the day he attended and witnessed her taking notes of what was being said. He asked the council’s leader Jonathan Nunn whether it was appropriate for the legal officer to be at the trial, which did not concern WNC and related to matters in 2015, and if he had asked her to attend. He asked if the legal officer reported what had been said in court and if so to whom.
Cllr Nunn said he had known that Catherine Whitehead had gone to the court but said it was not under his instruction and that officers had the freedom to make their own decisions.
Cllr Patel, who was not at the full council meeting last night, was also the subject of questions from two members of the public. One asked whether there should be an inquiry into the conduct of Cllr Patel following the outcome of the trial in which David Mackintosh and Howard Grossman were cleared of all charges against them.
Cllr Patel is the former chair of the Northamptonshire South Conservative Association and was David Mackintosh’s election agent. He is the chair of the democracy and standards committee at West Northamptonshire Council.
We will be following up this story and hopefully have more next week.
A businessman who made a donation to the election campaign of former Northampton MP David Mackintosh has been given a suspended prison sentence.
Gary Platt, who had admitted to not declaring information about the source of the funding, which had been transferred to his business account by his associate Howard Grossman, was given a seven week jail sentence suspended for eight months at Warwick Crown Court last Friday.
MrGrossman and Mr Mackintosh, were themselves cleared of allegations against them at the trial which ended last week.
Read the BBC report in full here
NN Events
🎶 Ska band Bad Manners are performing at the Roadmender in Northampton on Saturday at 7.30pm.
🎅 Holdenby House is holding some family festive events this weekend. More details here.
Quite a week of scandal for Northants, there is a lot more connection between the OPFCC, Police and council than people are aware of and dismantling this cabal through this sort of investigative journalism is in the interest of all residents of Northants.
There definitely seems to be a set of interlinked individuals and institutions determined to keep control of whatever happens in Northamptonshire, and I think you are doing a great job of keeping an eye on things.