Friday brief: MP and council leader at odds about the state of the roads
Plus news from across Northants in our regular news round up
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Wellingborough MP and the leader of the North unitary are in dispute about the state of the roads after the MP wrote an open letter questioning whether the council should renew the deal with its highways contractor.
Gen Kitchen MP published an open letter this week to leader of the council Jason Smithers, querying whether the contractor Kier should have its contract extended. In the letter she said her team had been tracking repairs and cited six occasions where repair work done was ‘sub par’. The state of the roads in Northants has been steadily deteriorating in recent years with many motorists complaining about the damage large potholes in the road are doing to their vehicles.
But in response at NNC’s executive meeting yesterday councillor Matt Binley, said the company, which has had the contract to maintain the county’s roads for more than a decade, has made improvements in the past 12 months.
Pointing to the performance figures he said compared to June last year there had been a 7.6 per cent reduction in outstanding defects, with 3,759 in 2024 compared to 4,069 in 2024. He also said the firm’s performance had improved as last year 86.1 per cent of defects were repaired on time, which has now risen to 91.9 per cent.
He said:
“That is really positive for the people of North Northamptonshire. Showing we are holding our contractor Kier to account, we are driving forward performance and that is shown by those figures. That is fact.
“So when somebody says the repairs being carried out are sub par, I don't understand what figure is being used. You can quite clearly see there is an improvement and quite a significant improvement within 12 months. We do of course know that the highways need work on, but what that shows is that we are doing it.
He dismissed Gen Kitchen’s analysis as ‘hearsay’ and said:
“When we have an MP saying that the workmanship is shoddy and that we need to hold them to account, this is exactly what this is showing. What I would say to that individual is she needs to hold her government to account to make sure that the people of her constituency see the investment that they were promised by the last government.
“This council is putting in £9m over the next three years in additional work and we are seeing a huge improvement due to the resurfacing programme that we have carried out this year.”
He said the Labour MP should have looked at the figures. However the figures he was referencing from the council report were not related to the quality of the repair, rather they referenced the number of repairs.
Leader Jason Smithers said he had a meeting with Kier eight months ago in which he told them he was not happy with their performance and said they have since ‘stepped up’. He said due to the number of repairs there would naturally be some that failed. He said if a defect was not repaired properly Kier then repaired it, at its own cost. He did not say whether the council would be renewing Kier’s contract.
News in brief
A Rushden hairdresser has died after falling out of the window of a Wellingborough Hotel.
Oliver Marmon, 33, died at the scene of the accident on Sheep Street at around 11.30pm on Sunday evening. Police had initially launched a murder investigation but closed it on Tuesday after investigations.
He was due to get married next month to his long term partner, Jaymi Hemsley, who is a member of Union J, a band formed after appearing on TV show X Factor.
The number of children’s special education needs and disabilities (SEND) assessments completed on time in West Northamptonshire is rising, but there are still hundreds of vulnerable families stuck in the system who feel sidelined by the authority.
In June, West Northamptonshire Council managed to issue 42 per cent of Education health care plans (EHCPs) within the 20 week time limit, up from the six per cent average in 2023. However at the end of July, the number of children awaiting an EHCP outside the statutory timescale sat at 340.
A freedom of information (FOI) request sent to WNC revealed the longest wait for a final EHC plan still in the system was 70 weeks, approximately a year and four months more than it should have taken. The council has said it responds to assessments in two separate teams, one for those who have requested an EHC assessment more recently and another known as the backlog team.
The council has apologised to the children and families that have been impacted and said it is in the ‘very early days’ of its SEND improvement journey.
Report by Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter
The North unitary council has raised concerns about an increase in the numbers of state school pupils when the VAT rise is levied on private school education.
The council approved two projects totalling £3.3 million to create 54 new school places at Wrenn School, in Wellingborough, and Wollaston School. It said it had predicted a “significant deficit of Year 7 places” in September.
At the executive meeting held yesterday, Cllr Gill Mercer reflected on how expensive it is to create additional spaces and shared her worries that a possible influx of pupils into council-run schools when VAT is put on private schools in January could put authorities under immense pressure.
She explained:
“You can see that this is an expensive business… so it’s not something we can do lightly.
“It’s not just teachers we need to provide, it’s the buildings, the infrastructure. It is costly, as I said £1.7m for 30 places- what would it be if we had hundreds of extra children?
“We just don’t know the outcome of this.”
Labour has pledged to end the VAT exemption for private schools to raise an estimated £1.6bn, which the party said would be used to hire 6,500 teachers in the state sector. However, doubt has been cast on what will happen to families who can no longer afford the fees and some schools have already indicated their plans to close as VAT pushes their costs up.
Leader of NNC, Jason Smithers said:
“Ultimately the responsibility for those children if they can’t go to the paid-for school comes down to us to find them places. That will no doubt put an additional burden on this authority and other authorities up and down the country.
“I’m sure the incoming government will recognise that and understand that if they have to fund more capital-build projects in the schools up and down the country that they will have those contingencies in place.”
The expansion of Wrenn Secondary School for 30 extra places will be funded by the Department for Education (DfE) whereas the 24 places in Wollaston School will be paid for primarily by Section 106 payments, contributed by major housing developments. Both projects cost in the region of £1.7 million.
A further capital project to create a SEND unit at Whitefriars Primary School in Rushden, totalling £2.3m, was also given the green-light at the same meeting.
Cllr Smithers added: “It’s great that we’re investing here in North Northamptonshire and I’m sure the schools will be absolutely thrilled with this investment.”
Report by Nadia Lincoln
North Northamptonshire Council has listed ten cultural venues, which are set to share a £5m pot promised by the previous Conservative government, but there are fears the pot could be scrapped.
Places such as Adrenaline Alley in Corby and the former Gala Bingo site in Kettering town centre have been put forward by the authority as its chosen projects to benefit from the levelling up fund, which was announced by the Tory government in Spring.
But Cllr Helen Howell, deputy leader and executive member for culture and tourism yesterday raised the prospect of the cash not arriving and said it would be “an absolute travesty” if the funding did not come through from the Labour Government after all the hard work put in by local businesses and the authority.
“These projects are fantastic. If the new Government pulls back on this funding all of those organisations who have spent time, effort and money on these bids, well, quite frankly it doesn’t bear thinking about.
“I just hope that we are able to realise that funding and develop these opportunities,” she said.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said since taking office, that the finances were much worse than expected and has put schemes such as the new build hospital programme under review. She has also told all government departments to find huge sums in savings.
The projects chosen by the council are:
The Lighthouse Theatre in Kettering
Rothwell Market House
Desborough Heritage Centre
Rushden Transport Heritage Society
Adrenaline Alley in Corby
Sywell Country Park
Fermynwoods Contemporary Arts
Chester House
Transformation of the former Gala Bingo in Kettering
Project M creative youth space in Corby
The council will also allocate £500,000 of the money to go towards grant schemes for smaller local cultural projects.
Leader of NNC, Jason Smithers said:
“North Northamptonshire is poised for a cultural transformation. A provisional fund of £5m has been earmarked to ignite local cultural projects, breathing new life into our communities.
“We are looking forward to the new Government’s confirmation of the final funding award. This investment is crucial for improving our cultural facilities, creating opportunities and building a sense of pride and belonging.”
A decision on the award of funding is expected soon.
Report by Nadia Lincoln
This will be the last report until after the bank holiday as I am going to take a week’s holiday. Will be back on August 27 with an interview with the police, fire and crime commissioner.
Frankly, Binley can wobble on about his statistics until he is blue in the face, but I don't believe him. The Kier contract includes more or less the entire back office Highways function, and that includes collecting and massaging figures on Kier's performance. His numbers are, therefore, Kier's numbers, not the council's, because the council has no remaining capability to produce it's own. To imagine that these figures aren't produced to "accentuate the positive", in terms of Kier's performance, is on a par with believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden. Binley either knows this, but is too dishonest to mention it, or he doesn't, in which case he is very stupid. Whichever way, he is unfit to be a steward of what is, after all, our money (£200 per household, per year, on this contract alone).
By contrast, Gen Kitchen's so-called "hearsay" (which I understand is documented and photographed) corresponds very fairly with my own, here in Kettering - as a cyclist, I keep a very close look at the surfaces my wheels are running on. So, I am inclined to believe Ms Kitchen's position, and to disbelieve Binley's. I hope very much, therefore, that she isn't going to leave it there, because she is doing a community good in pursuing the issue of the appalling state of our roads.
As a final note, I would point out that the fundamental question that Ms Kitchen is asking in her letter is, are you going to extend the Kier contract and, if so, why? It impresses me not one tiny bit that neither Smithers or Binley have had the good manners to provide an answer.
Whenever anything good happens in Northants it will be because the last government promised it, anything bad will be Labour's fault of course. Isn't politics the best thing about loc al government?