Friday brief: Teenagers stage impromptu vigil after murder of Northampton schoolboy
Friday brief: Teenagers stage impromptu vigil after murder of Northampton schoolboy
In a tragic week for Northamptonshire we bring you a longer than usual Friday brief
It’s been a tragic week in the county with the horrifying murder of a Northampton schoolboy on his way home from school. Yesterday many of his school friends silently congregated at a memorial close to the place where he was stabbed to death on Wednesday.
Rohan Shand’s murder - the third of a Northants school child in less than two years - comes in the same week that failings in the care of the county’s most vulnerable children were brought to the surface once more with another damning Ofsted report - this time about the county’s fostering agency.
We report on these two stories plus other news in a longer than usual Friday brief.
Teenagers from Kingsthorpe College gathered in silent grief yesterday following the death of a school friend.
Rohan Shand, 16, who was known as Fred, was stabbed to death on Wednesday afternoon as he walked home from school with friends at around 3.35pm.
Two men aged 41 and 21 and two teenagers aged 14 and 16 were swiftly arrested in connection with his death and yesterday evening were still in custody.
A crowd of young people gathered at the war memorial off the busy Harborough Road in Kingsthorpe yesterday, laying flowers, crying and consoling each other.
Their school, which is run by head teacher Jennifer Giovanelli, had closed yesterday following the murder.
In a media briefing held close to the murder scene yesterday afternoon Superintendent Rachael Handford said:
“This is an exceptionally sad and tragic incident, which can have an enormous impact on the neighbourhood and wider community. And whilst we do believe that this was an isolated incident, we know people are very shocked and upset by what has happened, our officers will remain in the Kingsthorpe area over the coming days to provide reassurance and be on hand if anyone has any concerns.
“We would also like to say thank you to the members of the public who stopped at the scene and tried to help as well as those people who have contacted us with information about the incident. Without the support from the community, the investigation wouldn’t be in the position that it is.
“With that, we would also encourage anyone with information, however small, to get in touch as soon as possible if they have not already done so. Any little detail may assist the investigation team and we would rather be given well-meaning information that comes to nothing, than it not be given at all.”
There was a minute’s silence at the West unitary meeting. Councillor for the area, Lib Dem Sally Beardsworth said she understood the murdered teenager’s father had ‘already lost his wife’ and also criticised those who had stopped and filmed the boy while he was receiving CPR in the street.
Conservative Cllr Sam Rumens, who also represents Kingsthorpe, said the murder had ‘shaken the community to the core’ and said the civic community needed to work out its response.
Labour councillor for the area Harry Barrett said at the meeting:
“Alongside the leadership and safeguarding teams at Kingsthorpe College, we have been working through the night and morning to draw up an action plan to support the school's students and staff in this incredibly difficult time.
“This is an unprecedented time for the school, and the leadership team and staff are doing all that they can to navigate what is an extremely difficult situation under the most tragic of circumstances.
“Your Kingsthorpe councillors have been working, and will continue to work, alongside all agencies in the community, offering our support and advice where required.
Police are asking for any residents who have CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage relevant to calling them on 101, quoting incident number 23000174855. Footage can also be uploaded via the online portal at Northants.police.uk
A councillor who has been raising concerns about Northamptonshire’s fostering service for two years says a cross party improvement board needs to be created.
As exclusively revealed by NN Journal earlier this week Ofsted has rated the service run by Northamptonshire Children’s Trust as inadequate. Inspectors found during their visit last month found that there were serious failings in the service, with safeguarding concerns not acted upon and the service focusing more on foster carers than the children. It found there was a ‘lack of critical thinking and professional curiosity from staff’.
Following the publication of the inspection the leaders of the two unitary councils, Cllr Jason Smithers and Cllr Jonathan Nunn, made a joint statement saying they were ‘not happy at all’ about the Ofsted findings and would work with the trust to turn the service around ‘as quickly as possible’.
The trust was imposed on Northamptonshire in 2020 by the government after the former county council had mismanaged the service, with government commissioners finding the service was in ‘chaos’ and hundreds of children did not have an allocated social worker.
The trust is now run at arms length - although is entirely funded by the local authorities. However the local authorities have no power to intervene in the operational running of the trust.
Cllr Leanne Buckingham from the North unitary Labour group says she has raised issues publicly including in December 2021.
“At this meeting I raised my concerns of the first-hand experience that I had witnessed. I did not in any way reflect the comments made by the executive member for children’s services, and explained what I had witnessed. One young man in a foster placement in Corby had been allocated to three different social workers, and had failed to find a suitable school placement.
“I appreciate that children’s social care is a challenging environment with such a high volume of staff turnover and a national shortage of both social workers and foster carers. But we need to do more to ensure that our most vulnerable children are supported and cared for.
“The looked after children’s action plan needs to contain a list of actions that need to ensure certainty for all children. We need to take a pragmatic approach to the improvement of services and that starts with the fundamentals of having a safe space to live and thrive.
“I call for a cross party improvement board to work with the children’s trust, to publish an urgent action plan to protect our children in the foster care system.”
There is also huge concern among the West unitary Labour group.
Shadow cabinet member for children’s services, Cllr Danielle Stone, said the trust had been set up to fail. She said the trust should be brought back into local authority control and split into North and West. She said unless something happened the current decade of failure would turn into two.
She said:
“This is a deeply troubling report that paints a picture of a service that is in trouble. The issues that have been highlighted are not new, they are the same that appear time and time again.
“In West Northants we inherited a really bad situation from the county council. It is a sad fact that our children have been failed for ten years. This has been made worse by the national under-investment in children. Social workers are under pressure with caseloads that are too high, with technology that is clunky, where too much time is spent travelling to visit families and not enough time spent with families.
“We must urgently find ways of easing the strain and making our children safe.”
Two meetings have been held this week with senior leaders of the council and the trust, and the trust says action has already been taken. NN Journal understands that a senior member of staff from the trust has been sanctioned.
We asked the trust yesterday whether the trust’s chief executive Colin Foster was considering his resignation but did not receive a response. Chair of the trust Julian Wooster (who is currently being employed as a troubleshooter in Devon’s children services) said the inadequate rating ‘ was not anticipated’.
Last year Ofsted said the trust had improved the overall children’s service from inadequate to requires improvement, but said service was ‘variable’.
News in brief
Developer Vistry held a consultation meeting about the threatened trees in Wellingborough yesterday. The event was ticket only and was oversubscribed with many people missing out. We will bring you an update last week.
A plan to knock down a single-storey former office building and replace it with a block of flats has been rejected by council planning bosses.
Developers wanted to demolish Peerless House, in Talbot Road, Wellingborough, to make way for a four-storey building containing 38 one-bedroom flats.
But North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) said the development would have been “harmful” to and “incongruous” with the neighbourhood, which is a short walk from the town’s Grade II listed train station.
Plans submitted to NNC said the design had been put together to “carefully consider” the area’s character and that the proposed building would have resembled a converted factory.
However, the council said it would have resulted in an “unacceptable loss of light” and caused overshadowing to nearby buildings.
It said the potential replacement for the 1960s office building, which has been used as a boxing gym since the start of 2022, would have resulted in “overdevelopment”.
Report by Nathan Briant, Local Democracy Reporter
The new £250,000 tourism hub for Northamptonshire opened at Rushden Lakes this week. The hub is being funded by money given to the north unitary council from the government as part of its levelling up funding. The county’s tourism strategy was supposed to be launched at the same time but has been delayed and is now expected in May.
Westminster Watch
Wellingborough’s MP Peter Bone has reprised his role as chief Boris Johnson supporter this week and appeared on national media to defend the former PM for attending lockdown parties. Johnson has been grilled by parliament’s privileges committee about whether he knowingly misled parliament and if found guilty could face sanctions which may force a by election.
Bone, who has always dismissed the idea that Johnson did anything wrong, told Channel 4 news:
“Based on the evidence it seems the only conclusion they can come to is that Boris did not willingly mislead parliament.”
We have been all over the county this week attempting to bring you information about what has been happening. Our journalism costs money to produce and is only funded by our readers. Many thanks to those who support us and if you can please consider signing up for £5 per month.