West unitary’s redundancy and retirement scheme will save more than £1.5m this financial year
Our regular news round up this sunny Friday
A widescale redundancy and retirement scheme opened up to the West unitary workforce last year is set to save the authority more than £1.5m this current financial year.
A Freedom of information request by NN Journal has revealed the figures after the authority put out a call in October to staff to put their hands up for redundancy, hours reduction or early retirement in a bid to make savings.
The authority, which was the Conservative run and is now in the control of Reform UK, has a budget this year of £431m.
In October it employed more than 2,500 staff across all of its departments.
The FOI reveals that 31 staff have taken voluntary redundancy since October and 23 people have retired early. 38 staff have reduced their hours. The authority would not reveal in the FOI request how many staff had been made redundant voluntarily as it said this would identify staff.
Altogether it says £1.5m would be saved this current year due to the voluntary job losses, retirements and hours reductions. This figure does not include the amounts saved by involuntary redundancies.
The council says that just under £87,000 was saved in the 2024-25 financial year due to the staff reductions.
It remains to be seen how Reform will tackle the financial savings needed by the authority. In the election campaign it made a big deal of the debts held by the council (much of which was accumulated by the former county council and was for capital projects and PFI projects).
It’s national leaders have also said audit and IT task forces will be sent into its councils and carry out an Elon Musk inspired DOGE review to cut what it saw as council waste.
News in brief
Campaign group Climate Action-West Northamptonshire has published an end of term report on the recent four year Conservative administration at West Northamptonshire Council.
Highlights include the authority declaring a climate emergency in 2021; joining the UK100; a network of councils with ambitious net zero plans; setting up the cross party sustainability working group and recruiting a sustainability team and the council’s housing company doing a retrofit of 470 homes to improve energy efficiency.
Lowlights include the Active Travel scheme, as the campaign group says delivery of a strategy has been endlessly delayed.
The county’s police, fire and crime commissioner held a round table discussion with mosques from the county to discuss how police can increase trust and confidence and remove barriers to community engagement.
Mosque leaders told Commissioner Danielle Stone and chief constable Ivan Balhatchet of the need for improved communications channels with senior leaders in the police and about concerns they had on community tensions and hate crime.
In a statement Danielle Stone said:
“I am on a mission to make communities safer and to improve the relationships between all our communities and our Police and Fire Services.
“All of our local faith groups are very good at putting services in place that help and protect people, and they are hugely influential in their respective communities.
“Bringing us all together will help to forge a strong partnership, and it will take a collective approach to tackle the shared challenges we face across the county.
“We have now held round table discussions with local church leaders as well as our Mosque leaders. The Chief Constable and I know there is a lot to do to increase trust and confidence. So we are open to speaking with any faith or community groups so we can further strengthen the partnerships we have across the whole county.”
Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet said:
“We recognise that policing currently doesn’t reflect the communities that we serve as much as it should. Hopefully this meeting is the start of a process that will help to build better lines of communication.”
The delayed Higham Ferrers election will take place on Thursday, June 12.
The election for the North Northamptonshire Council ward should have taken place on May 1 but was delayed due to the death of Lib Dem candidate john Rafcliffe. Two seats will be up for election and all of the political parties will be campaigning heavily in the area in a bid to strengthen their numbers on the council.
If Reform win both available seats, it would take their majority to a comfortable seven.
Racist Ron Firman was elected to the West unitary as a Reform UK candidate last week. NN Journal revealed his historic tweets before the election, which included saying he would throw a Somalian asylum seeker from an plane and making jokes about white supremacy group the Ku Klux Klan.
Former bus driver Firman, who was elected to the Hunsbury ward, refused to speak to NN Journal before the election so we will continue attempts to contact him. He was supported as a candidate by Farage’s party, which refused to suspend him after his beliefs and comments were exposed.
Westminster Watch
27 Northamptonshire GP surgeries will be modernised as part of the Labour government’s £102m spend on primary care to increase appointments.
The surgeries will be modernised in Northants are: Abbey House Surgery; Abbey Medical Centre; Abington Park Surgery; Albany House; Bugbrooke Surgery; Burton Latimer Health Care; Danetre Medical Centre; Eskdaill Medical; Great Oakley; Greens Norton and Weedon; Greenview Surgery; Harborough Field Surgery,King Edward Road Surgery; Lakeside Surgery; Langham Place Surgery; Leicester Terrace Surgery; Queensview Medical Centre; Queensway Medical Centre; Redwell Medical Centre; Saxon Spires; Spinney Brook Medical Centre; Springfield Surgery; St Lukes; The Brook; The Pines Surgery; Towcester Medical Centre and Weavers/Eskdaill Medical Centre.
Labour MP for Wellingborough & Rushden, Gen Kitchen, said she was thrilled to see six surgeries her constituency selected for an upgrade.
“Constituents regularly tell me about the difficulties they face getting a GP appointment, so I am thrilled that the Labour government is bringing forward a plan to deliver millions more appointments each year.
“This funding marks the biggest investment in GP facilities in five years and is only possible because of the difficult but necessary choices made by the Government in the Budget to invest £26 billion into the NHS.”
I have written to the Health Secretary about throwing more money into the GP 'surgery' pit. It is a colossal waste prolonging the dire outcomes of this outmoded primary care structure. These 'surgeries' should be replaced with diagnostic hubs peopled by doctors who are not so repulsed by having to be near their patients that they barely look at them let alone seek to find causes.