Planning Applications
Planning applications are initially considered by two councillors (see Councillors' Responsibilities) before being discussed by the full Parish Council at the next available meeting. If there is no meeting due before the designated return date for correspondence, the Clerk will circulate an application by email to all Councillors, and decisions will be made by email correspondence or by calling an extra meeting.
Details of our meetings are shown in the Council Meetings Calendar. The Agenda for the forthcoming meeting is published at least 3 days prior to the meeting.
In all cases, whilst the Parish Council considers and comments on all applications affecting the parish, the controlling authority is West Northants Council (WNC) who can choose to take on board or ignore our comments and approve or refuse.
To find details of all current and historic planning applications see WNC's website.
To see applications within Cold Higham parish go to this page on SNC's web site and search for Cold Higham under the 'Parish' drop-down menu.
Northants County Council - The Financial Challenge
Public Consultation
Northamptonshire County Council 2018-19 Budget Consultation: Phase 1
The financial challenge and the need for change
The money the Council receives from the Government has been reducing for some time and will do so again in 2018/19. Since 2010, we have delivered savings totalling £376 million. By 2021, our total savings will have risen to £0.5 billion. On top of this, we are facing higher than ever demand for our services. We have made a number of difficult choices over the last few years to make the savings we needed, and we need to do this again to make sure that we have enough money in our budget to run services that meet statutory requirements (what we must do) and help those who need it the most.
Our population is growing and its needs are changing. New responsibilities for the Council have placed huge pressures on our public services in the county. As a result of this, and changes at a national level (including Brexit and a new minority Conservative government) we must look again at our financial plans. We are making our case to the Government for Fairer Funding to address this, but we need to act now to make sure we have enough money in our budget for 2018/19 to meet all the pressures we face.
Have your say on Phase 1 of the County Council's budget proposals
We have started to look at what we might need to change in terms of how we deliver our services and whether we need to reduce or stop anything we currently do. Our proposals set out the start of our plans to deliver a balanced budget for 2018/19 to make sure we have enough money to deliver our key services. In Phase 1, we are consulting early on proposals where we might need to meet contractual or procurement deadlines, where we may need to consult with staff, or where there is a chance of starting to make savings in 2017/18. For Phase 1, these add up to a value of £9.6m.
In December, we will launch Phase 2 of our consultation, which will be our consultation on the draft budget. Phase 2 will also include consultation on the level of Council Tax we propose to set for 2018/19 and have more proposals on how we will manage next year's budget.
Your feedback on both phases of consultation is really important to us, and all consultation feedback from both phases will be analysed and considered, and will help Councillors make a final decision on the Budget at the Full Council meeting on 22nd February 2018. This meeting is held in public and anyone wishing to speak at the meeting should contact Customer Services.
The consultation on Phase 1 of the budget proposals covered by this survey will run for six weeks, starting on 20th October 2017 and ending on 1st December 2017. Details about the consultation on Phase 2 of the budget proposals will be announced in December. Please email consult@northamptonshire.gov.uk if you would like to be notified when Phase 2 of this consultation launches.
How to give your views
We want to hear your views about these options to understand the possible impact of the proposals and what would be the best way forward for the Library and Information Service in Northamptonshire.
Please visit our web site for all of the different ways you can give your feedback to these proposals, including our online questionnaire and public events.
This consultation closes at 1st December 2017.
Details of this consultation and other past and present consultations are available on Northamptonshire County Council's Consultation Register.
Northants CALC Synopsis of NCC Financial Changes
You may have picked up in the press the news that Northamptonshire County Council (NCC) is exploring the possibility of cuts to some services that will affect all communities in the county. The news was based on a report on the council's Medium Term Financial Plan that had been published for the NCC Cabinet meeting that was held yesterday. The report is available at https://cmis.northamptonshire.gov.uk/cmis5live/MeetingsCalendar/tabid/73/ctl/ViewMeetingPublic/mid/410/Meeting/2922/Committee/399/Default.aspx under Item 06. A web cast of the Cabinet meeting is available at https://northamptonshire.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/279880.
The recommendation in the report was that the proposals be consulted on, and this was agreed at the Cabinet meeting. A public consultation will begin in November and a detailed plan is being drawn up for how that will work.
The proposals relate to 2018/19, i.e. for the financial year that starts in April 2018.
The proposals that will be of most interest to parish and town councils are:
- Remove subsidies for bus services where there is no statutory duty to provide them
- Remove Empowering Councillors and communities fund of £5k per councillor
- Redesign of Libraries including withdrawal of the mobile library and the closure or transfer to the community of some medium and smaller libraries (3 options to be consulted on)
- Remove parish enhancement gang
- Reduced weed killing treatment, reduction in road marking maintenance and targeted traffic signal maintenance
- Reduce winter gritting to 32% of the network and charge parishes for filling grit bins
- Reduce Public Right of Way technical, inspection, enforcement and operational staff levels
It should be noted that the above measures are just part of a package of savings designed to reduce a funding gap of £37.3m by £9.6m, leaving a remaining gap of £27.7m (which in itself is a small proportion of the £0.5 billion needing to have been saved by 2021). Additional proposals will be identified as part of the production of the Draft Budget to be presented in the December 2017 NCC Cabinet. Other measures outlined in the review of the Medium Term Financial Plan include:
- Review of the duties, responsibilities and standards of service delivery provided by the Trading Standards Service with a reduction of approximately 16 staff and focus based on risk and priority, and less preventions
- Children's service provision and location review and contract reductions, including a reduction in funding for support services countywide and children's centres services in Corby
All parish and town councils are encouraged to respond to the consultation on the Medium Term Financial Plan proposals, and when the consultation launches I will circulate the links. However, you don't have to wait for the launch of the consultation to start having conversations internally about what your parish council will do and how it will react to the proposals if they are implemented. As always, the devil will be in the detail and Northants CALC will be encouraging NCC to:
- Be as open and transparent as possible
- Make access to information easy and straightforward
- Provide detailed information as soon as possible, particularly where there might be an impact on parish and town council's own budgeting process
- Make it easy for parish and town councils to collaborate with NCC and contribute where they choose to do so, without wrapping everything up in red tape and regulations
Parish and town councils with libraries in their area should begin conversations with NCC as soon as possible, if they haven't already done so. Contact your county councillor, or the NCC Cabinet member responsible, Cllr Sylvia Hughes (shughes@northamptonshire.gov.uk).
I will keep you updated on any significant developments.
I hope you have a good weekend!
Best regards,
Danny.
Northamptonshire Libraries and Information Service Review 2017 Consultation
Northamptonshire County Council needs to find £115m savings over the next four years predominantly to meet social care costs in the county. The Library and Information Service must share in this financial challenge and seek to reduce costs to the tax payer. The low cost per visit compared to other library services demonstrates that this cannot be achieved by further efficiencies alone, and requires a more fundamental reshaping of the service to ensure it is fit for the future.
The review of the library service will comprehensively examine the current Northamptonshire Library and Information Service as it operates over its current 36 static and one mobile site against four measures of accessibility, quality, availability and sustainability in line with the review approach recommended by the National Libraries Taskforce. It will examine key statistics and trends within the service before setting out options about how a future library service may be shaped. It will test these proposals against the common design principles of library services and consider the impact of the proposals on the residents of Northamptonshire. This consultation and its outcomes will play a significant part in informing the new library strategy 2018-2022.
What might change?
We are consulting upon three options for the future of the Library and Information Service. Each section of the questionnaire gives more detail on what the options mean.
Option 1
- Develop community-managed library model to be offered to all other current library communities
- Retain countywide digital, information and business offer
- Retain 15 libraries and further develop as community hubs – 8 large libraries, 7 medium libraries
- Investigate potential future library service provision to additional location in Corby
- Extend Library to You to replace Mobile Library
- The mobile library would be withdrawn from service.
The remaining libraries would be closed, including the universal Children's Centres services delivered in those libraries. Expressions of interest from community groups, organisations or businesses wishing to establish a community-managed library are invited via their county councillor. These community-managed libraries would sit outside of the statutory library service offered by the Council.
Option 2
- Retain countywide digital, information and business offer
- Retain 15 libraries and further develop as community hubs – 8 large libraries, 7 medium libraries
- Investigate potential future library service provision to additional location in Corby
- Extend Library to You to replace Mobile Library
- The mobile library would be withdrawn from service.
- The remaining libraries would be closed, including the universal Children's Centres services delivered in those libraries.
Option 3
- Retain countywide digital, information and business offer
- Retain 8 libraries and further develop as community hubs
- Extend Library to You to replace Mobile Library
- The mobile library would be withdrawn from service
- The remaining libraries would be closed, including the universal Children's Centres services delivered in those libraries
In all three options, libraries with Children's Centre designation are proposed for closure so it is important to consider the full range of services provided at the libraries when thinking about each of the proposals. Details of the proposals, copies of the Cabinet Paper and information about each library at risk of closure can be found on our web site.
How to give your views
We want to hear your views about these options to understand the possible impact of the proposals and what would be the best way forward for the Library and Information Service in Northamptonshire.
Please visit our web site for all of the different ways you can give your feedback to these proposals, including our online questionnaire and public events.
This consultation closes at 5pm on 13th January 2018.
Details of this consultation and other past and present consultations are available on Northamptonshire County Council's Consultation Register.