Agenda item

Northampton Carnival Archive Project – exhibition now on at the People’s Gallery in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. Anyone with any stories or objects or photos from past carnivals please share them with the project team.

Community Centres
The forum was advised that progress had been in handing community centres over to the local community to run. To date 9 had been transferred to be run by the community. Another 6 were due to go through before end of March, then another 6 over the coming months.

Governance Review

Keith outlined the opportunity for all electors to have a say whether they want a local council to be set up. He explained that this might be called a “parish council” or “community” or “neighbourhood” council – all these terms describe similar things but “parish” may be perceived as overly Christian or old-fashioned by some people who would prefer the other terminology.

If people would like to see a local council created they need to do so using a petition. Any individual can set up a petition. There’s help e.g. petition forms. People in the community can get other people to sign it. The signatures need to be from registered electros in the local area for which the council is requested. They can’t be on several different petitions.

Once handed in to the Northampton Borough Council the petitions will be validated against electoral role. If they are found at 27 April 2012 to exceed the threshold of that area – generally 10% - they go forward as valid petition – which means they go to the full Council.

There’s then a second stage which is a referendum, due for 15 November 2012, the same day as the Police Commissioner’s referendum. So all electors can vote in each area – a simple “yes” or “no” to having the proposed local council established. If there’s a majority in favour on the day the proposal will go forward to have approval for the local council being set up. Individuals then stand as parish councillors in May 2013. The parish precept will be set by Northampton Borough Council for the first 10 months or thereabouts. The new local council will then set its own precept for 2014-15.

There is a web address www.northampton.gov.uk/cgr . Information there includes the proposed timetable, petition forms, information about possible parish council powers. E-petitions for people to sign electronically and the possibility for people to set up e-petitions online themselves. There are ward maps available. Petitions may seek parish councils for part of a ward, a whole ward or going across more than one ward – all the petitions so far have been set up by NBC and/or NCC Councillors and they often have close links to local residents associations.

There a 7 parish councils already in Northampton, mostly in the south of the Borough and on the outskirts of Northampton. They offer a range of services, often currently just a few of what they could potentially do.

On the “You Decide” form you can put your name down as if signing a petition by sending the form to NBC.

The10% required to get a referendum for an area ranges between 250 and 660 signatures of individual electors.

Parish councils in Northampton currently have a precept of £20 to £100 per registered elector per year. So people have to pay more tax if they have a parish council. Most petitions so far submitted are looking for about £1 per week per registered elector.

Some parish councils choose to pay for staff/roles such as a “PCSO” (Police Community Support Officer), Environmental Warden and Parish Park Warden. Some have volunteers doing roles. Community centres may be owned and run by parish councils. Some might pay for equipment or apparatus such as MUGA. Duston has – imminently – a sports and leisure complex and hopes to develop St Lukes into a day nursery. Some run community events and organise tree planting. Some do road signs, park fencing, community clean ups and reviewing planning applications.

There was some concern about the ability of parish councils to have due regard to the needs of everyone in their local community.

There was some concern about the potential impact of parish councils on the town’s population overall – for example if people in more affluent areas of the Borough were able to afford a parish precept and had skills which helped them to be parish councillors, might this lead to better-off areas being better lit and better serviced, while areas with more poverty and which might include significant numbers of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, might be less well served where their local residents could not afford to pay for extra services. The forum was interested in seeing and understanding what equality impact assessment was being done as part of the governance review. Keith Mitchell agreed to bring this back to a future meeting of the forum.

There was some concern about the scope of powers of parish councils. It was suggested that those in the town already had come about due to formerly rural nature of the areas concerned. It was noted that parish council powers traditionally were suited for rural communities e.g. provision of graveyards and allotments, matters which these days in Northampton might need to be looked at in a townwide way.

There was a suggestion that adding in a third tier of council to Northampton was not necessarily helpful and one view was that it would be preferable to look at a unitary Northampton council instead.

Northampton General Hospital

Several members of the Forum reported concerns about changes in how appointments were being managed at the hospital. If people were unable to make a time given to them, it seemed that they were unable to rearrange but simply found the appointment was cancelled and they were moved to the back of the queue and might have to wait several weeks or months for another chance to be seen. For people with conditions which needed regular monitoring this was a particular concern.

Agreed: Gracie from the Link to look into this

Northampton Link

Gracie handed out information about the upcoming meetings and events.

Pearls of Peace
Shared information about their upcoming coffee morning and encouraged more people to get involved.

Councillor Empowerment Fund
Cllr Suresh Patel reminded people to look out for the new financial year’s councillor empowerment funds which enabled councillors at both Northants County Council and Northampton Borough Council to look to help local communities.