Plan for traveller site near Rothwell moves along as councillors reject plea to send it back for re-think

North Northamptonshire Council will plough ahead with a £1.3m plan to build a traveller site on a green spot on open countryside near Rothwell.

Dozens of locals listened as councillors voted unanimously to allow the scheme to continue after the original decision was ‘called in’ for a review.

Tensions were raised toward the end of Thursday’s (January 19) meeting and a member of the public had to be told to be quiet several times.

The scheme could see the transient site built on a piece of land off Junction 3 of the A14 that Kettering Borough Council bought in 2017.

Travellers passing through the county would be able to stop there for up to 28 days at a cost of £120 per week.

The scheme was first mooted in 2022 but the council failed to get a Government grant. A public engagement session was held at that time, but no formal consultation.

NNC then decided to stump up the cash themselves and voted through the proposal in December.

But decisions made by the executive of the council can be ‘called in’ for further scrutiny before they have been implemented.

Cllr Jim Hakewill (Ind, Rothwell and Mawsley), with cross-bench backing, asked the council to look again at the decision.

Thursday’s Scrutiny Management Board were tasked with checking if it provided best value for local people. They had the option to send the matter back to executive or implement the executive decision and plough ahead with the plan.

Cllr Hakewill told the meeting: “We must all stress this has nothing to do with the provision of services for our friends in the traveller and gypsy community. This is about the process not working properly.”

He criticised the council for not considering other sites and for not looking at the scheme as part of the gypsy and traveller local plan.

"This is a sensitive and attractive site that should stay at it is,” he said. “It would be very ill advised to commence a planning application when there was so much opposition to this particular application last year.”

He said that the council had not been transparent about running costs in its report, thought to be in the region of £270,000 per year including loan interest, on top of the £1.3m outlay.

Councillor Joseph Smyth (Con, Rothwell and Mawsley) spoke during the public session on behalf of local residents. He said there had been no site visits and that background information about why the site had been chosen had not been ‘forthcoming’.

He added: “I just feel that site in Rothwell was shoehorned in quickly because there was no consultation beforehand and it was very hush hush.

"There should be proper consultation and transparency and a proper report on where the viable options should be for this site.”

He said there had been no consultation with Rothwell residents and with the travelling community.

“The cost is £1.3m,” he said. “This is taxpayers money and we have to ensure we have best value for money.”

Katherine Cadbury chair of Harrington Parish Council said that the village felt ‘very strongly’ and said that only ‘lip service’ had been paid to the practise of consultation.

Other speakers described the proposal as ‘ridiculous’ and called for the site to be made a pocket park.

Rothwell Town Councillor’s Karl Sumpter said: “For many years NNC has been aware of Rothwell’s absolute intention to retain this site as an area of natural beauty and despite many conversations, here we are for the second time, justifying our position.

"It’s the main entrance into Rothwell from west, so the first thing anybody will see when it says ‘Welcome to Rothwell, an historic market town’ is a gypsy/ traveller site.”

Executive member Cllr David Howes (Con, Desborough) said that there were no alternatives to the A14 site, and that was the only site had been recommended by officers for the executive to consider.

"The executive are very well aware of the difficulty in finding suitable sites within the council’s ownership,” he said.

"As soon as you start talking about gypsy and traveller sites it immediately sets the hares racing.”

Cllr Howes admitted that when alternative sites had been presented to local councillors they had been done so on a confidential basis so as to not unnerve other communities. He added that there were a ‘range’ of reasons why other sites were not considered to be viable.

He said that the £1.3m cost was not ‘additional’ borrowing but rather ‘reallocated’ borrowing that the council was already due to take out.

The scheme will still have to go through the planning application process before it can go ahead.

After the meeting, Cllr Martin Griffiths (Ind, Irchester) said: “This £1.3m could have been used to fund a new thermal patching team that could visit our villages and estates on a planned, proactive basis repairing up to 80 road defects per day.

"In my opinion this is one of the worst judgement calls this Tory controlled executive have made in three years since the creation of NNC.”