Important North Northamptonshire unitary meeting happening this week

The North Northamptonshire joint committee will meet on Thursday (January 16) at the Corby Cube, with councillors from the five merging councils of Kettering, Corby, West Northants, Wellingborough and the county council getting together to look at reports put together by offices and council leaders.

There will also be a second unitary in the west of the county.

The committee will discuss a finance report – that has suggested that the annual savings for the first five years of the merger could save the two new authorities a collective £85m a year.

However some of the figures have already been called into question as they are partly based on out-of-date figures from savings that the county council is unable to make in its under-pressure children’s services department. Future Northants, the name given to the transformation organisation says, the monitoring position, which will include the latest in-year forecasts and budgets for 2020/21, will be included in a report to the next meeting in February.

The setting up of the new councils is a complicated process and is going to cost £43m to do.

The joint committee’s tasks are to make arrangements ahead of two new shadow authorities which are planned to be up and running this May.

It is anticipated there will be elections to the shadow authority at the same time as the police, fire and crime commissioner election, but as yet there is no official word from central government as the unitary creation still has to be made law.

The shadow authorities will then be replaced by the actual unitaries in April 2021, with the same councillors elected to the shadow authorities sitting on the new councils.

Also at Monday’s meeting the committee will look at suggestions about the process of recruiting the new senior offices to the new councils.

To register for the meeting residents should email by 5pm on Monday.

The meeting takes place on Thursday at 6.30pm.