North Northamptonshire Council leader Cllr Jason Smithers reshuffles his cabinet signalling exit for long-standing Wellingborough member Cllr Graham Lawman

There’s been a reshuffle of personnel at the top of North Northamptonshire Council.

Leader Cllr Jason Smithers (Con, Oundle) said he had altered the line up of his executive team to ‘enhance its way of working’.

But the news means that long-standing grandee Cllr Graham Lawman (Con, Hatton Park) loses his influential highways portfolio and returns to the backbenches.

Seen as a safe pair of hands by his colleagues, Cllr Lawman has served on NNC since its inception in 2021 and, before that, as chair of the Northamptonshire County Council pensions committee, from which he was ousted after a row with leader Cllr Matt Golby. All in all, he has been a councillor for more than 14 years.

Cllr Matt Binley (Con, Queensway) who was promoted from the back-benches to take on the running of housing, communities and levelling-up last year, takes on Cllr Lawman’s tough former role in highways – with the big job of trying to get the county’s crumbling roads repaired.

He hit the headlines in December last year when he reported his former pal Cllr Scott Brown (Con, Earls Barton) for the nature of private messages sent between them.

Cllr Mark Rowley (Con, Ise) moves from the backbenches into Cllr Binley’s former housing role.

In a short statement, Cllr Smithers said: “We are now in our third year as a council and I wanted to make some adjustments to our executive to further enhance its way of working. I welcome Cllr Mark Rowley to the council’s executive and Mark’s knowledge and previous experience as an executive member will serve both the executive and council well.

"I would also like to thank Cllr Graham Lawman for his positive contribution to the council since its inception in 2021.”

The moves mean that the executive is now made up of ten Tories – five from the former East Northants area, one from Wellingborough and four from the former sovereign Kettering borough. There are none from the Corby area.

Members of the executive receive an extra £15,000 allowance on top of the £14,000 basic allowance they receive.