About the Council
Our vision for West Northamptonshire
Working as one to achieve our ambitions
Everyone in our district has an important part to play in addressing the challenges and harnessing the opportunities as we work together to create ONE West Northamptonshire for the benefit of everyone. Successful place plans are fully owned and adopted by strategic partners, stakeholders and businesses across the area and are not seen as solely the Council’s responsibility. Through an extensive engagement programme, we have listened to our residents, businesses, voluntary and community sector (VCSE) partners, town and parish Councils and wider stakeholders about what this plan must contain.
Crucially we have heard about how our residents think, we can achieve the suggested outcomes. We were pleased that 80% of respondents agreed with our direction and priorities but we also consistently heard that stakeholders want to see detailed, measurable, and actionable steps to achieve our vision and transparency in what we do. This will be vital for our future success. On the adoption of this plan, the next step will be to set out a clear delivery plan with milestones, deadlines and commitments that can be monitored, so everyone can see our progress against our priorities.
Working together to achieve our ambitions
We need to use our collective resources to deliver better place and resident outcomes and drive successful results with positive economic, infrastructure and wellbeing impacts. We know all partners have both the desire and drive to work more closely together in achieving these ambitions for our area. We welcome the feedback from our residents and their desire for involvement in shaping policies and decisions that affect them. Likewise, we were delighted to receive input from our VCSE partners and Town and Parish Councils who are keen to work together in the delivery and design of our plans. We believe our success now and, in the future, will come from our collective efforts and collaboration to make West Northants a great place.
Our vision is to make West Northants a great place to live, work, visit and thrive, a place:
where there is opportunity for all – where children are given the best start in life and vulnerable children are supported and protected. A place where all young people grow up qualified and inspired to succeed
where people are proud to live, with strong sustainable communities, decent homes, a fulfilling job, and stress free travel through well connected places
where people are supported to live independent, self-sufficient lives and where everyone has the best life chances
where services are joined up and if you need a helping hand you’ll get it
with a thriving and prosperous economy that draws in investment, visitors and talent
where we have modern towns but where rural character is cherished
at the forefront of action on climate change with clean air, sustainable growth and a flourishing natural environment.
Harnessing opportunities for growth
The ONE West Northamptonshire Plan is our overall vision for the future, harnessing the opportunities for growth, creating a distinctive and thriving economy, therefore the chance to improve prosperity for everyone who calls West Northants home. The Plan captures the things we think will make the biggest difference to improving people’s lives across all West Northants and many of the big challenges we face. Often the best opportunities will relate to both.
As outlined in our Annual Report 2023/24, our ambition is to help our residents to live their best lives and this is at the heart of everything we do as we continue to make a difference to improve outcomes for those who live in West Northamptonshire. There are many life factors that impact someone’s health, and together with our partners we are working hard to tackle health inequalities to improve life chances for our residents from the newborn stage, to ageing well. This includes looking at opportunities to review and improve services – right from the early stages of commissioning, to how we better engage with residents and our communities, to deliver services that meet the local needs of our population. Together, we are putting a spotlight on early prevention, to help residents get support at the earliest opportunity to reduce the likeliness of more intense care and support later in life. Our nine Local Area Partnerships are really helping to drive this forward, with a fresh approach to localised working with many initiatives underway to support communities, by working closely with a range of partners to ensure the right people are involved to make change happen.
West Northamptonshire is a new Council district created through local government reform. As well as being the fifth biggest unitary in the UK and the largest of the South Midlands authorities, the area benefits from a rich and diverse geography, economy and culture. Whilst the creation of a new authority presented fresh opportunities for public and private services across our communities, this process also created some challenges in establishing a new identity and moving away from a county footprint which some partners still use today.
Furthermore, it provides us with a chance to work with all our partners to create a new authentic vision for our place, that builds on our unique position in the heart of England, our close proximity to major cities, airports, national infrastructure and our incredible countryside.
A great place to live, work, visit and thrive
At its creation in April 2021, West Northamptonshire Council set out a vision agreed with its stakeholders, Councillors and residents ‘to make West Northamptonshire a great place to live, work, visit and thrive’. Since then, we have worked hard with partners to create the key strategies and plans that move us towards achieving this.
Work to date has focused on key pillars of our overall vision, for example our new business prospectus, town regeneration plans, new Local Plan, strategies for housing, tourism and addressing poverty, with further work now being undertaken on our local transport plan and economic strategy.
We have also created a single “Live your Best Life” health and wellbeing strategy for our county with common outcomes and shared plans across health and council services and our voluntary sector to ensure we have a focus on the health outcomes for our residents. All these strategies and plans have been developed through co-design and together create the foundations for meeting our ambition. Over our first years we have started to build a reputation for innovation, building strong partnerships and attracting new investment, and we now have a track record for delivery and creating the environment to do business.
Now is the time to take this to the next stage with a single vision for our area that encompasses these plans and articulates the kind of place we all would like West Northants to be. This ONE West Northamptonshire Plan starts to fulfil that need, creating a roadmap, shared with our partners to achieve our ambitions by 2030.
Key Contacts
For a confidential discussion about either of these role, please contact the following consultants at our recruitment partner, Tile Hill, who will be happy to answer any questions that are not covered here:
For the Executive Director of People Services, please contact:
Chris Barrow, Senior Consultant
07437 839048
chris.barrow@tile-hill.co.uk
Anita Denton, Senior Consultant
07725 554802
anita.denton@tile-hill.co.uk
For the Director of Public Health, please contact:
Helen Alwell, Senior Consultant
07931 543313
helen.alwell@tile-hill.co.uk
Anita Denton, Senior Consultant
07725 554802
anita.denton@tile-hill.co.uk