Policies & Issues
Ian's Issues and Policies for Deanshanger & Paulerspury Ward and West Nortamptonshire
Ian – working for you, not them
Ian will work for you not them. Being independent he does not need to conform to any one way of thinking. Good ideas are worthy of support and bad ideas need to be called out from wherever they come from.
A full detailed policy agenda combining the West Northants district and the very local to the ward is set out below.
This hotel is currently home to dozens of asylum seekers. It was put to this use by the last Conservative government, they did empty it and its use ceased for a short time. Shortly after coming to power, the present Labour government filled it again with asylum seekers.
The MK Hotel is on the edge of Deanshanger on the road towards Buckingham.
It is not close to the villages nor close to Milton Keynes or Northampton. This location and accommodation cannot service the needs of asylum seekers. There are no support services, being a rural location, public transport is limited, thus rendering this site unsuitable.
Recently there were concerns raised about the behaviour of the residents. I've taken the view that if the village and hotel residents can rub along together I can tolerate it. However, that compact seems to be breaking down, it is now time to close the MK Hotel for asylum seeker use.
Free parking in our market towns is under threat. The council thinks because charges are applied in Northampton they should apply everywhere.
Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats councillors have complained about this. One even accused Ian McCord of being responsible for free parking in Towcester and Brackley!! Guilty as charged.
Take action now to keep parking free. I will campaign to keeping parking free in our market towns.
I do not doubt the science, it's the 'so what does this mean'? I take issue with:
We need to change to alternatives over a longer time to make this more affordable and less damaging.
West Northants Council wants to be Net Zero by 2030. WNC also wants to force you and everyone in the district to be Net Zero by 2045.
We do not have the technology nor the budgets to achieve Net Zero ambitions, by 2030 or 2045. Government is beginning to ease up on their 2050 target, by allowing more time for petrol and diesel cars before mandating electric.
Oil and gas are required for a few more decades to come to keep our society functioning.
These targets will not be met without inflicting damage to our economy and society.
We need to work towards a properly managed timeline that is affordable and achievable both locally and nationally.
We have a proposal to turn many hectares of agricultural land over to a solar farm between Yardley Gobion and Potterspury.
The proposal is merely a symptom of the Net Zero policy which is driving these sorts of proposals.
We need to be more self-sufficient in both food production and energy security. Let's put solar panels on every warehouse roof in the county before turning green land to this use.
We need to support our farmers making it economic for them to produce the food we need.
West Northants Council spend 65 pence in every pound on care for adults and children. Waste, recycling, leisure, highways maintenance, fly-tipping, planning and all over council activities compete for the remaining 35 pence.
Until central government, of whatever stripe, fix the funding for care, our roads will continue to deteriorate.
Our local roads are in poor condition. The existing policy is to manage the decline.
Back in Feb 2024, Ian McCord asked WNC to put £2m extra into the budget to help and not reduce the funding, the Conservative majority was whipped into rejecting this idea.
A few weeks later the same Administration then decided to spend £10m on the pot holes. Attempting to bribe you with your own money. Notably fixes were made to to roads that were on the route for the cycling tour stages and some in the roads that the Cabinet members live in.
There is a current planning application to open a new area for quarrying at Paulerspury then back fill the hole in the ground with other material from elsewhere.
1,750,000 tonnes of road stone is planned to be extracted along with 50,000 tonnes of the traditional Pury End building stone. A further 200,000 cubic metres of other inert material is planned to be land filled into the void.
This would be an 8 year project and according to Highways England would result in approx 110 lorry movements per day.
The site wants to operate 6 days a week.
An entrance is planned off the A5 are the area photographed above, this is dangerous and a cause of a lot of concern.
West Northamptonshire Council is too focused on Northampton. The rural areas are seen as a cash point to funnel money into Northampton. This is all the more galling for the residents of Deanshanger & Paulerspury ward as we tend to look toward Milton Keynes as a principle urban area rather.
Charing for green waste on the basis that it was charged for in Northampton so we should do it everywhere is a symptom of this focus. We are told there is no money for rural services but the council is buying property in Northampton town regularly in what they think is some game of real life Monopoly.
As a district councillor we need to take a view on matters outside our immediate area. Farthinghoe Bypass is one such project Ian McCord will support.
Lorries cannot pass if they meet in the centre of the village. When Leader of SNC, Ian McCord, allocated £250k for design work on this road, WNC have wasted all that work and would not build the road.
Instead WNC borrowed £20m to build a road in Northampton.
The villages and rural areas are missing out because of WNC urban priorities. They lack the political will to take this forward.
The position of National Highways is contradictory. We know that the route is used as an effective diversion when there is an issue on the M40. Yet, if two vehicles meet at the pinch-point, they cannot pass. Clearly then this route is not suitable as a diversion. National Highways should make the route suitable and fund the bypass.
We have waited too long. This bypass is needed NOW.
The previous MP has tried to get Permission to build this road on time. FOUR elections and 1,000+ houses built still no road open. The planning conditions required the road to be open from Jan 24. (at the completion of 1016 houses).
WNC refuse to take action. They are too afraid, too spineless and the planning department too useless to take any action to remedy the situation. The road starts in the Deanshanger and Paulerspury Ward on the A5.
On the positive side work is now ongoing to get this road connected to the A43. According to the road signs it will complete in March 2026. That will have been over two years late and hundreds of extra houses built.
Ian McCord has had many interactions with WNC on this matter but they refuse to take any action. He will continue to highlight the issue at every opportunity.
I will support our local economy to ensure that it can thrive by light touch regulations and creating an environment where business wishes to invest.
We need to protect high performance engineering, motorsport, food, drink and tourism.
Our local challenge is unique. As retail changes across the country to become more online, we need to plan ahead for our what our town centres will look like, but take care not to have many distribution warehouses which threaten to alter the character of our communities.
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We have a planning application for 174 houses in Deanshanger.
We have another application for 24 houses in Potterspury and an outstanding appeal for 9.
Ian McCord will oppose these as neither are in the current plan and outside the village building boundary.
The Deanshanger application, from Davidson Homes, was submitted immediately after the new Labour government announced plans to change national planning policy to make these sorts of applications easier to obtain. (They had given up on a similar on a year before.)
Another of those changes to national policy is to give WNC a much higher target of houses it needs to have built every year. This current government as told WNC it must find 20% or over 200 units a year.
In April 2024 WNC consulted on a Local Plan Draft. It was pleasing to see that the proposed new settlement at Furtho was removed following pressure from Ian McCord and others.
The new changes mean that WNC need to find at least 10,000 more houses across the whole of the area, taking the total to close approx 50,000.
WNC have decided not to consult with residents as to where they want these houses until after the local elections on 1 May.
Where will these houses be earmarked for?
Ian McCord will be fighting to ensure that inappropriate development in this area does not take place.
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