Policies & Issues
Ian's Issues and Policies for South Nortamptonshire
Ian – working for you, not them
Ian will work for you not them. The 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 for South Northamptonshire is set out below.
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.
We do not have the technology nor the budgets to achieve Net Zero ambitions, by 2030 here in South Northants.
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.
The previous MP wants a station on the HS2 line at Brackley. This will bring with it 10,000 houses something not mentioned to date.
Ian will set out the advantages and disadvantages of any proposals, getting a new station at the expense of doubling the size of Brackley may not be so attractive and needs full discussion.
Arguments need to be presented in the round setting out the positives and the negatives. I will keep the others honest by doing so.
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, they refused topping up the bank balance instead.
Do you pay council tax to make a Northampton bank balance fatter?
We need to have a sensible debate about drugs and whether or not the so-called war on drugs is achieving anything. Legalisation with taxation and regulation may be a more sensible approach?
A Royal Commission is required to look into all these areas and report back with a cross- party long-term plan that may begin to tackle this with more than slogans.
The new councils are too focused on urban centres. They see you as a cashpoint to funnel money into the big towns.
The rural communities are being sacrificed for the likes of Northampton, Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough get more attention than the surrounding areas.
In Farthinghoe the bypass has been shelved but WNC could borrow the funds to build a road in Northampton.
Charging for green waste implemented across the former SNC area at the charges for Northampton because they could. Ian McCord tried to stop this but the Conservatives used their majority to ram it through.
This election, like everyone before, it will have many screaming "24 Hours to Save the NHS" No party plans to end the NHS, sell the NHS, or shut the NHS down.
We need to have honest sensible debate and find solutions to the many problems of aging, increase population, advances in medicine and more.
I want the NHS to be the best in the world, sadly it is not, the first step is to remove the politics give it a 10 year plan for funding and outcomes.
Any party that will simplify the tax system I will support. Fewer taxes and lower rates will bring in more cash.
Any party committing to a legally binding minimum of 3% of our GDP per annum spent on defence I will support.
With the correct safeguards, everyone should be allowed a dignified death. We treat animals better than we do humans when at the end of life.
Lorries cannot pass if they meet in the centre of the village. When Leader of SNC, 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.
The South Northants MP needs to apply pressure to change the law giving councils real teeth to stop developers from abusing the system in this way, with consequences to them.
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.
The proposals to turn 950 Hectares of arable land for the Green Hill Solar Farm are too much.
We need to be more self-sufficient in food production. 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.
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