One West Northamptonshire Plan Flipbook
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One West Northamptonshire plan
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One plan with a purpose for all partners
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One plan with a purpose for all partners West Northamptonshire is a new Council district created through local government reform, bringing 3 lower tier councils and the local County Council services together. 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 created some challenges in establishing a new identity and moving away from a county footprint which some partners still use today, the process also presented fresh opportunities for public and private services across our communities. 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. At its creation in April 2021, West Northamptonshire Council set out avision 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 our 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
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build a reputation for innovation, building strong partnerships, and attracting new investment, and we now have a track record fordelivery 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 Northamptonshire 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. Working as oneto 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 thebenefit 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 you 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. 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
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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 Northamptonshire a great place.
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One mission
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One mission 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. The feedback from stakeholders was also very clear on this, we need inclusive growth that benefits everyone, not just a select few. Reducing inequalities and ensuring better access to services and opportunities are essential for fairness. Economic growth should be aligned with creating social value, and improving overall wellbeing. This is mirrored in the Council's new Economic Strategy which has been developed in parallel with this plan and includes an objective “that the benefits of economic growth are felt by all members of the community”. This plan represents the Council's commitment to work with the residents of West Northants and all partner organisations, public, private and voluntary sectors, and to use our combined resources wisely to protect the environment, meet residents’ needs for homes and jobs and ensure that everyone can live well. All places are not the same, they have local characteristics, different needs, challenges and inequalities and our Town and Parish Councils and VCSE partners have been clear that our plans need to reflect and respect these differences, as well as help close any gaps in opportunities their residents face. This plan and the delivery plan that follows will need to take account of how partner organisations and local communities in every part of our area, in our key rural towns of Daventry, Brackley and Towcester and surrounding villages as well as our urban centre in Northampton; can work with us towards making West Northamptonshire the best place in the UK.
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Aligning our Ambitions We have made sure this plan is connected and aligned to regional and Having already established key plans national policy as part of an overall and strategies in many areas, it is hierarchy focused on the same goals. important that they all pull in the same This is important as it will ensure we direction, work towards the same aims maximise the investment and funding anddeliver against common we get, its used effectively and objectives. The One West efficiently across partners and it Northants Plan creates that linkage. delivers benefits for both people and place.
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One plan with clear outcomes
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One plan with clear outcomes Thriving place - One Future: Growing, creating and delivering a thriving future for West Northamptonshire With: a thriving economy a great environment to live in good connectivity a skilled workforce more and better quality homes Thriving People - One Heart:at theheart of West Northants is its people and the communities in which they live Where: you can age well residents feel safe it isa great place to raise a family children get the best start Efficientand Enabling Council Easy to do business with No waste of public money Best use of assets Modern and efficient process Evidence and intelligence-based decisions
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Our guiding principles
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Our guiding principles Our Plan has key underlying principlesCollaboration for how we work and what we do. Success in the delivery of our objectives While the principles are high level, they will require collaboration. Having are important tests for our future plans produced plans in partnership with and to ensure we consistently pursue residents, local communities, partners these objectives, which have been and businesses we will build on our refined further to reflect feedback commitment to work with them to received. deliver our priorities and outcomes. We will encourage and support vibrant InclusiveGrowth networks of small social enterprises; community groups and charities local We will create the environment to investment that help our towns and deliver greater opportunity and villages thrive. prosperity for all. A thriving local economy and having a strong regional and national voice will help make WestSustainable Environment Northants a highly investable place. We will seek to promote sustainability For everyone to benefit from growth, it in our plans. We recognise the Council may require investment in has a stewardship role in the communities, reducing access responsible use of natural resources inequality, and fostering collaboration and will seek to reduce negative and innovation in all their forms. impacts on the environment where possible whilebalancing the need to Our Economic and Local plans drive prosperity for our residents. recognise there are substantial variations in local areas within West Northamptonshire and our rural areas Prevention have specific challenges that we will We support resilience in our needto address, including: transport communities that helps promote connectivity, the right infrastructure wellbeing and independence. Families and theright housing or business in crisis, isolation, anti-social facilities in the right place.
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Prevention and ensure all our young people get the best start in life. behaviour, crime and poverty in all forms makes it more likely that council partners will need to make costly andEfficient and modern services sometime intrusive interventions. The Council will spend public money efficiently and deliver value for money. We will work with our public sector The Council will embrace innovation partners and voluntary and community and maximise the growing groups to create resilience and support opportunities to use technology to more people of all ages to stay well make us cost effective. We will be andindependent. For our children and transparent with what we spend and families, we will extend an expand why, as well asuse benchmarking to our Family Help offer so we can challenge ourselves and ensure we support more families in times of need reflect best practice.