Labour's weakening of local government will do nothing for voters' confidence in the political system

So Harborough District Council is to disappear, subsumed into a single authority for the whole of the county outside the city of Leicestershire. And Leicester is to be expanded to make the hole in the doughnut bigger.

City boundaries have to be expanded from time to time, but I'm not sure the areas Leicester is taking will be delighted. For some years there has been criticism that its elected mayor Peter Soulsby, now in his fourth term, is keen on prestige projects in the city centre, but less interested in bread-and-butter issues like litter and the state of the pavements out in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, the abolition of all the district and borough councils in the county can only make government feel more distant, and this at a time when our democracy is being challenged from within and without. 

I was in Loughborough today. It's a large town with a university, but it will soon lose Charnwood Borough, the council that looks after it and its hinterland. And Leicestershire, of course, is not the only county seeing huge changes.

This revolution in local government was not mentioned in Labour's last manifesto and there has been little debate about it since the election. It does appear to have been set in place because Labour has a vision for revitalising local democracy, but simply because someone has told ministers that there is an ideal size for a council and many are smaller than this.

I am reminded of a comment by Lord Bonkers:

I’m told that when a Labour junior minister discovered that councils are not All The Same Size, he started screaming and had to be sent home in a taxi. 

District council backs a parish council for Market Harborough

An extraordinary meeting of Harborough District Council has voted unanimously in favour of a parish council for Market Harborough, reports BBC News.

This vote, which took place on Monday, followed a public poll in which 86 per cent of those who voted supported the establishment of a new council. I was one of them.

The BBC report makes great play of the fact that only 24 per cent of those eligible cast a vote, but I wonder if this is such a bad figure for such a poll.

Given the possibility that Market Harborough will be governed from Glenfield in future – it would be Nottingham if Labour had its way – the existence of a forum where the town to debate and decide what it needs is vital.

"The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate"

Embed from Getty Images

James Hawse's The Shortest History of Ireland reveals that the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, with its notorious verse

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

was written by Cecil Frances Alexander, the wife of the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, in Donegal at the height of the Irish famine.

At one of my first meetings as a councillor, Harborough was asked to make its response to the Thatcher government's proposed Community Charge, which was to be universally called the Poll Tax.

It's forgotten now, but the government's original proposal was that the Poll Tax should be phased in over 10 years. If they had kept to that, they might have got away with it. But Harborough was one of many Conservative-run authorities that was so enamoured of the new tax that they wanted it brought in at once.

I remember the debate: you could see the pound signs in some Tory councillors' eyes as they calculated how much the Poll Tax would save them and their neighbours.

In my own contribution, I used some of the approved clichés of the day, calling the proposal "a Robin Hood tax in reverse" and complaining that "the rich man in his castle will pay the same as the poor man at his gate".

One of the later speakers in the debate was Tim Brooks, a Tory and the owner of Wistow Hall. Rather painedly, he pointed out that owning a great house brought with it great expenses.

Anyway, the Conservatives made the mistake of listening to their rank-and file and brought in the Poll Tax at once. Among the consequences of this decision was the fall of Margaret Thatcher. 

The Dam Busters' training was a spectator sport for Great Easton

Eyebrook Reservoir Dam: John Fielding

Being a well-prepared visitor, I brought the Harborough District Council leaflet about Great Easton with me yesterday.

And here's an interesting snippet from it about a nearby reservoir:

For several months in 1943 up to a dozen Lancaster bombers regularly used Eyebrook Reservoir as a training ground prior to setting off on the famous Ruhr "Dam Busters Raid".

Initially the low flying night flights caused considerable disturbance to the surrounding villages. However local residents, who recognised their sleep would be interrupted, regularly congregated around the lakeside to witness the spectacular rehearsals.

Discover Rutland says:

Practice flights took place from the 3rd May 1943, with a full ‘dress rehearsal’ on the 14th May of 14 Lancasters "attacking" the Eyebrook Dam.

The reservoir, which straddles the border between Leicestershire and Rutland, was built between 1937 and 1940 by Stewarts & Lloyds to supply water to its Corby steel works.

Tories seize control of Harborough District Council as their £800k loss is revealed

HFM News reports that the Conservatives have seized control of Harborough District Council this evening:

A motion to remove Liberal Democrat leader Phil Knowles and replace him with Tory group leader Simon Whelband was approved by 17 votes to 16 at an extraordinary council meeting tonight.

Councillor Knowles had led a 16-strong coalition of Liberal Democrat, Labour, Green and independent councillors since 2023, although that number fell to 15 last week following the death of Labour councillor David Gair, who represented Lutterworth.

As Phil Knowles has been saying in recent weeks, with investment in leisure centres and a community grant scheme, this coalition has achieved more than the Tories did in 20 years before it.

And HFM News has another story today that shows what Tory control can mean:

A company owned by Harborough District Council is set to be shut down after making losses of more than £800,000 over two years.

Harborough District Commercial Services was set up in 2019 and purchased two retail units in Market Harborough town centre, currently occupied by  Sports Direct and Tesco, along with flats above.

The intention was for the arms-length company to invest in further property to generate income for the authority, but no further purchases were made.

The ruling coalition group at the council says the company, established before it took control of the authority, has been a "complete white elephant."

Am I being wise after the event? No this is what I wrote when the company was set up:

I am all in favour of municipal enterprise and councils having their own income streams. But they are being rather driven to these sort of speculations because of the savage cuts in central government funding.

Some councils are going to come a cropper doing this, and I hope Harborough isn't one of them.

Compared to some councils we got off lightly, but this episode doesn't make me feel any happier about the return of Harborough Tories.

Tim Farron presses banks to improve access to their services

The high-street banks' retreat from the high street was accomplished with little complaint or even comment from politicians. Maybe that's a reflection of where power now lies in Britain, but it will have done nothing to make people feel warmer towards politics and politicians.

But here's Tim Farron raising the issue in the Commons last week.

Banking hubs are owned by Cash Access UK, which is owned by the banks, and run for it by the Post Office. So I'm not sure how far the minister, Lucy Rigby, is justified in implying it's the government that's rolling them out.

Here in Market Harborough, it was local government - in the shape of Harborough District Council - that acted as a catalyst by making space available for a banking hub in its offices.

That hub has just moved to a more convenient site among the shops. You can see it in the photo above.

Banks save £2 billion a year from abandoning our high streets and town centres. Our post offices pick up the slack, but they are not funded by the banks anywhere near enough to be able to maintain their presence. This must change.

[image or embed]

— Tim Farron (@timfarron.bsky.social) 16 December 2025 at 10:09

Rewilding Harborough project attracts interest from government and national organisations

Representatives from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Anglian Water, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust and the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts were in Market Harborough today to hear about Harborough District Council's Rewilding Harborough project. 

They attended a briefing at the council offices before visiting the rewilding site, which lies to the north and east of Great Bowden.

The Harborough Mail quotes Cal Hatley, Harborough DC's director of communities and wellbeing:

"Establishing effective partnerships is going to be the key to making this rewilding project successful. I am looking forward to welcoming these organisations and showing them that we are taking action to address the nature crisis in the region with the engagement of local communities."

And Mat Carter, chief executive of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, said:

"This project is an opportunity to restore nature and create a landscape where people and wildlife can thrive. We work best together and are delighted to welcome our partners to see this project."

Harborough DC is run by a Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green administration - my old Liberal and Lib Dem council colleague Phil Knowles is its leader.

The wildlife trust owns land adjacent to the council's land at Great Bowden and I've walked that land with one of their team. I intend to write something about Rewilding Harborough when I've got my head round the project properly.

Sculpture to replace phone mast in Harborough's Friendship Park

A steel sculpture will replace the phone mast in Market Harborough's new friendship park, reports BBC News:

EE is now working to decommission and remove mobile phone infrastructure at the site before owner Harborough District Council can demolish the mast in the park.

A steel sculpture to take its place will then be designed and sent to the council's planning department for consideration.

EE confirmed it had installed a new mast nearby and was working to remove its equipment "at the landowner's request".

Northampton Road will be closed on Tuesday 30 September while work takes place at the park, according to highways authority Leicestershire County Council.

You may recall that the friendship park project, and the participation of the community in planting it, outraged the local Conservatives. This confirms my impression that many Tory activists are now more online than in the real world.

The Peatling Parva by-election sounds like an episode of a sitcom

Harborough is a large rural district council taking in all or part of three parliamentary constituencies. In the mid-1980s the only organised branch of the Liberal Party in the district was in Market Harborough, which meant that large parts of it were a bit of a mystery to us.

It sounds like an episode from a sitcom on local politics, but the effect of this was that when we heard the Liberal candidate had won a Harborough District Council by-election in Peatling Parva, we were delighted but had no clear idea where Peatling Parva was.

Soon afterwards, I won a by-election myself and got to know the councillor for Peatling Parva, the lovely Lisa Brown. This was so long ago that I find it natural to describe her as Yugoslavian. (Ask your grandparents.)

Sadly, Lisa did not hold her seat at the all-out elections the following year, even though they saw the Conservatives lost control of the council. She was replaced by an amiable Tory whose appearance gave you the impression he might play in a trad jazz band.

It turned out that Peatling Parva was not quite the backwater it sounds. Yes, it was a large rural ward, but it contained Bruntingthorpe, a military airfield of the Cold War era that was being turned over to commercial uses, including a proving ground for cars.

Not surprisingly, Bruntingthorpe generated much of the casework for the member for Peatling Parva, but the new Tory councillor had business interests there. So every time it came up in council, he had to declare an interest and leave the chamber.

I'm not sure where this rambling memoir is headed, so let's end by saying that this last point is a reminder that standards in local government are higher than they are at Westminster.

Space scientist to fight Rutland by-election for Lib Dems

Embed from Getty Images

Dr Jonathan Nicholls, who is Reader in Planetary Auroras¹ at the University of Leicester, is the Liberal Democrat candidate in a Rutland Council by-election.

The vacancy in the two-member Barleythorpe Ward has arisen because a Green Party councillor has stood down because of family commitments. The Greens are not fielding a candidate in the contest, which takes place on 24 July.

Dr Nicholls told Lincs Online:

"After decades of underinvestment and complacency from the Conservatives, both locally and nationally, we’re left paying some of the highest council tax bills in the country, while services are cut and facilities – like our much-loved leisure centre, where I was a member – are forced to close. Many of us hoped that a Labour government might finally deliver the support we need, but things have only got worse.

"That’s why I’m standing for election – to give our community, and our county, the strong local voice we need fighting for us."

Rutland is run by a Liberal Democrat minority administration.

Meanwhile, there is a Harborough DC by-election on 17 July in Logan Ward here in Market Harborough. If you can help in either contest, please email Stuart Bray at East Midlands Lib Dems.

Notes

1. I don't usually capitalise job titles here, but this one really deserves it.

"Inspirational" Harborough rewilding scheme set to expand

One a day of bad news for the environment, here something more encouraging from HFM News:

An ambitious re-wilding project near Market Harborough – which will include the creation of a new country park – could be expanded to cover more land.

Plans for the scheme were announced earlier this year when Harborough District Council purchased over 130 acres of land either side of the A6 bypass near Great Bowden, for nearly £2m.

Now, landowners from adjacent plots have expressed interest in joining the project, meaning it has the potential to extend across 500 acres.

This welcome development comes after a meeting between the council and Natural England.

Phil Knowles, the Liberal Democrat leader of the council, told HFM News:

"A number of actions were agreed around potential funding sources and alignment to national priorities and initiatives. Everyone we have met has been blown away by our investment and our ambition – words like unprecedented, inspirational and excellent place leadership are being used."

Harborough District Council is run by a Lib Dem, Green and Labour coalition.

Market Harborough's new friendship park opened today

Market Harborough's new Friendship Park was opened today by Cllr Peter James, the chair of Harborough District Council.

He cut a ribbon to declare the park open and celebrate the hard work of the community who have helped create it.

He told the Harborough Mail:

"I am thrilled we have been able to turn a space that was overgrown into a community park. It brings flowers, trees and wildlife into the heart of the town, which are so important for people’s sense of wellbeing and is destined to become a much-loved place for everyone."

The Mail has a video and photographs of the event.

I notice the park was open late this afternoon and took these photos myself.

You may recall that for some reason this project roused the Conservative opposition to fury. Mr Whelband is now their group leader.

Market Harborough cattle market and retail market in 1992

This video makes it look a long time ago - it was a long time ago - but one of the major decisions Harborough District Council took while I was a member was the redevelopment of the cattle market site in Market Harborough.

It was a controversial decision and the farmers assured us the market was profitable. But when we offered them the chance to buy it, they went quiet. By all accounts, the new market site near Foxton did very well - having it in the town was not the visitor attraction that some claimed.

The idea of allowing a supermarket to built on the site was to discourage the building of out-of-town stores and keep trade in the centre of the town. That policy worked for over 30 years and is only now in danger of unravelling, with the building of a new Aldi store on Rockingham Road.

And we got a better retail market hall out of the scheme: you can see how unappealing the old one had become.

So enjoy this slice of Market Harborough history. I had forgotten the entrance buildings on Springfield and the headquarters building of the Leicester and Northamptonshire branches of the National Farmers' Union.

The narrator is Frank Berry, who was the chief executive of Harborough District Council in those days.

h/t Solar Pilchard on Bluesky. The video dates from 1992, not 1999.

Market Harborough's friendship park gets ready to open

Market Harborough's new mini-park is due to open at the end of the month, and today I noticed that its name sign has gone up.

This is the project that so outraged the local Conservatives - it must be that parks are woke, or maybe friendship is? Maybe they both are?

For news of plans for a much larger park just outside the town, see my story Harborough District Council buys land for rewilding project.

Harborough District Council buys land for rewilding project

More good news on World Rewilding Day. HFM News reports:

A new publicly-accessible open space and country park is to be created near Market Harborough.

Harborough District Council has spent just under £1.8m purchasing over 130 acres of land for the ambitious rewilding project.

The Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust will lead the scheme either side of the A6 bypass near Great Bowden.

It will restore the nature-depleted land - an area the size of 79 football pitches - re-establishing natural processes and building a network of nature sites where wildlife can thrive.

HFM News has interviews with Ben Devine from the wildlife trust; Phil Knowles, the Liberal Democrat leader of the council; and Darren Woodiwiss, the Green Party cabinet lead for climate change and environment. The video above shows the site that's to be rewilded.

I'm convinced that contact with nature is important for human wellbeing, so housing development must take place hand-in-hand with projects like this.

Alistair Carmichael marks 75th anniversary of Jo Grimond’s election

Alistair Carmichael is the latest guest on Iain Dale's All Talk podcast, talking about his own career and about the former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond. 

The Liberals and then Liberal Democrats have held the Orkney and Shetlands seat ever since Grimond won it at the 1950 election.

Thanks to Caron Lindsay for flagging this up on Lib Dem Voice - follow that link to see a photograph of a very young Alistair. He is his usual engaging self in the podcast.

I never met Jo Grimond. The nearest I came to it was in the 1983 general election, when he did a public meeting for us in Kew. Being a good activist, I went canvassing instead - and there were no certificates and medals from Mark Pack in those days.

He gave his speech, I was told later, and then said, looking at the timetable he'd been given:

"It says 'Questions' here, but as I'm stone deaf these days, that's no use. I'll just come round the hall and meet you all."

And so he did, charming everybody.

But I did meet Laura Grimond, a significant figure in the party in her own right in her day, and also the wife of Jo, daughter of Violent Bonham Carter, the gender-fluid gangster even the Krays feared Violet Bonham Carter and granddaughter of Mr Asquith.

She came to Market Harborough a couple of times in the Eighties, and I've found a photo from those days in the British Newspaper Archive. It shows Laura Grimond, Phil Knowles (the current leader of Harborough District Council) and me. One day I'll share it with you.

District council offices to host banking hub for Market Harborough

Market Harborough will have a banking hub by the end of this month, reports the Leicester Mercury.

While the search for its permanent home is concluded, it will be temporarily housed in the offices of Harborough District Council in the town.

My old friend Phil Knowles, who leads the Lib-Lab-Green coalition that runs the council, told the Mercury:

"Although lots of people do their banking online nowadays, there are many residents in the Harborough district who find this difficult, do not have internet access or prefer to do their banking in person. 

I have campaigned for a banking hub for Market Harborough for a while following the steady closure of high street banks in the town, and I’m delighted that the council has been able to assist with welcoming the new banking hub provided by Cash Access UK by hosting the hub temporarily in our council offices. 

I am looking forward to the banking hub opening for residents later this month."

Lloyds will close its Market Harborough branch at the end of March, leaving the town without a branch of any of the big four banks.

Change of government means Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire is free to continue with its four-day week

The Labour government is not going to continue the Conservatives' harassment of Liberal Democrat South Cambridgeshire for introducing a four-day working week for its staff.

South Cambridgeshire's trial of the scheme with around 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors, says the Guardian, found:

• staff turnover fell by 39 per cent, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs;
• regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier;
• approximately 15 per cent more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale.
• The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell.

Yet the last Conservative government issued the council with a best value notice in November 2023 and March 2024. This warned it the government had concerns it was failing to comply with its legal duty to provide a continuously improving service for taxpayers and forced it to submit about 200 pieces of raw data to government every week.

Now the new government has wisely said that, while it's not government policy to support a general move to a four-day working week, councils are "rightly responsible for the management and organisation of their own workforces".

At the base of this affair lies the Tories' inbred distrust of workers - public-sector workers in particular.

It reminds me of may days when Harborough District Council. When I was first elected, the council offices closed at lunchtime, which was obviously the time when many people would have found it easiest to go there if they had a query.

A change to more flexible working, to allow the offices to open all day, was put through the following year, despite the opposition of the Tory group. They thought it would somehow involve our staff being allowed to get away with something.

The council was balanced - we even shared the chairs between all the parties - and the new policy was piloted through the council by a dissident Tory, who worked in personnel and knew what he was talking about, with the votes of the Liberal, Independent and Labour members.

Volunteers turn out to help plant new Market Harborough park - and the local Tories are appalled

More than 30 people turned out this morning to help plant bulbs and plants at Market Harborough's new Friendship Park. You can hear one of them on the HFM News site.

I'm not surprised at the turnout. A few weeks ago I saw someone with a clipboard looking at the derelict site and guessed that she was involved with the planning of the park. I went over for a chat, and she mentioned how much support for the scheme she had found in the nearby flats.

The park is a project of the Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour coalition that has run Harborough District Council since last year's elections.

The Green councillor (and sometime Liberal England contributor) Darren Woodiwiss tweeted:

There was a great turn out this morning to plant 10,000 bulbs in the new friendship park on Northampton Rd, #Harborough.

Thank you to the lovely volunteers and @HarboroughDC officers and contractors for organising. pic.twitter.com/soin3aeJE8

— Darren Woodiwiss (@darrenwoodiwiss) October 25, 2024

Who could be against voluntary action, a new park and friendship? Our local Conservatives, that's who.

My old friend Phil Knowles, the Lib Dem leader of the council, was spot on his reply to this nonsense:

It’s a shame that local Tory councillors won’t be coming down to Market Harborough’s new community led green space because they think it’s “silly”, or that they don’t like the residents suggestion of calling it a Friendship Park. As it sounds like they could do with a little friendship, and hopefully they’ll change their minds.

Luckily the local community, who championed this project, have warmly received the invitation to help be apart of it’s success.

“It’s rather sad that involving the community and our many wonderful volunteers is seen as a negative.  I’m proud to say that the coalition see the community and volunteer involvement as a tremendous positive.

We feel that creating a new park and community open space close to the town centre for residents and visitors to enjoy for wellbeing is a positive addition. We as we say, are not about negativity, let’s improve our district not keep talking it down!

Investing in communities is what we as a coalition do.

That's good sense and good politics. Who the Tories think the are appealing to, I cannot imagine. This attitude will do nothing to dispel the general impression that their party has gone rather weird in recent years.

And, best of all, the park is on my way into town.

Later. Another email from the good guys.

“Most of the people who came on Friday didn’t know each other or others groups but now they are all friends” - Cllr Peter James, Market Harborough Friendship Park pic.twitter.com/2xR7m1TOLg

— Harborough Lib Dems (@HarboroughLD) October 26, 2024

A tourism video for the Harborough district

That I should live to see such times! 

This video was produced by Harborough District Council - and very good Harborough looks in it too.