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 Northants Residents Alliance has been puzzled for many weeks now as to why the sloping land that was withdrawn from sale by Northampton Development Corporation in 1983 has not been identified by either West Northampton Development Corporation, Northamptonshire County Council or even Northampton Borough Council.
You may recall that as long ago as September 2007, NRA discovered documents from Northampton Development Corporation detailing why it was necessary to withdraw all sloping land from sale in both East and West Hunsbury because of real fears of land instability or landslip made the land unsuitable for development. Since we uncovered these ‘hidden’ documents, we have been pressing all of the above planning departments to look into which plots of land were actually withdrawn from sale. For some reason, Cllr. Judy Shephard and Stephen Kelly have failed to explain why this research hasn’t been carried out by their organisations. We think it is essential in the interests of public safety that the land is identified before it is sold for development. (If it isn’t too late and the land has already been built upon by unsuspecting developers and occupied by occupiers that are oblivious to the history of the land on which their property stands).
Imagine our shock then when we approached Northamptonshire Records Office, asking to see records from the now disbanded Northampton Development Corporation and we were told that although the office still held the records, their ‘Listing’, which indexes the massive quantity of documents available, had been loaned to none other than English Partnerships. For some inexplicable reason, this was Northampton Records office’s only copy and - mysteriously - English Partnerships have told the Records Office that they lave ‘lost’ the listing! This means that although the records are held, there is no way that anyone can reference them, because it would mean searching through over 100 large boxes of files.
We have formally asked the Records Office to re-list the documents as soon as possible, because knowing where these potentially dangerous plots of land are located is a matter of public safety. However, the Records Office have so far been slow to respond to our request.
We are extremely suspicious about this sinister turn of events, because it so happens that it is English Partnerships that are most likely to have inherited the unstable land from Northampton Development Corporation; so if there is unstable land within their current ownership, it would be quite financially damaging for EP if the development land were identified after all the years that the records have been hidden. Of course, we are probably just being paranoid and it is most likely a pure coincidence that we find ourselves unable to access the records, because of a silly mistake by English Partnerships and the even sillier mistake by the Records Office of not taking a copy of their Listing before sending their one and only original to English Partnerships.
Another source of valuable information might have been the Planning Committee meetings for Northampton Borough Council in 1983. This was the year, our records show, the Council was advised by Northampton Development Corporation of the danger of land instability in Northamptonshire and we expect that there would be a mention of this in the Planning Committee minutes of the time. However, the Records Office - now looking quite sheepish, told us that they could not find any Northampton Borough Council records between the years 1980 to 1987!
We are sure we are just being paranoid and expect that between them WNDC, Northamptonshire County Council, Northampton Borough Council, English Partnerships and Northamptonshire Records Office will be able to locate these very important records for us within a reasonable space of time, otherwise one might suspect that for one office to lose records is unfortunate, but for all FIVE of them to do so might be considered careless.
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