Phil Hope MP - Frequently asked questions

**Corby Projects**
Project	Cost	Date
Health
NHS Dental Access Centre	£311,000	2003
Oakley Vale NHS Dentist	£561,000	2006
Kettering Medical Centre	£18 million	2006
Corby Community Hospital	£30 million	2009
Education
Tresham Skills Centre	£1.25 million	2006
Lodge Park Sixth Form	£3 million	2007
Brook Weston Academy	£4 million	2007
Corby Academy	£30 million	2008
Kingswood New Build	£25 million	2009
Corby Town Centre
Shopping Centre (Phase 1): Willows Place	£35 million	2007
Civic Centre: theatre, library, restaurant, town square	£32.6 million	2009
Shopping Centre (Phase 2): Bus station development	To be announced
Shopping Centre (Phase 3): Cinema/Bowling Alley	To be announced
Sports and Leisure
Rockingham Motor Speedway	£70 million	2003
Indoor Urban Sports Centre	£700,000	2006
Corby Boating Lake	£200,000	2007
Weekley Glebe Sports Pavilion and pitches	£1.4 million	2007
Rockingham Triangle	£1.4 million	2007
International Swimming Pool	£18 million	2008
Transport
Corby Star Bus service	£3 million	2004
Major Road Network Build	£30 million	2007
Railway Station	£12 million	2008

Please follow the links below to find out about the exciting developments taking place in Corby:

Question 2
I did not agree with the closure of Pope John secondary school and am concerned that not every school in Corby is doing equally well. What is being done now to improve education in the town and when will there be a new faith school in the town?

Answer

Two new secondary schools are being built in Corby along with a new £3 million sixth form extension to Lodge Park Technology College and a £4 million extension to the Brook Weston Academy.
The new £30 million Corby Academy is under construction and will open in September 2008. It will take all the students currently at Corby Community College and continue to take students from the same catchment area. It will work in close partnership with the Brook Weston Academy which is one of the most successful comprehensive schools in the country.
A new £25 million Kingswood Arts College will be built on the existing Kingswood site and will open in September 2009. The former Kingswood and Pope John school buildings will be abolished to be replaced by new playing fields, sports facilities and housing. The total investment in Corby secondary schools over the next few years is around £60 million.
Estimates of future population growth indicate that an additional new secondary school may be needed from 2013. If so, the first option that will be considered is making this a faith school.
Links to schools in Corby and East Northamptonshire

Question 3

The newspapers say that the NHS is getting worse but my when I had to go into hospital I was really impressed by the quality of care and standard of treatment. Why is this?

Answer

The newspapers often focus on bad rather than good news. It is not 'news' that people no longer have to wait two years or more for an operation. It is not 'news' that people are no longer 'parked' on trolleys in Accident and Emergency for 36 hours. It is not 'news' that we no longer have a 'crisis' in the NHS at Christmas each year. These major improvements to our health service are now taken for granted and are not covered by the national or local press as news stories.
However it is good to read about positive personal experiences of the health service in the letters pages of the local press. You can often read a letter from a patient thanking the doctors, nurses and support staff in the hospital for the quality of care and treatment they have received. In surveys of public opinion people often say they are worried about the NHS because of what they read in the press but that their own individual experience is very good.
Of course negative 'stories' such as problems with infections in hospitals will continue to hit the headlines. It is right that these issues are raised and action taken to resolve them. For anyone who does have a bad experience in the NHS there is a very good patient support and complaints system and I am also able to take up individual concerns of my constituents.
Listed below is a summary of recent investment in the local NHS to provide better services to patients:

£18m Treatment Centre (April 2007)
£4.7m Cardiac Centre (July 2007)
£1m in infection control since July 2006
£3.4m new staff Education Centre June 2006
£2m for new elderly care wards in December 2005
£1m new pathology machine in January 2006
New A&E observation ward January 2006
New Minor Injuries Unit in Corby (joint with PCT) in September 2005

Northamptonshire Teaching Primary Care Trust (PCT) oversees how Government funding is distributed within Northamptonshire. Funding for 2007/08 is up 14% with Northampton General Hospital being awarded £151m and Kettering General Hospital being awarded £119m.
The PCT have recently published Northamptonshire's Local Delivery Plan 2007/08 setting out investment for the next two years.
The investment for Northamptonshire includes:

Mental Health and Disability services: £105m
Sexual Health: £6m
GP services: £91m
GP prescribing: £89m
Healthy Lifestyles programme:£1.6m

To view Northamptonshire Local Delivery Plan for 2007/08 follow the link below:

Northamptonshire Local Delivery Plan

A NEW website has been launched to celebrate 60 years of the NHS in Northamptonshire and they want to hear from you.
The new site – www.northants60.nhs.uk - is an opportunity for patients, public, staff and ex-NHS employees to share their memories, photographs, and any NHS related events they have planned to celebrate this important landmark diamond anniversary.

Question 4

The new housing around Corby looks very good but what is being done to improve the housing that exists already?

Answer

High quality homes are being built in and around Corby as part of the planned growth and regeneration of the town. As Corby grows, new and different jobs are coming to the town too. The necessary infrastructure of a better road network, a new rail service, new schools, new health facilities, a better town centre and more sports and leisure facilities is also bringing benefits to the existing Corby residents and those new to the area.
As well as building new homes round Corby there is a lot of work being done to regenerate existing areas of the town in most need of development. Three priority inner areas - Kingswood, Danesholme and Lodge Park - have been identified and demolition work is now underway to be followed by re-modelling of the areas and construction of new homes to buy and rent.
In addition the Council is to invest £16m to ensure that more than 5,000 council houses will be brought up to the national decent homes standard a year early by 2009.
Visit Corby Borough Council's website and North Northants Development Company's website to find out more

Question 5

I read that levels of crime are coming down in Corby but it doesn’t feel that way. What are the facts and what more can be done to make us feel safer?

Answer

Yes, crime is falling and a recent survey shows that people's perceptions of crime in the town are improving too.
To view National Crime statistics please follow the link below
National Crime statistics
To view Local crime statistics please follow the link below

Local crime statistics

Perception survey
The perception of people in Corby who perceive a high level of anti-social behaviour in Corby has decreased from 69% in 2003/04 to 39% in 06/07 (BVPI survey results 2003-04/2006-07).

BVPI GENERAL SURVEY 2003-2004 / 2006-2007 - 5051 Corby District Council

	2003/04	2006/07	Difference
High levels of perceived anti-social behaviour in Corby	69%	39%	-30%
Noisy neighbours	25%	22%	-3%
Teenagers hanging around	71%	68%	-3%
Rubbish & Litter	67%	51%	-16%
Drunk/rowdy people	64%	40%	-24%
Burnt out cars	80%	30%	-50%
Graffitti/vandalism	80%	59%	-21%
Drug use/dealers	80%	64%	-16%

Extra police

The graph below shows the number of police officers in Northamptonshire

Police numbers graph

Extra cash
Northamptonshire Police Historical funding 1997/98 to 2006/07

	General govt grants (£)	Annual change in general govt grants	Specific grants & capital provision (£)	Total govt grants (£)
1997/98	50,770,386	-	1,950,000	52,720,386
1998/99	53,269,885	4.9%	1,347,000	54,616,885
1999/00	55,136,539	3.5%	781,000	55,917,539
2000/01	57,141,259	3.6%	2,226,909	59,368,168
2001/02	59,461,337	4.1%	4,101,390	63,562,727
2001/02*	57,926,000	-	4,101,390	62,027,390
2002/03	59,279,178	2.3%	5,131,002	64,410,180
2003/04	62,224,177	4.9%	9,320,855	71,545,032
2004/05	64,271,295	3.3%	7,453,179	71,724,474
2005/06	67,782,696	5.5%	7,564,320	75,347,016
2005/06**	67,163,000
2006/07	69,245,266	3.1%	10,462,991	79,708,257

*Adjusted for funding changes to NCS & NCIS
** Adjusted for comparison purposes following the transfer of pensions and security funding from general grant in 2006/07

Safer Community Teams
New 'Safer Community Teams' are now beginning their work. Four teams will cover Corby and two teams will cover East Northamptonshire. A Safer Community Team is made up of Police Officers, Police Community Support Officers, Special Constables and other police support, and may also include partner agency staff, such as neighbourhood wardens.
They will focus on tackling anti-social behaviour and nuisance crime that can cause so much misery to residents in an area. In the Kingswood where this approach was first tried out crime fell by 25%.
Visit www.northants.police.uk to find out more about your Safer Community Team.

Question 6
We hear a lot about what is happening to improve Corby but what is happening in to improve life for people in the villages around Corby and the towns and villages in East Northamptonshire?

Answer

The improvements to schools, health services, the new shopping centre, transport and sports and leisure facilities in Corby will directly benefit people of all ages living in the surrounding villages in Corby Borough and in East Northamptonshire.
However there have also been improvements to services and facilities specifically serving and located in villages and the local market towns. These include:

Improving village halls in Titchmarsh and Kingscliffe
Improvements to facilities in village schools such as Glapthorn school, Stanwick primary library, Nassington school computer suite
Investing in secondary schools in Oundle (Prince William Humanities Block), Raunds (Manor School sports Hall) Thrapston (King John computer suite) and Irthlingborough (Huxlow Science Laboratories)
Building new affordable housing called The Spires in Thrapston.
Regenerating the shopping centres in Raunds and Irthlingborough with £0.75m awarded in 2006.
Creating rural Safer Community Teams.
East Northants Central SCT covers Thrapston, Ringtead, Woodford, Raunds Windmill and Saxon, Irthlingborough and Stanwick wards.
East Northants North SCT covering Barnwell, Oundle, Prebendal and surrounding area
Making rural roads safer such as the red route between Oundle and Thrapston
Funding for community transport schemes such as Volunteer Action Oundle Community Car Service and Thrapston Volunteer Centres Nene & Ouse Transport Scheme.
Creating new children’s centres in Raunds and Irthlingborough to help families and give very young children a better start in life.
Improving sports facilities including the new Thrapston swimming pool and leisure centre, greater community use of school facilities such as those at Raunds Manor School and Prince William School.
Investing in internet services and websites that help people deal with local government services such as processing planning applications
Providing subsidies to maintain rural post offices
Creating the Stanwick Lakes leisure and environmental centre. Supporting the woodlands and rare species at Glapthorn.
Supporting the Frontier residential and community activity centre.

Useful websites to visit

Question 7
What is being done to stop illegal asylum seekers and illegal immigrants coming into the area?

Recent action by the government to prevent illegal immigration has been very successful.

The latest Home Office Asylum Statistics can be seen in this pdf document (280k).

We have a proud tradition in Britain of offering asylum to those fleeing persecution and violence in their own country. Special arrangements exist to assess every individual who seeks asylum in the UK and if given the right to enter the country are provided with support until they can return to their home country.
New mechanisms are now in place and more are being put in place as set out in a recent Border and Immigration Agency Business Plan (pdf 2.1MB) from the Home Office website.
You can also read some facts and figures about what the Border and Immigration Agency have achieved so far (pdf 180k).

Immigration and Asylum

The economic and fiscal impact of migration: key facts

The government is taking action to strike a new balance on immigration.

The new Points-based system (PBS) will provide more clarity on the available entry routes and, in conjunction with a test of labour market need in some cases, ensure that the migrants admitted are those who might sensibly fill labour market shortages. To clamp down on abuse of the system, there will be fast-track fines for employers who turn a blind eye or break the rules.
A Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) will be established by Autumn 2007, and be fully operational from April 2008, to advise the Government on how migration may help fill identified shortages. The MAC will be accompanied by the Migration Impacts Forum (MIF), which will focus on the wider impacts of migration experienced by local areas.

Numbers of migrants and trends

The UK has shared in trends towards increasing migration that have been seen in recent decades. Over the last ten years there has been a steady increase in the number of people coming to live in the UK. Most recently, this trend has been supported by the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to the EU.

Data for the year to mid-2006 show that:

574,000 migrants to came to live in the UK on a long-term basis;
385,000 people left the UK on a long-term basis;
There was therefore a net inflow of 189,000, a 28% decrease from 262,000 in the year to mid-2005.

The Office of National Statistics has established an inter-departmental task force on migration statistics. Details of improvements planned for the period 2008 to 2012 are set out in a separate ONS Statistical Submission to the House of Lords inquiry.

The economic and fiscal impact of migrants

The rate at which migrants are employed has risen steadily since 1997. The majority of employers find migrants reliable and hard-working. And often they have high levels of skills – higher, on average, than the UK natives. By working here they therefore make a very important contribution to the economy. By increasing the numbers of people of working age in recent years they have helped the economy to grow. We estimate that in 2006 new migration added about £6 billion to economic growth – around one-sixth of the total growth in the economy in that year.
The more output produced per person in the country, the wealthier we are as a nation. The odds are that migrants add to wealth because:

migrants earn more on average than UK natives, suggesting that they are more productive on average (they earned £424 per week in 2006, compared with £395 for the UK-born);
by complementing the skills of UK native workers they are likely to make those workers more productive directly; and
by underpinning essential services that the economy needs they leave other workers free to concentrate on what they do best, thus raising productivity indirectly.

Because migrants earn more, it is likely that they will, on average, pay more tax than their UK native counterparts – for example income tax and VAT. What the Government in turn pays out to migrants depends on their personal characteristics – for example whether those migrants have children; their state of health; and whether they are employed. In fact, in 2003-04 it is estimated that migrants contributed 10% of government revenue - more than their share of the population (9.6%) – and by contrast only used up 9.1% of Government expenditure – less than their population share might suggest.

Migrants and the labour market

(i) Employment
The idea that there are only a fixed number of jobs to go round is so conclusively refuted by economic history that it has its own label – "the lump of labour fallacy". UK experience over the last decade bears this out:

the proportion of foreign-born workers in the UK labour market has risen from around 7_ per cent to 12_ per cent; whilst
employment is up by 2.7 million; and
the unemployment rate (ILO measure) is down by 1.8 percentage points to 5.4 per cent.

Academic research provides little or no evidence that migrant labour has had a significant impact on employment prospects for native workers. DWP analysis provided no discernible statistical evidence that A8 migration has resulted in an increase in claimant count unemployment since May 2004.

(ii) Earnings
The Low Pay Commission has commissioned research relating to migrant flows in the period 1997 to 2005. It finds that:

on the one hand, immigration slightly increases the rate of wage growth for those at the top and middle of the wage distribution;
on the other hand, immigration leads to a modest dampening of wage growth for native workers at the bottom end of the earnings distribution. Despite this effect, lower-paid workers still recorded strong wage growth between 1997 and 2005. The National Minimum Wage helps to protect lower-paid workers from the impact of immigration;
viewed overall, the research finds a small positive effect of immigration on the wages of native workers. The average hourly wage for non-immigrants increased by 29 pence per year between 1997 and 2005 (in real terms). Of this figure, immigration contributed around 4 per cent.

In addition, research from DWP focused on A8 migrants shows no discernible relationship across Local Authority districts between earnings growth and the concentration of A8 migrants.

(iii) Sectors
Employers use migrant labour for a variety of reasons. In particular sectors – for example construction – migrant labour provides an effective means of meeting skill shortages. Agricultural employers view migrant labour as crucial to the survival of their businesses.

Migrants and demographic change

As the UK workforce ages, the dependency ratio – the ratio of children and older people to those in work – rises. Under GAD's principle projections, the dependency ratio rises from 61 per cent in 2007 to 74 percent in 2056. But without any migration, it is estimated that the ratio would reach 82 per cent in 50 years time, implying a greater burden of taxation on those in work.

Question 8
How can we stop legitimate migrant workers from countries like Poland jumping the queue for council housing, taking jobs of local people and undermining local wage rates.

Migrant workers from Europe including the newer member countries such as Poland and Latvia are entitled to come to Britain to live and work. In the same way, British people go to live and work in other European countries.

Corby's success has been built upon a history of waves of inward migration. Corby is today a diverse mix of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Polish, Croation, Latvian and other communities with a relatively small number of families from Black and Asian ethnic groups. Corby's new reputation and its affordable quality of life is already attracting new people from all over the country from places like Liverpool, Luton and London. It is also attracting migrant workers from Europe particularly the 'A8' countries such as Poland and Latvia.
There are particular rules that affect housing for migrant workers from Europe or outside of Europe and, specifically, such workers do not qualify for council housing.

Chris Mallender, Chief Executive of Corby Borough Council says:
"The factual position is that we have no arrangement with the Home Office to place asylum seekers or EU immigrants around the Borough and they would be given no precedence whatsoever on our waiting list unless they qualified under the homelessness act. Around 97% of our tenants are of white British origin and I think this underlines the point that we operate strictly on the basis of our housing need and points score on our register.

On jobs, Corby has a mix of employment opportunities and unlike the position a decade ago there is now practically full employment in the town. There is worrying evidence that some rogue employment agencies are exploiting migrant workers including overcharging them for transport and placing them in overcrowded housing; and not paying them money to which they are entitled such as accrued holiday pay or lunch break hours. This is unacceptable abuse of those migrant workers, it undermines the pay and conditions of local people and inevitably creates resentment that threatens community cohesion.
The government is proposing new measures to curb the abuse of vulnerable temporary workers by rogue agencies including giving workers a clear right to withdraw from accommodation, transport or other services provided by an agency without suffering any detriment; and alerting potential migrant workers to their rights and highlight unscrupulous practices they may fall victim to before they come to the UK.

Workers can contact the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) on 08457 474747 for impartial, confidential advice on employment rights. The Employment Standards Agency also have a dedicated helpline which provides advice to agency workers on current legislation and the work of the Inspectorate, contact the helpline on 0845 955 5105.

Question 9
I have read that Corby is going to get a direct passenger rail service to London. Where will the station be, what will it look like, when will it open, who will run it and what kind of service will be provided?

The new Train Station in Corby will be appropriately located off Station Road in an area already cleared and secured for the purpose. The new station building will be the latest modular design being developed by Network Rail and work is planned to commence around March 2008 with the Station Operational by December 2008. The train service will be operated by Stagecoach and the Station by Network Rail. It is anticipated that there will be one train per hour to and from the station. The stops and timing of the services have still to be agreed.

The two images below give an impression of what Corby's new station will look like. Clicking on each image will open a larger image in a new window.

Artists impression of Corby station

Artists impression of Corby station
17/08/07

Question 10
How do I actually vote in an election

You are entitled to vote when you reach the age of 18. Your name will be on the register of electors that is held either by Corby Borough Council or by East Northamptobshire District Council.
You can vote in local, European or general elections if you are a citizen of the UK. You can cast your vote on election day by going to your local polling station and filling in the ballot paper. Your vote is kept a secret - only you know who you vote for.
Many people now choose to vote by post, particularly if they find it physically difficult to get to the polling station, work away from home or have other reasons for not being able cast their vote on polling day itself. Instead if you vote by post, your ballot paper is sent to your home address, you can vote in the comfort of your front room and return your vote in a sealed envelope to the council's 'Returning Officer' and your postal vote is opened and counted on polling day.
I would encourage everyone to vote by post just in case unforeseen circumstances mean that they cannot vote on polling day itself. You can download an application for to vote by post. Please complete the form and return to the address given.

Application form for Corby residents: Word (40k) or pdf (44k)

For East Northamptonshire residents, email: avotes@east-northamptonshire.gov.uk to request an application form