Positive Plan for Corby

Foreword

Corby is one of the fastest-growing towns in the East Midlands. Since the closure of the steelworks in 1980, the town has reinvented itself as a centre for logistics, manufacturing, and increasingly, professional services. The 2021 Census recorded a town population of 68,164, with the former borough at 75,571; with the growth since, Corby is now approaching 80,000 people. Continued growth is expected through the 2030s as Priors Hall, Weldon Park, and West Corby build out. We want to continue that growth in a sustainable way that makes Corby a commuter town people want to live in with great connections, access to services, and room to grow.

As such this growth is welcome as it has brought new schools, the reopening of the railway station, the Cube and the International Pool, and a younger demographic profile than the regional average. But it has not been matched by the infrastructure needed to sustain it. Residents struggle to register with NHS dentists. GP appointments are in short supply. School places, particularly for children with special educational needs, are under acute pressure. The road network was designed for a town of 50,000 and now carries the traffic of a town approaching 80,000. Cycling and walking links between estates and employment areas are fragmented.

Corby Liberal Democrats believe a town that has grown this much deserves a plan that matches its ambition. This Positive Plan for Corby sets out our proposals for the future of Greater Corby: clear, deliverable targets for housing (including the homes the council already owns), health, education, roads and buses, rail, active travel, green space, the arts, and community safety. It is called a positive plan deliberately. Corby has spent too long being told what it cannot have. This document is about what it can have, and about how the town gets there.

It is a proposal for Corby, and it puts Corby at the centre. North Northamptonshire Council is the strategic authority for planning, highways, education and social care; the NHS, Network Rail, National Highways and the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner each hold powers that no local plan can override. But none of those bodies is Corby, and none of them will make Corby's case unless Corby makes it first. This plan is therefore written from the town's point of view: what Corby needs, in what order, and what the town, including its residents, its community and resident associations, its councillors at every level, its MP, and the neighbouring parish councils of Weldon, Stanion, Little Stanion and Rockingham, will press for together.

Crucially, this plan recognises that Corby is not one place but many. Lodge Park is not Hazel Leys. Oakley Vale is not the Old Village. Each of the town's neighbourhoods, and each of the surrounding villages, has its own history, its own assets, and its own challenges. A one-size-fits-all approach would flatten those differences. That is why this plan makes the case for Neighbourhood Wards, smaller wards that match the communities people actually recognise, and for a named, dedicated police community support officer for every neighbourhood. The unit of this plan is the neighbourhood, because that is the unit at which people live.

This is a working document. Sections marked as being built upon, such as our proposals for the arts, are deliberately at an early stage and will be developed with residents, with the organisations named in them, and with anyone who wants to help improve them.

Contents and summary of targets

This plan is structured around fourteen sections. Each theme sets out the current position, our proposed targets, and what Corby will press for to secure them.

Next: 1. Vision and the Greater Corby Growth Area