Harborough News is an independent news and information site for Market Harborough, Lutterworth and the Harborough district. We report from documents, we cite them, and we are not connected to the council.
Where we cover
Market Harborough is the anchor, a self-contained market town on the Welland with the canal basin at one end and the London line running through it. Lutterworth is the district’s other town, and the rest is villages: Broughton Astley, Kibworth, Fleckney, Great Glen, Great Bowden, Little Bowden, Husbands Bosworth, Billesdon and Medbourne among them. About 107,000 people live across the district, which makes it small enough that a single planning decision can be the biggest local story of the month.
What we report
Harborough District Council’s planning register and committee papers, licensing notices, police.uk crime data, HM Land Registry sold prices, Food Standards Agency hygiene ratings, Environment Agency flood warnings for the Welland and the Jordan, and company filings in The Gazette. Roads, schools and social care are run by Leicestershire County Council rather than the district, and we say which authority a decision came from.
What happens in 2028
In July 2026 the Government decided that Harborough District Council would be abolished on 1 April 2028 and absorbed into a large new Leicestershire and Rutland unitary authority, with several parishes going instead to a Leicester-based council. That decision was put under review on 7 September 2026 and is no longer settled, as we report in Harborough council abolition paused. We will report the detail from the published documents rather than from speculation, and keep the practical pages on this site pointing at whoever is actually responsible.
Tips and corrections
Email hello@harboroughnews.co.uk with anything we should be covering, an event worth listing, or a correction. Tips are treated in confidence, and corrections go up quickly and are noted on the page.
Harborough News is published by the GOB Media Group.