can we close the issues ourselves if they've been merged?

Yup!

If it's already merged do we wait for chris or james to closed it or we move it into done in kanban and close the issues by ourself?

If it's merged, you can close the issue! It should if linked properly move on teh KanBan already. But if it doesn't just move the card yourself to the relevant column 🙂

perfect, thank you!