Two weeks left to have your say on North Yorkshire reorganisation

Less than two weeks remain for people in North Yorkshire to have a say on how the county’s local government will look in the future.

Earlier this year, Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that two proposals from councils in the area would be taken forward as part of the Local Government Reorganisation process.  The consultation closes on April 19.

North Yorkshire County Council has submitted a bid for one large authority to cover the county, with more powers passed on to town and parish councils. City of York Council, itself already a unitary, would be left as it is under the proposals.

Six of the county’s seven district councils – Scarborough, Harrogate, Ryedale, Craven, Selby and Richmondshire – submitted a proposal dubbed the “East & West plan” that would see the county and York split in half to create two authorities of roughly the same population size under one Mayor.

Scarborough, Ryedale, Selby and York would be in one authority with Craven, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Harrogate in the other. Both bids would see Scarborough and the other six district councils scrapped.

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The consultation asks a number of questions about each proposal around value for money, proposed geography of the council and impact of the proposal on local services.

Residents, councils, Local Enterprise Partnerships, public service providers, businesses and voluntary organisations all have the opportunity to have their say on which proposal, if any, they see as the best fit for their area.

Jenrick will consider all proposals following the consultation before making a decision about which option, if any, to implement. This would be subject to Parliamentary approval.

Subject to Parliamentary approval, it is expected that any new unitary council would be fully operational from April 2023 with transitional arrangements expected to be in place from 2022, including elections in May 2022 to the shadow or continuing councils.

To take part in the consultation visit www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposals-for-locally-led-reorganisation-of-local-government-in-cumbria-north-yorkshire-and-somerset.

Councillor claims covid death figures are ‘absolute rubbish’

A North Yorkshire county councillor who works as a funeral director has claimed it is “absolute rubbish” to say 130,000 people have died of covid in the UK.

Cllr Andrew Jenkinson said deaths had been wrongly recorded and  blamed “inept” doctors.

The current number of UK deaths within 28 days of a positive covid test is 126,592 and 148,125 people had covid mentioned on the death certificate.

The independent councillor said:

“They say 130,000 people passed away, approximately, of covid. To me that is absolute rubbish and I will tell you why it is rubbish.

“It is because as a funeral director, we have [seen] so many cases that have been put down as covid and they have died of other things.

“So we have actually been very, very good, telling [it] as it is but even more [so[ and I think the rest of Europe have lied.

“I bet their figures are a lot higher. The problem with the UK is that we are so honest.”

Cllr Jenkinson was speaking at a meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s Scarborough area committee on Friday where he put his concerns to Robert Goodwill, the Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby.

Cllr Jenkinson told Mr Goodwill other European countries had “lied” about their death figures.

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Cllr Jenkinson, who was elected as a Conservative but who now sits as an independent, went on to claim that doctors had been signing death certificates as covid deaths without ever seeing the patients.

He added:

“First and foremost, you do not need two doctors to certificate a death now since covid came in, you only need one.

“This is not to have a go at anybody but the doctors. I think the doctors in the NHS have been brilliant but the actual doctors in your practices have been quite inept in the early stages.

“There still are problems where they will not come and see the death of a person to clarify everything, so they’re going through and [the cause of death] has been put down as covid.”

UK ‘performing better than other countries’

Mr Goodwill said he runs a green burial site and had been told by one family that “it says covid on the death certificate but we don’t think that actually is the case”.

Mr Goodwill said the true measure for deaths would be excess deaths compared to the five-year average and said the UK was performing better than other European countries.

He said:

“We get a lot of criticism in the UK because we are quite a big country.

“In Belgium the death rate has been way ahead of ours all the way through but because it is a small country, those who choose to write newspaper articles or report in the media would not pick on Belgium because although their figures are higher as a percentage they are lower numerically.”

Conservative MP Mr Goodwill, who is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Funerals and Bereavement, added:

“At the beginning of the pandemic, you may recall we were saying that anybody who’d ever had a positive test who died will be down as a covid death.

“So you could have the disease last March and you could be run over by a bus in July and that would have gone down as a Covid death so they took the decision to say deaths within 28 days of a positive test. But that has problems.”

NHS North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group declined to comment on Cllr Jenkinson’s claims.