Like blossom on the Stray, bluebells in Ripley are a highlight of spring in the Harrogate district.

As these images by amateur photographer Michael White show, the annual display in Ripley woods is now in full glory.

Mr White, who lives in Birstwith, took the photos at 6.30pm on Sunday.

The route through the woods is popular with dog walkers and cyclists.

Besides bluebells, the woods also feature numerous pheasants and other wildlife, such as squirrels, which were beautifully captured in these photos.

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• Ripley Show cancelled due to covid
• WATCH: Harrogate blooms with cherry blossoms on the Stray

The author Lady Antonia Fraser will discuss her latest book’s Ripon connections in this year’s Markenfield Hall lecture series.

The hall, near Ripon, has held lectures since 2013 to raise funds for restoration work.

Past speakers include the writers Phillippa Gregory, Diane Atkinson, Julian Fellowes, Leanda de Lisle and Anne de Courcy.

Lady Antonia, who headlines this year’s series, will talk about her book The Case of the Married Woman, which is due out next month.

The book portrays the Victorian women’s rights activist Caroline Norton, whose descendant Lord Grantley owns Markenfield Hall.

Lord Grantley and Lady Antonia will talk about Norton’s life, as well as how the Markenfield archives were used as a source for the book.

The lecture will take place online on May 12.

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• Council hopes to reopen Ripon and Starbeck Baths next month
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Until last year, lectures were held in the drawing room at Markenfield Hall, which can seat about 50 people.

This year’s planned online events also feature the author Alexander McCall Smith, the writer A N Wilson and the Guardian journalist Madeleine Bunting.

Lord Grantley’s mother, Lady Deirdre, lives at the hall with her husband Ian Curteis, the former TV director.

The programme for 2021 is available here.

Train operator Northern is introducing new timetables with more trains from Sunday May 16.

Northern has been running a reduced service since the current lockdown began in January but the new timetable will return services to similar levels to before the pandemic.

It means the Harrogate line will have more trains during peak hours, and services will start earlier and end later on some days.

Throughout most days there will continue to be a roughly half-hourly service between Harrogate and Leeds, and an hourly service between Harrogate and York.

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Some of the changes include:

• The first train from Harrogate to Leeds on weekday and Saturday mornings will leave Harrogate station at 0605, half an hour earlier than currently.
• There will be 11 trains from Harrogate to Leeds on weekdays and Saturdays leaving before 0900, as against five currently.
• The last train from Leeds to Harrogate will be almost two hours later, at 2339 instead of 2129, every day except Sunday.

Northern do not expect any overcrowding, although a spokesperson said:

“It’s very difficult to say. There is no official capacity limit, however we are very conscious that people may well be concerned so we’re asking people to tailor their journeys to try and travel outside of the busiest times.”

Trevor Chapman was elected to succeed Stuart Martin as mayor of the Harrogate district last night.

Cllr Chapman, a Liberal Democrat who represents Bilton Grange on Harrogate Borough Council, succeeded Conservative councillor Stuart Martin.

Here are 10 facts about the district’s new mayor.

1 He was born in 1944 in Finedon, Northamptonshire, where the Reverend Richard Coles is parish priest.

2 He met his wife, Janet, when they both worked for the East Midlands Electricity Board in Northamptonshire. They married in 1966 and have two children, Zoe and Ben, and five grandchildren.

3 They moved to Harrogate in 1970 when he got a job with North Eastern Electricity Board, where he worked as an energy marketing sales engineer.

4 A keen football fan, he grew up supporting Kettering Town but after moving to Harrogate became a regular season ticket holder at Leeds United and watched the great Don Revie team. He’s also a member of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and a life member of Bilton Cricket Club, where he used to coach the under-17s.

5 He worked in electricity until privatisation in 1999, when he took early retirement.

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6 His two political heroes are local Liberal Democrats Geoff Webber and Phil Willis, who ignited his interest in politics. Webber, who died this year, was a Liberal Democrat councillor on Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council and Willis was MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough from 1997 until 2010.

7 With their encouragement, he was elected to represent the Liberal Democrats on Harrogate Borough Council in a New Park by-election in 2004. When the boundaries changed in 2018, he stood successfully in Bilton Grange, which he still represents.

8 The mayor usually holds office for one year. The honour is rotated between the political parties based on the amount of seats each one has. The Conservative-controlled council therefore has the most mayors. This year it was actually the turn of the independents to hold the mayoral office but neither independent councillor wanted to take the role so they nominated Cllr Chapman instead.

9 In a typical year, the mayor can attend as many as 400 events. Covid decimated this for the previous mayor but in-person duties have resumed. One of the highlights Cllr Chapman is most looking forward to is attending the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate.

10 His three nominated charities are Supporting Older People, which he is a trustee of, Citizens Advice Craven and Harrogate Districts, which his wife was a trustee of for 19 years and the Friends of Harrogate Hospital.

Harrogate Borough Council has begun making preparations for the live streaming of meetings to continue when councillors return to the chamber next month.

Emergency regulations which allowed local authorities to meet remotely – where councillors tune in from different locations – were introduced in March last year and most meetings have since been broadcast online.

The rules will expire on May 6 when meetings must return in person but there is a government expectation that they must still be live streamed for members of the public.

Harrogate Borough Council has ordered live streaming equipment to install at its headquarters in what marks a major change from when councillors voted against any live streaming in January 2020 before the pandemic struck.

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• Virtual meetings could ‘drag council into 21st century’ and open up democracy to a wider audience
• ‘Mistake’ to return to in-person meetings, says council leader

They voted against the idea because of claims it would have been too expensive – and it is not yet known how much the new equipment will cost.

Conservative Cllr Ed Darling told a meeting on Thursday that the council was now waiting for the installation of equipment to begin.

He said:

“Remote meetings have become commonplace over the past year – I personally think they have been rather positive.

“A solution has now been ordered and we are awaiting its installation. Once it is installed and tested, the members ICT working group will meet to review the system.”

It comes as the High Court has this week rejected a challenge by local government lawyers and Hertfordshire County Council for online council meetings to continue after May 6.

He also argued councils should be given a choice whether to hold meetings remotely or in-person in the future.

Announcing the end of the emergency regulations last month, Luke Hall, minister for regional growth and local government, said in a letter to councils that he recognised safety concerns but the vaccine rollout and fewer covid cases “should result in significant reduction in risk for local authority members meeting in-person”.

Rail passengers on the Harrogate to Leeds line will have to use a bus replacement service on Sunday.

Network Rail has announced work to install new overhead line equipment and signals will cause disruption after the last train on Saturday and continue throughout Sunday.

Normal service will resume on Monday, which is a bank holiday.

It means trains will terminate at Horsforth, and replacement buses will operate between there and Leeds station all day on Sunday.

Trains from Harrogate to York will run as normal.

The replacement buses will pick up and drop off passengers on New Station Street, in front of Leeds station.

Passengers are advised to plan ahead and check their journey with National Rail enquiries.

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An inquiry has been launched after emails revealed a Harrogate council officer “massaged” a key report on now-approved plans for a controversial motorway service station on the A1(M) near Kirby Hill.

Emails seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service show that Barrie Gannon, former principal landscape architect at Harrogate Borough Council, made changes to a landscape report in 2019 when the council’s planning department went against three previous refusals to recommend approval.

Mr Gannon said he hoped the changes would make the report “read better” – although it is not yet known what was amended.

What is clear though are the report’s conclusions. It said the landscape impact of the service station was “not substantive” in what campaigners have described as a “complete U-turn” from a previous council assessment, which warned it would cause “significant harm”.

The revelations have sparked questions over why a change of stance was taken, as well as concerns over impartiality within the planning department.

Gareth Owens, chair of Kirby Hill Residents Against Motorway Services, said:

“It is a mystery to us how officers made a complete U-turn on the landscape assessment. Landscape harm has been the main reason for refusal of a motorway service area at this site for 25 years.

“We do not understand how or why this position changed.”

The proposals put forward by Applegreen were most recently rejected by councillors in 2019.

However, that decision was overturned at an appeal this month as the developers won approval at the fourth time of asking.

Read more:

• Villagers battle weary as fourth inquiry into A1 service station starts

• ‘There is a need’ for A1 service station near Kirby Hill, inquiry told
• Government approves A1 service station after fourth appeal in 25 years

Mr Owens, who gave evidence during the appeal, said the landscape report played a key part in the planning inspector’s decision to grant approval, which made it even more important to understand why the council had changed its conclusions.

He said:

“The officer’s report was not only presented to the planning committee. It was relied on by Applegreen at the public inquiry, who told the inspector that he should accept the view of the council’s professional planning officers, which he duly did.

“The planning inspector went along with the planning officer’s conclusions on landscape, so we think it is important to understand how they were arrived at.”

In the email dated November 2019, Mr Gannon said to a colleague: “I’ve massaged the landscape section 9.56 – 9.69 which hopefully reads better.”

Robert Windass, the Conservative councillor for Boroughbridge and one of the planning committee members who previously rejected the service station, said he had “serious concerns” about the email after he made calls for the inquiry last week.

Speaking at a full council meeting, he asked the council’s cabinet member for planning councillor Tim Myatt:

“Will you undertake a full inquiry into this matter to ensure that all reports presented to the planning committee in future are factual, truthful and unbiased?”

In a statement, councillor Myatt later said he was “confident” that officers always made “fair and impartial” assessments of planning applications.

He said:

“Officer recommendations are formed based on their assessment of information available about the application, including information submitted by the applicant, internal and statutory consultees, and the public.

“I am confident that officer recommendations are based on a fair and impartial assessment of that information.

“Together with officers, I have met with councillor Windass to discuss his concerns regarding the landscape assessment included in the officer’s report to committee.

“I agree with councillor Windass that there is a need to provide residents with reassurance that our planning processes were followed correctly, and I have agreed with councillor Windass that we will look into the specific concerns he has raised before providing a report to councillors.”

Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative MP Andrew Jones has urged care minister Helen Whately to review care home guidance on outdoor trips.

The guidance says residents that leave homes must isolate for 14 day except for medical appointments or exceptional circumstances.

It has been widely criticised nationally and locally, including by care home residents, the Bishop of Ripon and the director of health and adult services at North Yorkshire County Council.

Nick Moxon, 32, who has cerebral palsy and is a resident at Disability Action Yorkshire‘s care home on Claro Road, Harrogate last week told the Stray Ferret he feels “trapped” and “treated like a lesser being” because of the guidance.

Now Mr Jones has described it as “too restrictive and not in the best interests of the health and wellbeing of our care home residents” and urged Whately to act.

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Mr Jones revealed the news not on his official website but on Community News, a website he runs featuring local Conservatives.

He said “slow but positive improvements” meant care home residents could now receive two nominated visitors and hold hands with them

But he added the same could not be said for outdoors visits, which particularly impacted younger care home residents:

“New guidance says that when they leave their homes for any reason, as they often do to exercise in the fresh air, they must self-isolate for 14 days thereafter. This is said to be necessary to keep other residents safe.

“Whilst I support the government’s motive, this is undoubtedly too restrictive and not in the best interests of the health and wellbeing of our care home residents.

“I have written to the Minister for Care, Helen Whately, to ask for the guidance to be reassessed and reconsidered and I hope this will be acted upon quickly.”

Community groups and charities in several rural parishes in the Harrogate district are being invited to apply for grants of up to £2,500.

Organisations in the parishes of Felliscliffe, Hampsthwaite, Birstwith, Norwood, Menwith with Darley, Haverah Park with Beckwithshaw and Fewston can apply.

Applicants must show their projects meet some, or all, of the following criteria: they enhance quality of life for local residents; contribute to vibrant, healthy, successful and sustainable communities; promote community spirit and encourage community activity.

Two Ridings Community Foundation, which provides grants in north and east Yorkshire, is administering the awards on behalf of the Knabs Ridge Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund.

The fund, which was set up by the company RWE Renewables UK, awarded more than £22,000 in grants to 20 applicants last year.

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Previous successful projects range from a scheme to create safe roadside parking at Christ Church Community Centre in Darley to improving a children’s play area at Blubberhouses Cricket Club.

Blubberhouses Cricket Club

Other recent successful projects include community planting, coronavirus response, purchase of musical instruments, eco-friendly lighting systems and a project to help people use the internet.

The fund also supports projects that are aimed at encouraging sustainable energy use, reducing carbon emissions, or are generally environmental in purpose.

Grant applications must be submitted before the closing date of May 10. Funding decisions will be made in early summer.

Jackie McCafferty, programme manager at Two Ridings Community Foundation, said:

“We are proud to be working with communities to make a difference to people in their local area, especially during what has been a particularly difficult time.”

Full details are available here.

The Harrogate Bus Company is to introduce a new service connecting Harrogate and Skipton.

The 59 service will run four times each way on Saturdays, starting on May 22.

Buses will depart from Harrogate bus station at 0945, 1145, 1445, and 1645, and from Skipton bus station at 1040, 1240, 1540, and 1740.

The bus will stop at The Millstones, Blubberhouses for Fewston reservoir, the Devonshire Arms for Bolton Abbey, Bolton Abbey station for the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway, and terminate at Skipton bus station.

The journey will take just less than 50 minutes in both directions.

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This is the first bus to link Harrogate and Skipton since the X59 service was cancelled in 2013. There has been no direct public transport link between the two towns in the eight years since.

The price of a single or return ticket is not known yet, but a daytripper ticket to allow further connections with other Transdev services costs £10.

The news comes as local councils are considering plans to reduce car dependency and encourage active travel and use of public transport in the Harrogate district.