Andrew Jones MP enters devolution debate

Local government minister Simon Clarke has sidestepped a request by Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones to state the minimum population size for a new unitary authority.

Mr Jones submitted a written question asking what the minimum size should be to achieve value for money and quality service delivery.

But Mr Clarke’s response did not give a figure. He said:

“Whilst traditionally various population ranges for unitary councils have been referred to, where a unitary council is proposed its particular circumstances need to be considered when assessing whether its population would be appropriate.”

Mr Clarke added the government’s devolution and local recovery white paper, due to be published this autumn, would provide more details.

‘Too big and remote’

Population size is a critical issue in the ongoing devolution debate in North Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire County Council has proposed creating one large authority that would serve all 610,000 people in the county besides York, which would remain a separate unitary authority.

The seven district councils, including Harrogate Borough Council, have put forward an alternative east / west model that would result in two smaller authorities.

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The district councils claim the county council’s model is too big and remote and their alternative suggestion would lead to more responsive local government.

In June, Mr Clarke said the size of unitary authorities “depended on local circumstances but as a rule of thumb are expected to be substantially in excess of 300,000 to 400,000”.

The Stray Ferret asked Mr Jones if he was satisfied with Mr Clarke’s response and his view on the best devolution model for North Yorkshire but he had not replied by the time of publication.

Plan to convert Harrogate guest house to flats

The owner of Alexa House guest house in Harrogate has submitted plans to convert the building to seven apartments.

Sandra Doherty, who is also chief executive of Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce, told the Stray Ferret she planned to retire.

Ms Doherty will, however, continue her role with the chamber. She said:

“It was falling last year and breaking both arms that finally made my mind up. That and requests for seeing my grandchildren more.

“Covid hasn’t helped as I hoped to enjoy one last year, especially with my regular guests who I have become such good friends with over the past 14 years.”

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Plans sent to Harrogate Borough Council request change of use from hotel to seven residential apartments at the site on Ripon Road.

The application also proposes to demolish existing extensions and outbuildings, create a rear extension and remodel the car park.

New Tesco could open in Killinghall next year

The new Tesco Express in Killinghall is unlikely to open until late next year at the earliest.

The store is due to be built on the site of The Three Horseshoes pub on the main Ripon Road in the middle of Killinghall.

The pub posted a message on its Facebook page on Saturday saying it will close on September 27. But it could be some time before the Tesco Express opens.

In July, Harrogate Borough Council approved plans by Ilkley developers Dynamic Capital Killinghall to convert the site to a convenience store.

The plans also involve constructing four flats and installing six electric vehicle charging points.

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At a meeting of Killinghall Parish Council last week, Cllr John Moretta said the developers had suggested once work gets underway it is likely to take a year to complete.

Last month Tesco applied for an alcohol licence from 6am to 11pm seven days of the week at the site, which has hosted a pub for 150 years.

Tesco subsequently submitted three more planning applications for signage, lighting and an ATM machine. Work is unlikely to begin until these matters are resolved.

Fellow parish councillor George Novelli told last week’s meeting the store would be “absolutely vital for the village”, which has grown considerably in recent years. A Tesco spokesman said:

“We believe the new store will be a positive addition to the local community and we aim to be serving customers there in 2021.”

The Greyhounds Inn opposite The Three Horseshoes remains closed.

Fred Trueman’s Rolls-Royce sells for £31,000

A 1967 Rolls-Royce Mulliner Park Ward, which was bought new by Yorkshire and England cricketer Fred Trueman, has sold at auction for £31,000.

The vehicle was one of 273 lots that went under the hammer at Tennants Auctioneers’ site in Leyburn on Saturday.

Trueman, who died in 2006, was the first bowler to take 300 Test match wickets.

Some still consider him to be England’s greatest ever bowler. Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson once described him as the ‘greatest living Yorkshireman’.

Trueman sold the vehicle, which was estimated to fetch between £25,000 and £35,000, in 1992.

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Top lot at the motor car, motorcycle and automobilia sale was a 1961 Jaguar MKII Saloon Concours Restoration, which beat its £45,000 to £50,000 estimate to sell for £71,000.

A 1956 Jaguar XK140 sold for £50,000 and a 1965 Mercedes Pagoda 230 SL Coupe, which had generated much interest pre-sale, more than doubled its estimate to sell for £48,000.

The sale resulted in a total hammer price of £426,715.

Tennants, which is a fourth generation family business, is one of the UK’s largest antiques and fine art auctioneers. It holds about 80 auctions a year at its 80,000 square foot site in Leyburn.

TikTok ferret video goes viral

A video of a stray ferret in a kitchen in Harrogate has gone viral, having attracted 210,000 views on TikTok in two days.

Ashleigh Wilson feared there was a rat in the kitchen when her family returned home from walking the dog on Sunday to hear scratching behind a kick plate.

With the dog going berserk, she armed herself with a broom and set about recording the incident as she slowly removed the plate.

Here’s what happened:

@kidsvsmum

#wtff #help

♬ original sound – user8175306408969

Ms Wilson said:

“I thought it was going to be a rat so I was shocked when it turned out to be a ferret. To have a ferret in my kitchen is about the most Yorkshire thing that could have happened.”

 

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Ms Wilson contacted a ferret welfare organisation, which advised her to temporarily home the rodent in a high sided box containing meat and a blanket.

She did this and posted appeals on social media to find the owner. The posts were shared and shortly afterwards a neighbour a few doors down in the Jennyfields area of Harrogate got in touch to claim the creature.

It is believed the ferret escaped its enclosure, scurried down the road and entered the Wilsons’ home through a back door left open for the dog.

It isn’t the first time Ms Wilson, a cleaner, has discovered a strange creature in a house.

“I once found a frog in a house that I was cleaning,” she said.

Charities invited to apply for covid recovery grants

Charities and community groups in North Yorkshire fighting the impact of coronavirus are being invited to apply for grants of up to £10,000 and £50,000.

Two separate funders are offering the grants for organisations helping people overcome the effects of the pandemic.

Two Ridings Community Foundation will begin accepting applications for its coronavirus community fund on Monday. Applicants must demonstrate how they would use the grants, worth up to £10,000, to help beneficiaries become more self-sufficient and resilient in the wake of coronavirus.

Not-for-profit organisations in North Yorkshire, York, East Riding of Yorkshire or Hull can submit bids providing they meet the eligibility criteria, which include having a management committee with at least three unrelated members and a bank account in the group’s name.

Organisations can also apply in partnership with other not-for-profit groups for grants of up to £30,000. Applicants with annual income of less than £500,000 will be prioritised.

Two Ridings Community Foundation, which is based in York, is the local distribution partner in North and East Yorkshire for funds raised by the National Emergencies Trust. The trust was set up to provide a more co-ordinated national response to emergencies.

Its coronavirus appeal has distributed £56m nationally so far through local distributors, such as Two Ridings Community Foundation. Full application details are available here.

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Small charities can also apply for grants of £50,000 from Lloyds Community Foundation’s covid recovery fund.

The fund, which opens on Monday, will offer the grants to 140 charities for initiatives that help people overcome complex social issues.

Carlos Chavez, the foundation’s manager for Yorkshire and the Humber, said many charities in the area “faced significant income losses and other challenges over the last six months” and it “wanted to support these charities to recover in the months and years to come so they can continue to be a lifeline to the people in their communities”.

More details are available here

 

From Knaresborough Celtic juniors to Wembley

If Harrogate Town get promoted to the English Football League on Sunday, Jack Emmett will be the toast of the town.

Jack, 26, is the only Harrogate-born player in the squad and has made about 220 appearances.

After unsuccessful trials with Leeds United and Doncaster Rovers – the latter of which said he was too small to make the grade – he didn’t have any great aspirations when he first trained with Town during sixth form at Harrogate Grammar School.

Accountancy was to be his career; football was a hobby. But his life, along with the fortunes of the club, have transformed since then. He told the Stray Ferret:

“Everything was completely different when I joined. The team, the ground, the crowds, the professionalism… we were a bit of a head it, kick it team trying to get out of the Conference North on a grass pitch with a big slope in the corner.

“Every year since then we’ve built on things. It’s incredible really.”

The club’s decision to go fully professional in 2017 was the key moment, said Jack, who started out at Knaresborough Celtic juniors. Town signed several new players and were immediately promoted in 2018 to the National League.

Now they are heading to the most famous stadium in the world for the chance to play in the fourth tier of the English game.

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Standing in the way are Notts County, the oldest professional team in the world whose black and white striped kit was copied by Italian giants Juventus.

Ordinarily County would have thousands more fans cheering them on so playing at an empty Wembley could work in Harrogate’s favour, said Jack.

“Most people fancy them to beat us,” he said. “But I like going in as the underdog.”

Midfielder Jack, who has a year left on his contract, was a substitute in the 1-0 play-off defeat of Boreham Wood last weekend. But hot weather and Wembley’s big pitch could see the bench play a big part.

With no fans allowed, his family won’t be there to see it. He said:

“They booked a holiday in Wales so they wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway.”

He also feels for the fans.

“It’s such a shame they can’t be there with us. Hopefully we can win it for them. Having grown up in the town I know how much it would mean to people.”

Disability Action Yorkshire’s furniture warehouse to re-open next week

Disability Action Yorkshire’s second-hand furniture warehouse in Harrogate is to reopen on Tuesday.

The warehouse, in Hornbeam Park, sells office and home furniture as well as ornaments, books, DVDs, clothes, games and jigsaws.

The location has been a favourite haunt for TV prop buyers, with items acquired appearing in programmes such as Shameless, EastEnders and Birds of a Feather.

The enterprise not only generates income for Disability Action Yorkshire but also provides retail and customer experience skills for young disabled people.

The warehouse will be open for sales from 10am to 2pm Monday to Fridays. It will also be open for donations from 2pm to 3pm Monday to Friday.

Customers will be required to wear face coverings and observe social distancing measures.

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Jackie Snape, chief executive of Disability Action Yorkshire, said:

“Since we were forced to close the operation down, we have lost more than £12,000 in revenue – money which would otherwise be used to fund our services to disabled people.”

“We have introduced a one-way system around the warehouse for customers, and there will be regular cleaning, quarantining of all donations, and fogging at the end of every day.

“And whilst we won’t initially be able to collect or deliver items, we will be reviewing this later in the month.”

HCC upgrade : ‘£46.8m is enough to regain a strong place in the market’

Harrogate Borough Council’s cabinet is due to meet at 5.30pm tonight with just one item on the agenda: the renovation of the town’s conference centre.

The council is likely to vote to proceed with plans to invest £46.8m on a major overhaul of the 40-year-old centre.

A full renovation would be one of the council’s biggest ever financial decisions. The proposal has been welcomed by the town’s business community but criticised by politicians and business representatives in Ripon, Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge, where the benefits would be felt less.

John Gallery is a former Harrogate hotelier. He is chairman of the Business Visits & Events Partnership’s research and business intelligence group, a former chair of VisitYork and a former vice-chairman of the Meetings Industry Association, He currently works as a business tourism consultant.  

We put a series of questions to Mr Gallery: 

How does Harrogate rank as an events venue?
Harrogate’s conference centre does need to raise its game as it has lost out to a number of destinations with newer facilities. The sums seem huge, but in the market it is in, it will continue to decline if it does not keep pace with, or indeed, get ahead of these shiny new competitors.

What difference would a £46.8m renovation make?
As has been seen in other locations, investment makes a difference, not only to the fortunes of the venue but also to the wider local and regional economy. The value must be judged in that wider context and not just on the profit and loss of the centre. If the centre were simply to break even then it would be doing its job as a lever for all the other benefits. Better of course, that it also makes profit so that investment can continue over the long term.

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Is the council best placed to provide investment?
A private sector operator would probably be better. Ownership could remain in the public sector but hand operations to a private operator with a dynamic profit motive and things would change quickly. Having said this, Harrogate has probably relied too heavily on the conference market for the 40 years since the centre was developed. Too often there is feast or famine in terms of demand for hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants etc. It was like this when I first worked in the hotel business in Harrogate in the 1980s. So Harrogate Borough Council should also focus on stimulating demand with a stronger, more broad-based appeal that would attract visitors throughout the year.

£46.8m is a huge sum but is it enough to revive the centre?
It’s a large sum but in terms of the market the centre operates in, it needs it. It was controversial when it opened but some of the new plans do seem to make sense in terms of linking directly to the Royal Hall and re-imagining the space outside the main building. I don’t think it is a lost cause but £46.8m will probably be just enough to regain a strong place in the market. It needs to be a co-ordinated effort with the hotels and other accommodation providers, local travel companies and so on to make the best impact.

What should the long-term strategy be?
The centre should be the focus for events but be part of a bigger picture. The centre should work together with the Yorkshire Event Centre to attract bigger, international co-located events. Harrogate should up its game. The competition is overseas as well as Brighton, Bournemouth, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh etc. Think of Barcelona, Geneva, Frankfurt, Las Vegas, New York, Sydney, etc. Some of the money announced recently by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, to improve transport in the north should be chased by Harrogate. Improve the direct rail link to York and Leeds for example. With the canny Yorkshire approach I am sure they can do it.

How badly has covid affected the events sector?
The £70bn per year UK events sector has been one the worst affected and it is likely that demand will not return quickly in the short-term. Harrogate can look this year at the loss of so many events at both the convention centre and the Yorkshire Event Centre due to covid but the impact this has had on the other parts of the economy in these businesses is also severe.

How should the town respond?
Counter-intuitively this may be the opportunity to pivot the centre to be part of a broader tourism offer that still attracts conferences but with greater emphasis on the leisure and pleasure offerings in the district. For example, introduce delegate incentives to bring partners and families. Be more adventurous about what can be done. It’s a spa town so it should be attracting people for this purpose as it did when it was first invented as that. The convention centre could be the hub of the town’s tourism sector and business done at the centre might steer more towards the family market at weekends and holidays and business events midweek. There are a lot of possibilities. It needs a broad vision for both business and leisure.

 

Harrogate businesses back £47m conference centre renovation

Harrogate business leaders have urged the local authority to press ahead tomorrow with plans for a £46.8m renovation of the town’s convention centre.

Harrogate Borough Council’s cabinet will recommend spending £1.1m on a detailed feasibility study and a full economic impact assessment, according to confidential cabinet documents seen by The Stray Ferret.

The prospect of this leading to such a huge investment in the centre of Harrogate has alarmed some people in Ripon, Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge, who fear their locations won’t reap the benefits.

But businesses in Harrogate have said investment is necessary for the survival of the town’s hotels, restaurants and bars.

Simon Cotton, managing director of the HRH Group, whose properties include the Yorkshire Hotel, the White Hart Hotel and the Fat Badger pub, said the visitor economy was “massively driven” by the centre, which is currently being used as a Nightingale hospital. He added:

“The hotels are really feeling the effects of it being closed. Some are asking whether they can afford to stay open.

“I absolutely support investment. I don’t see an alternative.”

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A spokesperson for Harrogate Hospitality & Tourism Association said redevelopment “will help Harrogate attract new events and drive even more business to the town, which is great for local restaurants, retailers and the hotel and accommodation sector”.

Sandra Doherty, chief executive of Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce, said the “backbone of the town” would change if Harrogate lost the centre.

But Ms Doherty said the centre was “far behind its rivals, which offer more adaptive space to include breakout rooms, the ability to offer smaller conference space and the technology to support it”. She added:

“The need to invest should be part of a rolling programme rather than years of little to no investment, which results in the big ticket option we are faced with today.”

Sara Ferguson, acting chair of the Harrogate BID, said:

“It’s vital we have a modern facility, one that will continue to attract major clients from not just within the UK, but from abroad too.”