Yorkshire Water has sparked outrage by appearing to suggest pollution in rivers such as the Nidd was partly down to a “change in expectations” from residents.

A study by Professor Peter Hammond revealed the equivalent of 317 Olympic pools of raw sewage were discharged into the Nidd at four sewage treatment works in 2020.

Prof Hammond said the sewage was released into the river at Pateley Bridge, Harrogate, Darley and Kirk Hammerton.

Nidd Action Group and Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative MP Andrew Jones are campaigning for a stretch of the Nidd at Knaresborough to be granted bathing water status, as part of a drive to clean up the watercourse.

The figures prompted Ouseburn Green Party councillor Arnold Warneken to say water companies should be obliged to produce accurate figures on sewage discharge or face prosecution.

The Nidd saw 870 sewage dump incidents last year, according to Environment Agency figures. Recent testing of water pollution in the river has shown the harmful bacteria E. coli is at “concerningly high” levels.

Yorkshire Water’s chief executive apologised last month for sewage being discharged into the region’s rivers and promised to invest £180m in reducing leaks from storm overflows.

However, councillors told a North Yorkshire Council meeting in Skipton on Thursday that Yorkshire Water’s response to water quality concerns raised by Skipton and Ripon Conservative MP Julian Smith had been “profoundly inadequate”.

The firm wrote:

“Whilst storm overflows have been in use for many decades, since well before the sewer network entered private ownership, society is no longer content with their use and government, regulators and the water sector have responded to that change in expectations.”

Councillors said the firm was blaming the apparent lack of sewage infrastructure near waterways “on the fact that people’s standards had increased and the firm’s monitoring processes improving”.

Flooding concerns

In a separate response, to Harrogate and Knaresborough councillors, Yorkshire Water said “climate change and changes in land use have had a huge impact” on the sewage network.

The firm wrote:

“There is a misapprehension that discharges from overflows have increased dramatically in recent years. Instead, the recording of discharges has increased as we have installed event duration monitoring devices on our network.”

Nevertheless, many North Yorkshire councillors say they have been inundated with sewage-related complaints, with Bishop Monkton Conservative councillor Nick Brown saying Yorkshire Water had promised an action plan to stop sewage flooding in six of his parishes.

Read more:

• 317 Olympic pools of raw sewage pumped into River Nidd, study claims
• Yorkshire Water chief executive apologises for sewage failures

Aire Valley Green Party councillor Andy Brown told Mr Smith there had been “a gradual drift towards releasing sewage when the weather isn’t particularly bad”.

He added:

“The law is very clear. You cannot release sewage unless there is exceptional weather. I have photographs of sewage being released into the Aire on dry days.”

When asked about who should pay for extra sewage infrastructure, Mr Smith replied:

“Inevitably, the cost does have to be borne somewhere, and I accept the point, but the huge cost of fixing this problem is a challenge.”

Councillors told Mr Smith the government should be pressuring water firms to spend more of their profits on improving infrastructure.

Sick after swimming

The firm did not directly respond to Prof Hammond’s findings or claims made by councillors that children have become sick with suspected E coli after swimming in the Nidd.

Instead, Yorkshire Water stated storm overflows had not been identified by the Environment Agency as the reason why the ecological status of the river is poor.

It stated:

“Where Yorkshire Water can make a difference is in reducing phosphorus from all final effluent wastewater and that is why we are investing £790m by 2025 in phosphorus removal as part of our overall investment programme which has been in place for some time.

“Our shareholders are funding the majority of our plans for a £180 investment in storm overflow improvements in the next two years. They are supportive of our environmental commitments and this latest funding announcement takes our total investment in river water quality between 2020-2025 to almost £1bn.

“The additional national investment of £10bn announced recently by Water UK will be paid by shareholders up front, with the costs then paid back in tiny increments each year through bills. We won’t know the precise impact on bills for some time. It is clear that huge investment is needed, but precise levels are for the regulator to determine.”

A picture has emerged of the scale of losses sunk on the axed flagship rural bus service for Ripon, Masham and Bedale.

North Yorkshire Council announced last week it would abandon the YorBus on-demand bus service, which it had hoped to roll out to numerous rural areas poorly served by buses. The 14-seater minibuses will cease to operate at the end of the month.

The council claimed future transport services would be shaped by lessons learned from YorBus.

But councillors from across the political spectrum sounded a less upbeat tone about the outcome of the pilot at a meeting of the council’s Skipton and Ripon area constituency committee yesterday.

A report to councillors revealed Yorbus had seen a further £224,000 of taxpayers money pumped into it after disappointing first year figures.

Despite changes to try to improve uptake, the high-profile service carried just 14,208 passengers over 12 months, at an average cost per passenger of £15.57 across the year.

This is significantly higher than that for fixed timetable bus routes in the area which are around £6.50 per passenger.

Sustainability warnings

Within months of YorBus being launched, public transport experts had said it was unsustainable and needed a major overhaul to attract more passengers.

The authority’s hopes of extending demand-responsive transport were dealt a further blow last year when the government rejected the county’s £116m Bus Back Better bid in its entirety, citing a “lack of ambition” — a claim the council has rejected.

The committee heard how YorBus had often been seen driving around with few or no passengers. One Conservative member claimed following disappointing YorBus figures for the first year, officers had worked “to try and prove the concept”.

Cllr Andrew Murday

Cllr Andrew Murday, a Liberal Democrat who represents Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale,  questioned why the council had not abandoned the trial after the first year, adding:

“Obviously the project has failed and there are better ways of providing public transport.”

The meeting heard the trial had been extended for a further year largely to test if changes to the booking system improved take-up.

Councillors were told while the development of public transport was a key part of the council’s economic development plan, particularly to boost tourism, more rural bus services, including a regular service to the Yorkshire Dales gateway town of Grassington, were under threat.

Some councillors suggested the council should look to facilitate taxi or car-sharing through localised social media accounts before others pointed towards passenger safety concerns.

Residents ‘horrified by the cost’

Calling for more innovative solutions, Settle and Penyghent councillor David Staveley said:

“Most residents who don’t use these public service buses, and don’t have any inclination to, would be quite horrified by the cost per journey that this has incurred. It’s a lot of money that’s coming out of the public purse.”

However, other councillors argued the reason behind residents’ reliance on  cars was due to the lack of a sufficiently frequent and direct bus service.

The meeting heard villages without public transport were being “condemned to death”, as planning rules banned building “unsustainable” homes, while post-pandemic many of the county’s elderly residents had not gone back to using buses.

Read more:

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Referring to the trial, executive member for culture and housing, Cllr Simon Myers, said:

“It’s regrettable it hasn’t worked, but somehow we have to change people’s attitudes to public transport. How do we encourage the public back to using the services that are there? That’s a real challenge.”

Helmsley Conservative councillor George Jabbour said he believed from next year the incoming mayoral combined authority would have the additional funding needed to invest in public transport.

Cllr Jabbour added:

“This experience should not make the council less bold in its drive to explore new creative and innovative ways to improve public transport in our county.”

North Yorkshire’s Police Fire and Crime Commissioner has declined to respond to a call for her to resign after a government watchdog found some vulnerable children “remain at risk unnecessarily” due to delays in police investigations.

Zoe Metcalfe, who is aiming to be the Tory candidate to be the first North Yorkshire and York elected mayor, said she would not be commenting on a notice of motion lodged by North Yorkshire Council’s opposition leader, Cllr Bryn Griffiths, which is tabled to be considered at a full meeting on Wednesday.

However, rather than debate the issue at the meeting, one option for the council’s chairman would be to refer the notice of motion to one of the authority’s scrutiny committees for consideration.

The critical Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary report followed its assessment last year which found the force was “not effectively safeguarding children”.

Last week, at a public accountability meeting Ms Metcalfe said the information she had been provided about the force’s progress over its failings was bogus.

She said: 

“We were led to believe that North Yorkshire Police were in a better position than they ultimately were and we accept this.

“And as a result, we have entirely overhauled our scrutiny and assurance process, I have clearly set out how I will hold North Yorkshire Police to account for delivery.”

Read more:

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• North Yorkshire Police ‘still needs to improve’ on child safeguarding, say inspectors
• Crime commissioner Zoe Metcalfe under pressure following critical report

Cllr Griffiths called for Ms Metcalfe’s resignation to be debated at the meeting.

He said the second report, published earlier this month, had examined 33 child protection cases, of which 11 were found to be good, eight required improvement and 14 were inadequate.

He said: 

“For so many cases to be found inadequate is a damning entitlement not only on the police, but also on the overall management of the force by the police and fire commissioner.

“The police, fire and crime commissioner is elected to be responsible for generally overseeing both police forces and fire services. Clearly has failed and is continuing to fail to hold the North Yorkshire Police force to account and keep the public and in particular children safe.

“Urgent action is therefore needed to remove the existing commissioner immediately and replace with a far more effective manager.”

In response, a spokeswoman for Ms Metcalfe said the motion was being put to the council “for discussion only, and so we will not be commenting at this time”.

Some of Ms Metcalfe’s Conservative former colleagues on the authority said they believed the notice of motion was “political” and that they would not be supporting the call for her to resign.

The Tories said those behind calls for her resignation had misunderstood the situation as the reports referred to a time before she was the commissioner.

North Yorkshire Councillors have voiced frustration at proposals to delay the introduction of a separate food waste collection service for another 20 years.

The delay has happened due to the government’s failure to state how much funding it would give the service.

Several members of the council’s executive underlined that the recommendation to delay the service until up to 2043 did not reflect their determination to rapidly reduce carbon emissions.

The urgent calls for government action appear to mark a significant shift in policy for the authority. Four years ago its leadership stated it was opposed to the introduction of a separate food waste collection service.

In 2019 the council stated it did not support the separate collections as it already recovered organic matter from residual waste at the county’s Allerton Park energy-from-waste plant in a “very cost-effective way”.

When a year later, the government committed to rolling out separate household food waste collection across the country by 2023, 51% of local authorities already collected food waste separately.

A meeting of the council’s current executive heard how separate collections could realise up to a 3,300-tonne reduction in carbon emissions a year compared to the current arrangements.

By collecting food waste separately, the council could increase the amount that can be converted into green electricity using an anaerobic digester. The delay would mean the carbon equivalent of an extra 18 million kilometres of diesel car emissions every year.

Although the council has effectively been given consent by Whitehall mandarins to delay implementing one of its flagship carbon cutting schemes due to its waste disposal contract running until 2043, the authority’s executive members said they wanted the service launched long before that “backstop position”.

Read more:

• Weekly food waste collections in Harrogate district to be delayed over costs
• ‘Few teething issues’ with North Yorkshire Council launch, say political leaders

However, officers told the meeting the council had received “no further clarity” over government funding for introducing the new food waste collection service, saying the authority faced a bill of anything up to £6.4m annually.

Climate change boss Cllr Greg White said while council wanted to launch the separate collections with a county-wide overhaul of bin collections in 2027, it faced “very significant additional costs” over the separate food waste service.

He said: 

“Three thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide saved is huge, significant and something we want to do, but we can’t do that – with the best will in the world – if we don’t know what it’s going to cost us and at the moment we haven’t got sufficient clarity from the government.”

Other executive members said the authority, which is already facing having to cut a 30m annual deficit, needed “crystal clear” figures from the government before it could launch separate food collections and emphasised they had been left facing a choice of cutting carbon or funding other council services.

Cllr Simon Myers said: 

“As a responsible executive what we can’t do is take a decision when we don’t know the financial consequences for our residents at a time when there are financial pressures anyway.”

North Yorkshire Council says it has already saved taxpayers £3.8m a year in the transition from eight councils to one by cutting the roles of 24 senior managers.

The council’s finance boss, Cllr Gareth Dadd, underlined that none of the senior staff would be paid enhanced severance packages as the Conservative-run authority works towards a total of £67m of efficiencies by uniting the county, district and borough councils.

The comments follow critics of local government reorganisation questioning the amount of staff salary savings that it would achieve.

Cllr Dadd’s remarks come just weeks after severance packages of £770,000 were paid to four senior officers at Hambleton District Council because they did not wish to work for the incoming unitary authority.

A highly charged meeting of the district council last November heard the directors were fearful about the ring-fenced roles they would be given at North Yorkshire Council, despite no decisions having been made about their jobs.

A meeting of the unitary council’s executive heard the total exit costs for three senior management as a result of the transition had been estimated at £513,000, which had been raised as one of the former district councils had an enhanced redundancy scheme.

However, the changes had achieved £332,000 savings of salaries, meaning it would take around 18 months for the council to benefit from the redundancies.

Cllr Dadd said the redundancy costs were “minuscule” in comparison.

He said: 

“That £3.8m is the first step on our journey to possibly £67m of saving. That’s come from what some would describe as fat cats, but let’s just say the higher earners in the local government family.

“We should not lose sight of the fact that we have straightaway produced £3.8m as a result of local government reorganisation.”

The new council’s management structure has significantly fewer posts than the total for the previous eight councils, 60 compared to 36, resulting in some managers moving to the unitary authority without a specified role in the new structure.

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A number of the senior staff left prior to vesting day on April 1, in the main having secured another role elsewhere, while some planned to retire just before or shortly after vesting day, while two are undertaking duties covering work for the new council which will take them up to their planned retirement.

An officer’s report to the executive states: 

“These duties make full use of their significant skills and experience to the benefit of the council and cover work areas that would otherwise require additional resource in terms of appointments, interim managers, or consultants.”

North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Zoe Metcalfe is facing pressure to step down following further criticism that the police are failing to protect vulnerable children.

Ms Metcalfe’s role includes scrutinising the performance of North Yorkshire Police.

But leading North Yorkshire councillors have voiced dismay over the lack of progress Ms Metcalfe has brought about in the force over the last year.

It comes after His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services highlighted continuing concerns over child protection.

A HMICFRS report this week found evidence-gathering delays and a lack of knowledge about online abuse inquiries were reducing North Yorkshire Police’s ability to safeguard children.

Following a re-inspection of the force in December, the watchdog revealed police officers had not forensically examined digital devices connected to a suspected child rape six months after they were submitted.

In response, the commissioner, who is tasked with holding the force to account, said both her and her team had been “regularly assured that all concerns would be tackled head on and improvements made at a significant pace”,only to find “12 months later, the force is not in the position I expected them to be in”.

She said:

“Not enough has been done and there is simply no excuse – North Yorkshire Police have let the public and the most vulnerable in our society down.

“I know that it is my responsibility to increase the accountability of and pressure on the chief constable, to demand answers and not accept anything other than immediate and significant improvement.”

Within hours of the report being published Ms Metcalfe struck a determined tone as she held a public online meeting with senior officers, including chief constable Lisa Winward, where she questioned them over the progress made over 10 recommendations.

The meeting heard the force fully accepted the criticisms and was investing in officers’ training and in control room staff, the recruitment of specialist child protection workers, and cutting the time it takes to examine digital devices to less than 72 hours.

The force said it had spent £400,000 on reducing its digital forensics backlog and £1.17m on hiring specialist child protection staff, and was establishing dedicated safeguarding teams in each of the three regions it covers.

Call to resign

Once the elections for City of York Council are concluded the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime panel, which exists to hold the commissioner to account, will reconvene and consider holding an extraordinary meeting to question the commissioner.

The panel pushed Mrs Metcalfe’s predecessor, Philip Allott, to step down and heavily criticised the county’s first commissioner, Julia Mulligan, over her treatment of staff.

Ms Metcalfe has confirmed she is seeking to be the Conservative candidate for mayor of North Yorkshire and York, elections for which are due to take place in May next year. She has claimed to be “uniquely qualified” for the role.

Leader of the opposition on North Yorkshire Council, Cllr Bryn Griffiths said the Liberal Democrat group would be calling for Ms Metcalfe to resign at the next meeting of the authority.

North Yorkshire Council’s Labour group leader, Cllr Steve Shaw Wright said the commissioner had been in charge for “nothing but a series of calamitous reports”.

He said:

“She is doing very little. Police at the coal face are actually doing a brilliant job across North Yorkshire, but the ones who lead them need to get on with the job they are supposed to be doing.

“They have been short-staffed for a while, but that lays at the door of the Tory commissioner, who should have been banging doors down for a lot longer than this.

“‘Call me Zoe’ wants to be the Conservative candidate for the mayor of North Yorkshire and York, but I think she’s blown it.”

Read more:

• Crime commissioner’s office to move to Harrogate Police Station
• North Yorkshire Police ‘still needs to improve’ on child safeguarding, say inspectors

The North Yorkshire Council Independent group leader said the latest criticism showed there was no legitimate reason by commissioners should exist.

Cllr Stuart Parsons said increasing “scrutiny” by calling for the police to provide evidence of progress would only take more police officers off their day-to-day jobs. He said:

“What is the point of a police, fire and crime commissioner if she can’t ensure the force is doing what it is meant to?

“Instead of believing everything she has been fed she should have been investigating what was really going on and then calling them to account.”

The leader of the opposition on North Yorkshire Council has wished the authority “good luck” in establishing a comprehensive network of electric vehicle charging points after hearing the local electricity grid was “not fit for purpose”.

A meeting of the council’s executive was told the authority was so concerned about it impeding the establishment of the required 3,000 publicly available EV charging points by 2030 that the council was investigating using solar and hydro-electric solutions to provide power in some places.

Setting out a strategy to rapidly expand EV charging points, Cllr Keane Duncan, the authority’s executive member for highways and transportation, said the council was determined rural areas should not “fall behind”.

However, he said the rural nature of North Yorkshire and electricity grid constraints meant the county faced a relatively greater challenge in preparing for the switch to electric vehicles than elsewhere.

Cllr Keane Duncan

In addition, the relatively high proportion of properties in the county with no off-street parking – some 21% – would mean a greater demand for publicly available EV charging points than elsewhere.

The meeting heard while the council was developing on-street charging proposals it was focused on creating the publicly available EV charging points at “hub locations” where it would be convenient for residents and visitors to use them, rather than “tucked away in the corner of a car park”.

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Executive members were told with £3.4m of funding already secured to expand EV charging points, the council had obtained more money than any other local authority in the country for the programme.

The council is also optimistic about landing a further £5.1m of capital and £500,000 of revenue funding to deliver on its EV charging network aspirations, but the meeting was told the lack of power grid capacity would be a key factor in the council’s ability to create an EV charging network.

Paul Haslam, a Conservative who represents Bilton and Nidd Gorge, warned the meeting the lack of availability on the power grid could “make a mess of our strategy if we’re not careful”.

The council’s climate change boss Cllr Greg White added: 

“It’s great that we are going to have all these charging points, but are we going to have an electrical supply to these charging points to make them work because the local electricity distribution network at the moment doesn’t seem like it’s going to be fit for purpose.”

Wishing the council “good luck” in overcoming the challenges, Cllr Bryn Griffiths, the Liberal Democrat group leader, said the authority had reached “a drop in the ocean of where we need to be” in securing EV charging infrastructure, before receiving reassurances that the authority would consider changing planning policies to increase charging opportunities.

The authority’s chief executive, Richard Flinton, told the meeting how he and leaders of North Yorkshire businesses had held talks with Northern Powergrid officials and the National Infrastructure Commission last week to tell them the lack of grid connectivity was damaging businesses.

He said the council had been regularly lobbying the electricity infrastructure firm to develop capacity on the grid.

Mr Flinton added: 

“We are startlingly aware that when we move into post-2030 the requirement that cars are going to be non-fossil fuel that there could be an impact on North Yorkshire, and even the transition period before we move entirely to electric fuel vehicles could be problematic for North Yorkshire if we don’t get this right.

“We are in the hands of others, but we are working very hard to make those other parties understand that we in North Yorkshire are very concerned about this and require their engagement on our issues.”

Northern Powergrid is yet to respond to requests for comment.

Few teething issues have emerged during first month of the new North Yorkshire Council, the leaders of its political groups have agreed.

Councillors said residents facing confusion over who to contact and delays of about 30 minutes when trying to phone the council’s call centre had been the most major cause of concern since the county council and seven district authorities fused operations on April 1.

Ahead of North Yorkshire Council’s launch its chief executive Richard Flinton warned while the authority’s basic infrastructure had been created ahead “snagging issues” were expected when the new council launched due to the scale of the merger and “eight different ways of working”.

When asked whether he was pleased with how the transfer had gone so far, the Conserative-run council’s leader, Cllr Carl Les said: 

“Yes. It has gone surprisingly well, but with the amount of effort put in by Richard Flinton and his team I shouldn’t be surprised.”

He added: 

“We always said if you are going to chose a time to do local government reorganisation you wouldn’t necessarily be coming out of a pandemic with a war going on in Ukraine and various other things happening.

“You wouldn’t chose to launch on April 1, when council tax bills are going out for a new authority and people renew their garden waste collection waste collections with the new authority, but still have phone numbers for the old authorities.”

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Speaking ahead of a meeting behind closed doors with Mr Flinton and the other political group leaders to discuss the council’s first month, Cllr Les said the unitary’s contact centre had become deluged, resulting in lengthy answering delays and potentially some residents hanging up.

He said: 

“The contact centres have been busy and have not been as to strength as we thought they might be. We are taking steps to increase recruitment and increase training.”

The leaders of the council’s other political groups agreed no other major issues had emerged during the authority’s first month.

North Yorkshire Council civic centre at Knapping Mount.

Labour group leader Cllr Steve Shaw Wright said while the unitary authority appeared to be “generally working”, its call centre had been “an absolute abomination”.

He added: 

“Selby Town Council just can’t do anything because people have been forever ringing them up because North Yorkshire’s call centre doesn’t work.”

Green group leader Cllr Kevin Foster said: 

“This has been a massive undertaking and on the whole things have gone very well. There’s still lots of work to do, but if you’d asked me if I’d have accepted this when the changeover went in I would have grabbed it with both hands.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Bryn Griffiths said residents struggling to find phone numbers to contact the unitary, which was “trying to force people to use the internet a lot”, and delays in answering, had represented “a mixed start” for the unitary.

He added: 

“With a big organisation of about 10,000 employees there are bound to be a few hiccups.”

Independent group leader Cllr Stuart Parsons added: 

“Things could have gone better, but it also could have gone a lot worse.”

He said the centralised call centre had not appeared to work as well as “phoning the old numbers for district council call centres”.

Cllr Parsons said: 

“It’s been mainly hiccups, nothing major appears to have gone wrong, which is very comforting. It’s just a question of trying to iron out the hiccups and ensuring services improve considerably.”

A parish council has called on North Yorkshire Council to use recent government guidance to save a primary school in a Harrogate district village.

Skelton cum Newby Parish Council has submitted an action plan, developed by a group including several headteachers, to restore classes at Skelton Newby Hall Primary School, between Boroughbridge and Ripon, in response to the authority’s consultation on the closure of the school.

While the parish council is just the latest of numerous group to attempt to halt the closure of a rural primary school in the county, is understood to be the first to argue there is a lack of primary school capacity in the surrounding area.

The council has rejected numerous accusations in recent years over “distant decision-making”, particularly in regard to the closure of small, rural schools, which its leadership underlined last month was completely contrary to its ambitions.

Nevertheless, in a report to North Yorkshire Council’s executive last month, officers said the school’s governing body had “been active in their collective efforts to raise numbers at the school through many initiatives over recent years”, but pupil numbers had fallen to one.

The report stated although Skelton had been designated a service village in the Harrogate district Local Plan 2014-35, there was no new housing planned in the Skelton Newby Hall’s catchment area.

Read more:

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Officers said across the local area a potential 188 additional pupils were expected to join across the five nearby schools until 2027/28 and there was potential to provide additional capacity at Boroughbridge Community Primary School.

Although the parish council said it had been left in the dark until proposals to close the school were under way, officers said the move had been “unanimously” instigated locally, by the school’s governors, and was supported by the falling roll and the need to provide quality and breadth of education.

The officers’ report stated the council also believes there is sufficient capacity in the area to meet both the current and future primary school capacity requirements.

However, in its response to the closure consultation, the parish council has highlighted statutory guidance issued by the Department of Education in January that all decision-makers were expected “to adopt a presumption against the closure of rural schools”.

The DfE spokesman added: 

“This does not mean that a rural school will never close, but that the case for closure should be strong and clearly in the best interests of educational provision in the area.”

In its response to the consultation, the parish council said the community does not believe that the proposal to close the school had met the DfE threshold for closure, claiming there is not sufficient pupil capacity in the area and as a standalone school it could be strong and viable.

The parish council document states: 

“We have identified there is already a shortage of capacity in the area with more demand to be met from the new housing developments which are still being built, as well as further developments with planning.”

The parish council said while the authority had pointed towards capacity at Boroughbridge Community Primary School the “reality is quite different” with that school being close to its 230 capacity.

It added: 

“We are confident that with the committed support from the local community and the new North Yorkshire Council, this school, with its ambition and leadership restored, can once again provide a valuable contribution to the education provision in the area.

“We can only achieve this by working in partnership with North Yorkshire Council. The new unitary council has a clear stated aim: ‘Local at its heart … We will work closely with town and parish councils … to ensure that local priorities drive locally led decision-making and local action.’”

Tory-run North Yorkshire Council has accused the Department for Education of “extremely slow” action and unfair funding of school spaces for vulnerable youngsters with special educational needs.

An officers’ report to leading members of the council highlights the government awards the county just 61% of the national average figure for special schools building schemes.

At the same time, the council faces a shortfall of about 100 places from September and 350 places over the next three to five years.

The report states using DfE data and criteria for specialist provision funding, North Yorkshire ranked 118th out of 150 councils.

Officers said this academic year had seen “a very marked increase” in requests for pupils to be assessed for SEN.

So while 700 new assessments had been a reasonably stable level for a number of years, forecasts of the likely number of requests for this year were between 980 and 1,090.

In addition, the report states resources available to the council to invest in key maintenance projects have reduced significantly in recent years, so North Yorkshire Council only receives about £6.3m to maintain 200 schools.

Exacerbating this, all of the council’s applications to secure government rebuild programmes at its special schools have been unsuccessful.

Officers said capital funding from the government for high needs pupils had been “significant but disappointing in comparison to other authorities”.

Pupils in Kensington and Chelsea get five times more

They said they had “significant concerns” about how the DfE allocated £88 per pupil in North Yorkshire compared to £483 per pupil in Kensington and Chelsea.

The report states several schools are in pressing need of repairs and Welburn Hall School, near Kirkbymoorside, has been identified as being “at risk of catastrophic buildings failure”.

However, the report states the authority has insufficient funding to tackle “significant concerns about the suitability and condition of our special schools”, adding its “overarching priority with the limited capital resource envelope available is to respond to create more classroom spaces”.

The report adds although the DfE approved the council’s bid for funding to create a Special Free School four years ago, the latest estimated opening date for the school was 2025.

The officers wrote:

“Whilst we were successful in securing the Selby Free School through the DfE Special Free School programme, DfE’s delivery of the school has been extremely slow.

“This is disappointing given that the 100 places that the school will create are urgently needed to address overlap capacity shortfalls and provide access to a local provision to families from the Selby area.”

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A government spokesperson said delays in delivering the proposed new Selby school had included reaching agreement with the council for its contribution to the access road and abnormal works, and an unsuccessful procurement of a contractor to build the permanent school.

The spokesperson said it had strived to distribute high needs provision capital funding fairly and efficiently between local authorities based on both their size, and their share of estimated growth in demand for high needs provision between academic years

She added:

“Every child deserves to have access to education that meets their needs. Our recent improvement plan will reform the support system for children with special educational needs and disabilities, prioritising earlier intervention and creating consistent high standards across the country.”