Harrogate District Hospital has reported that three more people who tested positive for coronavirus have died.

Today’s figures include one death from April 29 and two more deaths from Sunday and Monday this week, bringing the hospital’s total up to 54.

The deaths were recorded with a total of 244 across England’s hospitals. Patients were aged between 49 and 99 years old. Four of the 244 patients, who were aged between 51 and 78 years old, had no known underlying health conditions.

It also comes as the government releases a clear picture of confirmed coronavirus cases by lower-tier local authority – narrowing it down to the Harrogate district, rather than the wider numbers for North Yorkshire which were previously available.

According to the data released today, the Harrogate district has had 266 cases. It also includes rates per 100,000 resident population, which provides a comparable figure across the UK.

Harrogate has a rate of 165.7 which is lower than England’s rate of 248.5, Yorkshire and the Humber’s rate of 230.9 as well as North Yorkshire with a rate of 196.4.

Weekly data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also reveals how many people have died outside of hospitals. That number has been rising higher in recent weeks and is close to overtaking Harrogate hospital’s deaths.

This data goes up to May 1 and shows that there have been 48 deaths outside of hospitals. Of those, 43 deaths have been in Harrogate’s care homes, with the others in private homes or “other communal establishments.”

By midday more than 50 cars were parked on the verges around Swinsty reservoir today. It was a similar picture at Thruscross. It’s the first day since the seven week lockdown that people have been allowed to drive to take exercise and many took full advantage of the new rules.

The new guidelines conflict with the wishes of North Yorkshire County Council, the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Yorkshire Water which owns the reservoirs and their adjacent car parks. All clearly do not want people to drive out into the countryside at this stage.

Like others the Stray Ferret spoke to at Swinsty today, Rachel Wesson and her son, Rory, had driven up from Leeds to walk their dog.

“We’ve been doing the same walk for a long time now, we live in a built up area and it’s nice to have a proper day out.  We have brought a picnic. When I saw the car park was shut though I did wonder if it was alright to come but I know we are allowed to do this”

Rachel Wesson and her son Rory at a picnic table this lunchtime at Swinsty reservoir

This, though, is the problem for the parish council. Graham Hebblethwaite, the chairman of Washburn Parish Council, says that with car parks shut and people continually arriving, even during lockdown, it has given them a real problem with access and wrecked verges.

Graham Hebblethwaite, chairman of Washburn Parish Council at the top of the lane leading down to Swinsty

He says they now want Yorkshire Water to open the car parks:

“People park on both sides of the road – even across gates. The police have been around many times even during lockdown but nothing seems to happen.  The car parks should have been opened today to stop all the mayhem”.

Fewston Parochial Hall near to the reservoirs where they’ve had to put NO PARKING signs up

The head of Yorkshire Dales National Park has hit out at the Government after it gave people the green light to travel to beauty spots regardless of distance.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that as of today people can exercise as many times as they wish and drive to outdoor spaces “as long as they respect social distancing guidance while they are there.”

That advice does not appear to have gone down well with the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Yorkshire Water, or even the Conservative-run North Yorkshire County Council.

In yesterday’s daily update the council’s chief executive Richard Flinton made it clear that the “county is very much NOT open for visitors yet.”

“We look forward to welcoming everyone back when we are through this – but we are not there by some way yet.  We anticipate some of our beauty spots will be much busier and we will try to alleviate pressure where we can. We also encourage everyone to access open countryside close to their homes rather than head to these hot spots.”

The council warned that access to important hand washing facilities as well as toilets will be limited with most shops and restaurants and car parking remaining closed for the time being.

Yorkshire Water has also told the Stray Ferret that its car parks also remain closed and, despite the government advice, said that people should not travel to its beauty spots.

“Our reservoir car parks are still currently closed while we create a plan to adapt to changes in the government guidelines. Please don’t drive to our reservoirs as the car parks are still closed and inappropriate parking impacts our ability to access the reservoir safely as well as disrupting local residents.”

The chief executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, David Butterworth, has been outspoken about his opposition to the new government guidelines.

He said that he has been, along with other organisations, advocating for a staged approach to avoid unnecessary travel and tension between visitors and local communities.

“However, that message has not prevailed and, as a public body, we are still expected to deliver the government’s message and manage the situation as professionally and sensitively as we can. We will therefore be opening the Authority-run car parks from today and will strive to open toilets as soon as possible; they will be deep cleaned and have new cleaning regimes implemented.”

What has it been like at the district’s beauty spots since the new guidelines? By midday, more than 50 cars were parked on the verges around Swinsty reservoir today. It was a similar picture at Thruscross.

While the world may feel rather dull at the moment, lockdown has at least enabled some people to go green and inject colour into their gardens.

With more time spent at home and a prolonged spell of sunny weather, many people across the district have taken to gardening. With the green light from the government for garden centres to reopen, people can now get their hands on all sorts of horticultural goods.

Megan Peel, co-owner of Kit Peel Gardens in Harrogate, has given some professional advice on things you can buy and grow now to give you lots of pleasure in the garden all summer long:

“If you are new to gardening its tempting to buy the things that look most enticing in the garden centre today rather than those plants which will go on providing you colour and interest all summer long and on into Autumn.”

Grow your own

 If you are planning on growing some of your own fruit and veg this year, don’t be tempted to plant out young veg seedlings too early or they could be killed off by the late frosts we have up here in Yorkshire. Either wait a few weeks to buy or keep on a sunny window .. and gradually harden off outside in the daytime, bringing in at night until planting out when the risk of frost has well and truly passed.

Our top tip is to start by growing what you love to eat, and focus on growing those things which taste better straight from the ground, or which are hard to come by in supermarkets. We grow a lot of courgettes, above all for the flowers – which we love to eat tempura style in a light beer batter, stuffed with ricotta and herbs; peas which the children pick and eat straight from the pod – and we also like to add the shoots to salads; beetroots and salads – which you can sew successionally every two weeks throughout the summer. Peas can also be sewn into June, as can carrots. Aim to have a few trays of young lettuce seedlings waiting in the wings, and you can fill in any gaps of bare earth with a quick ‘catch crop’ while plants around them are maturing – alternate neat lines of red and green lettuces, for an old fashioned potager look, adding rows of winter brassicas, onions and leeks that will mature in the autumn after the leeks after harvested. Growing beans in the same bed will help fix nitrogen in the soil and benefit the brassicas .

If you don’t have the space to set aside for a dedicated veg patch then ornamental brassicas like Kale Lacinato and Red Drumhead cabbages can look eye catching planted in borders amongst your flowers. Edible flowers like nasturtiums; viola heartsease and marigold and cornflower petals can transform a simple summer salad into something special. “

A charity has already raised £10,000 but needs another £3,000 to give the staff at Harrogate District Hospital a place to stay after a busy shift.

The money Friends of Harrogate Hospital has already raised will be able to pay for the basic refitting work of five rooms but it is aiming to take the rooms up to a hotel standard.

Staff may not be able to get home after a long shift so they need to occasionally stay overnight at the hospital but they are not said to be in good shape currently.

Ian Elliot, the treasurer at Friends of Harrogate Hospital, told the Stray Ferret:

“The hospital has some rooms now but they are not in a decent state of repair. We have already raised a substantial amount but this extra money will bring the rooms up to hotel standard. It’s just something we can do to make their lives that bit easier.”

The charity has set up a fundraising page with a £3,000 target. At the time of publication, people have donated just over £50.

Hotels close to the hospital have been providing staff with a place to stay but some others need to be onsite at all times.

Some garden centres across the borough will be opening their doors to the public from tomorrow, after being closed for seven weeks due to the coronavirus lockdown.

It comes after the government announced on Sunday, that garden centres in England will reopen on Wednesday 13 May as long as they ensure social-distancing measures are in place.

RHS will be opening all four of its plant centres including the one at Harlow Carr.

Sue Biggs, RHS Director General, has said :

“We are pleased to reopen our RHS Plant Centres to bring joy, food and beauty into the lives of thousands of gardeners, and it is hugely encouraging that the Government recognises the vital role gardening and gardens play in supporting positive mental and physical health… We are ever mindful of the world we now live in and will, therefore, be operating with strict safety measures at all our sites to ensure we protect our visitors and staff who we thank for being patient with us at this time.”

Crimple Hall Garden Centre in Harrogate has been offering contactless deliveries to customers during the lockdown, but now as restrictions are lifted they are preparing to open.

Sally Dugdale who is the plant manager at Crimple Hall, told the Stray Ferret that lockdown came at a bad time for garden centres:

“The height of the season is between March and June, so it’s not been good at all for garden centres. We are now hoping that the season is extended with people spending more time in the garden and not going abroad.”

But not all garden centres in the borough are opening tomorrow, with some saying they don’t feel it would be safe for customers or staff.

Heoplants Nursery in South Stainley is remaining closed despite the go-ahead from the government. Deborah Withington, who owns the nursery told the Stray Ferret:

“We have been operating a contactless service since we closed… It has worked really well so we have decided to continue that way for now as we feel that casual visitors and passing trade would pose social distancing issues.”

Harrogate District Hospital has not reported any coronavirus deaths but the number of deaths in care homes across the district is still rising.

The last confirmed death in the hospital was on May 4, meaning there has been a week with zero deaths reported at the hospital. However, it can take several days for deaths to be confirmed so that data could still change.

Each week on a Tuesday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveals how many people have died outside of hospitals. That number has been rising higher in recent weeks and is close to overtaking Harrogate hospital’s deaths.

Two weeks ago, the ONS data which included deaths up to April 17 revealed that there had been 22 deaths outside of hospitals. Last week, the data went up to April 24 and showed that there had been 39 deaths outside of hospitals.

This data now goes up to May 1 and shows that there have been 48 deaths outside of hospitals. 43 of those deaths have been in Harrogate’s care homes with the others in private homes or “other communal establishments.”

North Yorkshire County Council has said it is stepping up its support for the 235 care homes in its area. From last week, new care teams will call each care home with a welfare checklist.

Pop up Coronavirus test centre at the Hydro, Harrogate.

The council will support struggling care homes with staffing, PPE, infection control, safe hospital discharge and more.

North Yorkshire is providing this new service in close partnership with the Independent Care Group, NHS colleagues, as well as Public Health England and the Care Quality Commission.

Richard Webb, North Yorkshire’s Corporate Director for Health and Adult Services said:

“While the number of Covid-19 deaths in hospitals is reducing, in care homes they are rising and so we have to do everything we can to save lives and prevent further outbreaks because this is about protecting loved ones, mums and dads, grandmas and grandads. Our teams are here to offer a supportive role to the care sector. Our daily calls are being used to escalate any concerns to get the right interventions and help.”

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year has seen a record number of submissions this year as it celebrates the centenary year of Agatha Christie’s first novel. Aptly, 10 of the 18 novels in the long list are written by women.

The award is part of the annual Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival which is managed  by Harrogate International Festivals. Historically, the winner is announced on the opening evening of the festival but this year the event has been cancelled due to coronavirus.

Instead, the winner will be revealed in a virtual awards ceremony on 31 July, where the author will receive £3,000, and an engraved beer barrel provided by Theakston Old Peculier.

The longlist was selected by an academy of crime writing authors, agents, editors, reviewers, members of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Programming Committee, and representatives from T&R Theakston Ltd, the Express, and WHSmith.

Reducing the longlist to a shortlist is now down to a public vote. So if you’re a lover of crime fiction and have time on your hands during lockdown – you can read them all and vote for your favourite on: www.harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com

Here is the long list:

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic Books)

Fallen Angel by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown Book Group, Abacus)

Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver (Orenda Books)

Cruel Acts by Jane Casey (HarperCollins, Harper Fiction)

Blue Moon by Lee Child (Transworld, Bantam)

The Long Call by Ann Cleeves (Pan Macmillan, Macmillan/Pan)

Red Snow by Will Dean (Oneworld, Point Blank)

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty (Faber & Faber)

Worst Case Scenario by Helen Fitzgerald (Orenda Books)

The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Little, Brown Book Group, Little, Brown)

Joe Country by Mick Herron (John Murray Press)

How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid (Little, Brown Book Group, Little, Brown)

The Chain by Adrian McKinty (Orion Publishing Group, Orion Fiction)

Conviction by Denise Mina (VINTAGE, Harvill Secker)

Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee (VINTAGE, Harvill Secker)

The Whisper Man by Alex North (Penguin Random House, Michael Joseph)

Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Headline Publishing Group, Wildfire)

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce (Pan Macmillan, Mantle/Pan)

Residents in Harrogate have expressed concern about the confusing advice in the government’s changes to lockdown rules, after reports of rising numbers of people and cars on the streets.

Harrogate resident Paul Dutton said he worried that people who were already feeling more relaxed about restrictions would be encouraged to go even further in disregarding social distancing.

“I could see in the last week the roads were getting busier, there were more people out and about. We’ve been told not to go out unless we needed to. This will open the gates even further.

“I think people will push the boundaries, go to the coast, visit the sites of Yorkshire, take picnics and barbecues, walking through the fields. We just need to stay how we are.”

With his wife working as a GP in Leeds and his youngest son home from university, Mr Dutton said the family has been living as separately as possible within the house in order to reduce the risk of contamination. If people begin mixing again, he fears the family’s hard work to stay safe will be undone by another spike in cases which could bring it into their home through his wife’s work, no matter how careful they are.

Need for childcare

As a former Harrogate Grammar School teacher, he said he feels sorry for schools trying to find ways to meet the need for childcare if parents are pressured into returning to work. Suggestions of smaller class sizes would help with social distancing, but would be impractical for schools to implement, he said.

“If you are going to invite six or seven students back, which are they going to be? Are you going to rotate it? Are schools able to staff it in that way? It’s a huge conundrum. how do you resolve that? I really wouldn’t want to be in that situation now. I just feel if we waited another couple of weeks to see how the situation panned out, we could phase it in a different way.”

Social distancing will be almost impossible in schools, according to former teacher Paul Dutton

His concerns were echoed by Andy Johnson, a health and safety advisor mainly working on film and television projects, who said he has only had one job since the lockdown began. Not expecting his work to re-start properly until at least September, he is now offering his services to businesses which are looking at ways to re-open safely. However, as a widowed father with a teenage son at home in Harrogate, he is nervous about the risks of going into workplaces:

“It would depend on each individual case. If I was asked to go into a closed factory and do a risk assessment prior to it re-opening, as long as I could maintain social distancing, wear barriers, do my job and get out, I would be reasonably happy to do that. But not while people are working there.”

Mr Johnson said the “viral load” was a critical factor. People who come into contact with several people who have the virus on more than one occasion seem to become more seriously ill, he said, which meant opening workplaces and encouraging more travel could lead to a rise in the number of severe cases and deaths.

Lack of PPE

As a community first responder, he works alongside some paramedics and emergency medical technicians who also volunteer in their spare time. He said two of them are now suffering with coronavirus symptoms, including one admitted to hospital:

“They had what they thought was adequate protection. They think they’re safe, but they haven’t been safe. How can you ensure in a workplace that it’s safe? Chances are, you can’t. All you can do is what’s reasonable in the circumstances.”

However, with PPE in high demand, he questioned whether people going out to work would be able to find adequate protection for themselves, and whether workplaces could provide it for employees.

Cycling campaigners and environmental groups in the district have called for “pop up”  temporary cycle lanes and lower speed limits to encourage people to continue cycling and help walkers with social distancing.

Jemima Parker of Zero Carbon Harrogate said the group has written to Andrew Jones MP and David Bowe, the county council Corporate Director Business and Environmental Services, asking for temporary changes.

Zero carbon Harrogate would like to see a 20mph speed limit in urban areas, more street space allocated for “active travel” (pedestrians, mobility scooters and cyclists) and encouragement for cars to be parked on the road rather than the pavement.

Harrogate District Cycle Action has published a list of “post-lockdown travel improvements” that, amongst others, include:

• Closing streets to cars at school drop off and pick up times
• Add temporary cycle lanes by putting up barriers and making streets one-way
• Close off town centre roads to cars
• 20mph limits in built up areas and “car free weekends”

In Knaresborough, town councillor Hannah Gostlow has urged the County Council which is in charge of highways to reduce the speed limit to 20mph between King James School and High Bridge in Knaresborough and around the towns schools, as well as increasing cycle lanes in the town.

“Our High Street is usually a fast and busy road that discourages cyclists, narrows our footpaths for pedestrians, and disconnects shops from the town centre, this scheme aims to let our town recover and breathe again. As well as a 20mph scheme I would also like to see cycle lanes where possible, and local businesses encouraged to take a lead on green transport initiatives”

The calls for parking bays to be made into cycle lanes in Harrogate are at odds with Independent Harrogate, the body which represents the town’s independent retailers. It’s called for free parking to be kept indefinitely to encourage more people to come into Harrogate by car when the shops finally open.

The Stray Ferret has asked North Yorkshire County Council for a comment. It said it was working to give a response as soon as possible.