A community-spirited Bilton man is determined to keep a mural looking its best after another attack by vandals.

Chris Knight was spurred into action today after the iron bridge, which connects Woodfield Drive and Claro Road, was defaced.

It is not the first time Mr Knight has cleaned the mural: he also cleaned the bridge when vandals painted a swastika and anti-Pakistani messages on it last year.

He told the Stray Ferret:

“Plenty of people were quite happy to see me cleaning the bridge today. It gives me quite the sense of achievement to do these things for the area.

“It did not take quite as long as last time, they must have used quite cheap paint. I am not one to wait around for other people to take action.

“The words of my old boss really stuck with me. There are three types of people — those who do things, those who watch people do things and those who wonder what happened.

“I have always wanted to be the type of person who can step-up.”

Read more:

• Bilton bridge mural aims to lift community spirit
• Bilton man cleans Nazi graffiti off mural bridge

Emma Garness, the artist who created the mural, used special paint to protect it from graffiti, which enables Mr Knight to clean it without damaging the artwork.

The mural, which was designed to become a beacon of positivity in the area, was well received by local residents.

Harrogate Business Improvement District has given its new street ranger a licence to fight grime.

It may not be as glamorous a role as James Bond’s, but street ranger Chris Ashby is set to become a familiar figure in the town centre.

Mr Ashby’s job is to give visitors a better first impression of Harrogate by cleaning, painting and pointing out anti-social behaviour.

His work is in addition to Harrogate BID’s four major deep-cleans in a year and Harrogate Borough Council’s usual street cleaning work.

Harrogate BID manager Matthew Chapman said the role was a key part of the organisation’s ambition to create a ‘safe, clean and welcoming’  town centre. He added:

“Harrogate is the jewel in Yorkshire’s crown, and Chris will be there to give it an extra sparkle.

“The council already does a great job in terms of ridding pavements of litter, and Chris will be building on their day-to-day work.

“His battery-powered vehicle will carry a variety of tools including brushes, bin bags and a power washer allowing him to quickly react to any unsightly or hazardous incident that businesses might report, and what and he sees with his own eyes.”

Read more:

• Residents petition calls on council to reject Harrogate Tesco plans
• Harrogate BID ‘waste of money’, says pub landlord

Mr Ashby said:

“Living in Harrogate, I’m aware of a what a very special town it is.

“I’m really looking forward to taking on this new role with Harrogate BID and getting to know business owners and levy payers as I carry out my grime fighting duties.”

Residents living close to the former gas works in New Park have started a petition calling on Harrogate Borough Council to reject Tesco’s application to build a supermarket.

If given the go-ahead, Tesco would build a 38,795 square feet store and a petrol filling station on the site near the New Park roundabout.

Electric Avenue residents have cited various concerns, including pollution, road safety fears and environmental damage,

They say the disused site has become a home to wildlife since Northern Gas Networks moved out more than 20 years ago.

Two days since resident Nicki Balmforth set up the petition, more than 140 people have signed it. In the petition description she said:

“We believe that this new application should be rejected in full due to the time that has passed the abundance of wildlife now thriving on this land, and the certain destruction of their habitats.

“The site is home to and/or feeding ground to the following wildlife, roe deer, badgers, foxes, newts, frogs and toads, squirrels, hedgehogs, owls and more.

“We do not need another supermarket in this area, in a five-mile radius from this site there are 14 food stores including Aldi, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Co-op, and express shops. We do understand the need to support the new homes being built, but this is not the right location!”

Read more:

• Tesco consultation results reveal support for new Harrogate store
• Tesco to revive controversial Skipton Road supermarket plans

Electric Avenue residents are holding a meeting tomorrow night to discuss the plans.

Tesco has harboured ambitions for a new store in the town for almost 20 years. The retailer previously had plans approved in 2009.

The supermarket giant held an online consultation about the plans last year — 187 people responded. Of those, 62% said they supported proposals.

Northern Gas Networks is carrying out works on Skipton Road close to the New Park roundabout.

There are temporary traffic lights in place, which has lead to heavy traffic in the area this morning.

Works are due to finish on Friday, January 28.

The Stray Ferret has changed the way it offers Traffic and Travel alerts.

We will now notify you instantly through app notifications and flash tweets when there is an urgent alert. This could include heavy traffic, dangerous weather and long delays or cancellations of public transport.

The alerts are sponsored by The HACS Group.

A Harrogate pub landlord has described the town’s Business Improvement District as a “waste of money” — and is refusing to pay the £370-a-year levy.

Marik Scatchard has been the landlord of Christies Bar on King’s Road for 14 years. He told the Stray Ferret that his pub has seen little benefit from the BID, which was set up in 2019 to improve Harrogate town centre

Businesses within Harrogate’s town centre pay the BID 1.5% of their rateable value a year on top of their usual business rates. Harrogate BID brings in around £500,000 from local firms.

Because a majority of companies voted to set up the BID, Christies is legally obliged to pay the levy. However, Mr Scatchard said he would not pay because the BID does not offer good value for money to levy payers and is run by a “private mates’ club”.

He said:

“We’re having to pay these levies but all they seem to do is put stickers in shop windows. I’m not paying. They can lock me up.”

Read more:

• Business groups claim they’ve been ignored in Station Gateway consultation
• In Depth: To BID or not to BID? Divided opinion in Harrogate, Knaresborough and Ripon

Whilst the landlord said the BID provided the pub with some furniture after lockdown and sponsored the Pubwatch scheme, he dismissed recent BID initiatives such as a ping pong table in the Victoria Shopping Centre.

He said the BID should focus its efforts on cleaning up King’s Road and Parliament Street, which he said were regularly strewn with litter.

BIDs have been criticised for doing jobs that have traditionally been under the remit of local councils, effectively taxing businesses twice.

Mr Scatchard said:

“Hardly anyone is in the ping pong room when I’ve been past. It’s a joke. It won’t bring anything to town.

“You don’t see them doing anything around the King’s Road area. It just winds me up, it doesn’t benefit me at all.”

BID’s response

Matthew Chapman, Harrogate BID Manager, said:

“We are well aware of Mr Scatchard’s views on the BID and the levy. Whilst he hasn’t paid his levy for the last two years, he has been happy to accept support from us, in particular outdoor furniture to help him out of the first lockdown in July 2020. He also had BID-funded flower boxes surrounding his venue.

“Christies also benefits from our sponsorship of Harrogate Pubwatch, and if he so chose to, he could take advantage of the LoyalFree app to help promote his business, and also become a member of the Harrogate Gift Card Scheme.

“He could also apply for a £750 match-funded grant, which would more than pay for one year’s levy! And whilst happy to criticise us on social media, he isn’t keen to speak with us in person, which we have tried to do on several occasions.

“Even though he personally doesn’t like the ping pong parlour, which I’m delighted to say is reopening at the end of the month, there are many who do, and these people make special trips into town to make use of this BID-funded activity.

“Finally, perhaps he’d like to pass comment on our recent festive partnership with Harrogate Borough Council and Destination Harrogate? Without BID and the levy, much of this would simply have not been possible.”

The state of CNG Energy’s finances has been revealed after its administrators published its first report into the company.

The Harrogate-based company, which had offices on Victoria Avenue, fell victim to spiralling wholesale gas and electricity prices and went out of business last year.

A report published by Interpath Advisory, the administrators appointed to take charge of the company, has revealed CNG owes £3.6 million to HMRC and other “secondary preferential creditors”.

Although the administration process is still in the early stages, the report says it expects to pay “a dividend” to those creditors.

The report says:

“Based on current estimates, we anticipate that secondary preferential creditors should receive a dividend.

“We have yet to determine the timing and quantum, but we will do so when we have completed the realisation of assets and the payment of associated costs.”

The company also owes more than £4 million to trade creditors and £6 million to consumer creditors.

London-based IT consultancy firm Gentrack UK Ltd is owed £450,759 and is among the highest creditors in the report.

Read more:

• In Depth: Why Harrogate success story CNG ended in collapse
• Harrogate energy firm CNG ceases trading

Meanwhile, the company has also made all but 21 employees redundant. CNG employed around 145 staff in Harrogate.

Staff still working are currently assisting with the transition of customers over to new suppliers.

Company was operating on ‘thin margins’

Administrators also found that the company had been experiencing financial difficulty for some time due to “significant cash flow pressures primarily caused by sharp price increases in wholesale gas prices and the general volatility in the energy market”.

The company was already operating on “thin margins” prior to the covid pandemic and had taken out a secured loan of £35 million from Glencore, a multi-national oil and gas firm.

However, the failure of a number of key customers and spiralling wholesale costs left the company unable to finance itself. The report says:

“In the absence of the financial and operational support of CNG Wholesale and other group entities, the company did not have the financial resources required to operate as a standalone business or bear the £35 million loan that was due to Glencore.

“As a result, the directors and Glencore began to explore ways to facilitate an orderly exit from the market.”

The recent rapid decline of the Harrogate district’s covid rate of infection appears to have halted, with the rate beginning to nudge up again.

A total of 226 cases were confirmed in today’s government figures, taking the seven-day infection rate to 1,073 per 100,000 people.

This is slightly up on yesterday’s figure of 1,059 and remains above both the county and England averages of 974 and 992 respectively.

Central Harrogate is worst affected, with 127 infections in the last seven days. Harrogate East has had 123 cases while Harrogate West and Pannal has had 120,

It was also revealed today that a total of 106.735 booster or third jabs have been administered in the district.

From Thursday, venues and events will no longer be required by law to use the NHS covid pass and face coverings will no longer be required by law in any setting.

Read more:

• Tomorrow marks 25 years since Harrogate mum Marsha Wray disappeared
• Man in hospital after being struck by thieves’ getaway van in Ripon

Stray Views is a weekly column giving you the chance to have your say on issues affecting the Harrogate district. It is an opinion column and does not reflect the views of the Stray Ferret. Send your views to letters@thestrayferret.co.uk.

Do the councillors voting on the Station Gateway know what’s best for Harrogate?

As we are all aware there has been quite a bit of publicity locally on the Harrogate Station Gateway project — mostly negative but some positive.

I object to the proposals as they stand and have written individually to each councillor sitting on the executive committee of North Yorkshire County Council on this basis.
The Station Gateway will not improve the visual appeal or the environment of the town centre. It is purely a highway engineer’s solution to the problem and one which is focussed on cycling in an attempt to reduce car usage. It will be a disaster for the town. What a legacy to leave us!

It will be interesting to see how many of them out of courtesy respond prior to the meeting.

So far I have had a response from Cllr Carl Les, chair of the committee and Cllr Don Mackenzie, although at this stage both are non-committal.

Looking at the mailing list for the executive, it is interesting to note that out of the 10 members sitting only two are residents of Harrogate. The remainder are scattered to all corners of North Yorkshire but will be making a critical decision on the future of Harrogate. It makes you question how many of those councillors know Harrogate and how well and how many of them have actually visited the town.

I’m not against cycling even though the cycling lobby appear to get the most publicity, but just the way it has been pushed in Harrogate because NYCC have applied for available funding without any prior thought on how they are going to implement schemes. As I have said many times over the last few years, “putting the cart before the horse”. I would respect them much more if they admitted they have got it wrong.

Much more could be achieved in Harrogate and make it a great town once again otherwise we will be left with a mess for the next fifty years.

Barry Adams, Harrogate

Station Gateway will turn shoppers away

Read more:

• Gas supplier objects to Tesco plans in Harrogate
• Inquiry reveals Harrogate Nightingale cost £31.6 million

Has Wallace Sampson visited the rest of North Yorkshire?

Further to your article on the economic power of the Harrogate area, one does wonder if Wallace Sampson, the chief executive of Harrogate Borough Council, has ever visited the North Yorkshire Council area and appreciated the economic contribution of Scarborough, Skipton or Northallerton.

He seems to be besotted by Harrogate town and its dying spa importance, and fail to realise how the spa town in the district was really supported by Ripon, Knaresborough, Boroughbridge, Masham and Pateley Bridge.

David Rhodes, Harrogate

Do you have an opinion on the Harrogate district? Email us at letters@thestrayferret.co.uk. Please include your name and approximate location details. Limit your letters to 350 words. We reserve the right to edit letters.

Jasmine Lehnis-Leitao worked in Malawi for 15 years before moving to Harrogate. Now she has set up the not-for-profit organisation Care In Action for Malawi to fund young people’s secondary and further education.

Ms Lehnis-Leitao went to Malawi in 2001 and has since worked on various projects there, including with local charity Open Arms Malawi, which cares for orphaned babies, and is closely linked with Harrogate communities.

Her new organisation will raise money through sponsorships and other fundraising to fund young peoples’ education, paying school fees and supplying them with books, supplies, and necessary technology. She is currently applying for charitable status.

Promise’s Story

Ms Lehnis-Leitao hopes her organisation will make a direct impact. She tells the story of Promise, a girl she worked with:

“Promise did well at primary school, but for secondary school she couldn’t afford the fees. Her parents had died, she was living with her aunt who sold tomatoes for a living. Her cousins and her aunt would all tell her ‘Why are you interested in books? You should be finding a man who can support you.’”

Care in Action for Malawi’s partner charity in Germany was able to step in to fund Promise’s education and Promise is now at a college for nursing. Ms Lehnis-Leitao adds:

“Once Promise becomes a nurse, that’s a career for life, it’s no longer about finding a man to rely on its about relying on yourself. It’s about having your career, having skills that you can give to your community.”

Read more:

• Family’s involvement in Harrogate charity ends after 100 years
• Harrogate set for colourful fountains and WiFi-charging benches

Local involvement

Ms Lehnis-Leitao aims to reach more people with her new organisation by working in collaboration with partners. She remarks that cooperation is key to “build strong partnerships locally and put more kids more through school”.

Ms Lehnis-Leitao hopes the Harrogate district will get involved with fundraising and she emphasises how a little can go a long way, saying:

“Get involved with events, which can be as simple as a pub quiz. Come along and support. We want to get to know people’s interests and what they can contribute.

“For £300 a year you can put someone through secondary school. For £500 a year you can put them through teacher training college which is only two years.”

To get involved or offer sponsorship, you can get in contact at info@care-in-action.org.

For more information, click here.

The news that we are all facing extraordinary rises in energy prices, together with the forthcoming reorganisation of local government are but two aspects of the great lie and con trick played on us by decades of politicians and career officers, that bigger is always better.

It is this grotesque fallacy that has led to local people losing control of the services that they originally created, financed and administered, in exchange for services controlled by strangers for whom the screwing of as much profit as possible from their reluctant customers, with as low a service as possible, seems their only purpose.

Let me provide some examples relating to Harrogate, with the reorganisation of local government being a particularly topical issue.

Local government

The liars say that Harrogate has too small a population to be a unitary authority. Of course they say this, as it is in their interests to promote the concept of big authorities, as salaries and payments are invariably higher when applied to responsibility for a larger population as against a smaller one. They will say that the merging of – say – six local authorities will mean one chief executive instead of six, one borough planner instead of six, one treasurer, instead of six, etc. etc. Whereas in truth, the savings come at the dire cost of local people becoming further removed from control over the services for which they are paying.

Harrogate too small to be a unitary authority. Rubbish! Today, the Harrogate district’s population is around 161,000, that of the town being little over 75,000. Yet when Harrogate town had a population of only 26,583, about two thirds smaller than the Harrogate town of today, it was able from the yield of its local rates, to build the Royal Baths, the Royal Hall, a gigantic series of reservoirs and an unequalled water distribution network, to run its own electricity works, to build and run its own schools and pay the staff salaries, to administer its own fire services, run its own public health facilities and many other things. All this was possible because Harrogate had the authority to levy its own council rates (and to keep the greater part of the income) and for Harrogate’s Council to spend the proceeds in ways permitted by Acts of Parliament.

The Royal Hall, previously known as the Kursaal, at height of Edwardian season. Pic: Walker-Neesam archive

Yet today, thanks to the gradual erosion of local democracy, the present North Yorkshire County Council takes the vast majority of every pound paid in council tax by Harrogate residents, with much less going to Harrogate Borough Council. Is it any wonder that our democratically elected Harrogate borough councillors are hamstrung at every turn when they try to provide the services demanded by local residents? The secret of true local democracy has little to do with population sizes, and everything to do with financial control, which must include the power to set local taxation and the power to spend such taxation within the town that supplied it – such powers being determined by Parliamentary authority.

Naturally North Yorkshire’s councillors and career officers will seek to expand their spheres of influence, and to retain and enhance their existing stranglehold on Harrogate – it is absolutely in their interests to do so. But history shows that their ever increasing power to control our lives has been at the cost of local representation and accountability. The latest calamitous “reforms” of local government will further reduce the rights and powers of local people to control their own lives, with Harrogate becoming further prey to the financial leech which is bleeding the town to finance road repairs in Tadcaster, libraries in Skipton, schools in Easingwold, and social services in Selby.

Nevertheless, it remains my hope that one day – maybe in 50 or 100 years time – Harrogate will regain powers to control its own finances, and re-establish democratic control of its affairs by its citizenry.

Gas

When some Harrogate people decided the town should have access to a supply of gas, they obtained an enabling Act of Parliament in 1846, after which a gas works was built at Rattle Crag financed by local private shareholders.

After overcoming initial difficulties with the Improvement Commissioners, the gas company supplied the lighting of the public streets as well as gas for residential and commercial use. The profits produced went back into improving the gas plant and paying the salaries of those employed in the work, many of whom lived at New Park.

After several extensions of its area of supply, Harrogate’s gas company was nationalised by the Gas Act of 1948, which merged some 1,062 privately owned and municipal gas companies into 12 area gas boards.

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The York, Harrogate and District group of gas companies had already merged on 1 January 1944, comprising Harrogate, York, Malton and Easingwold, which were joined by the Yeadon, Guisley, and Otley companies on 1 October 1946. This arrangement, however, barely survived for two years, until the 1948 Gas Act changed everything.

With every enlargement, control of the manufacture, distribution and pricing of gas passed further away from the people who had created the company, and for whom its products were intended, to huge, impersonal and uncaring conglomerates.

This process has continued to this day, resulting in the crazy situation that Harrogate’s gas customers now have absolutely no control over the gas they use nor the rate at which it is priced. What would those Victorian founders have said on hearing that we are to some extent reliant on Russia for the continuance of our gas supplies?

Electricity

Electricity works opening ceremony in 1897. Pic: Walker-Neesam archive

In order to provide the people of Harrogate with an alternative to gas, Harrogate Corporation’s elected representatives built a Municipal Electricity Undertaking near to the site of the present Hydro, which opened in 1897.

The people’s democratically elected councillors regulated the supply and pricing of electricity with regard to the local situation, so that when in 1933, at the height of the terrible depression, many were experiencing economic hardship, the council reduced the unit cost of electricity from one penny to three-farthings.

When war came in 1939, Harrogate’s Electricity Undertaking was supplying 20,670 consumers, and selling 26,815,046 units of power, with a gross income of £178,857.

By the end of the year to March 1945, those figures had increased to 21,977 consumers, selling 39,254,676 units of power, with a gross income of £242,412 – an incredible achievement given the conditions of war time operation.

But in 1948, and by order of the government’s Electricity Act of 1947, Harrogate’s Electricity Undertaking was transferred to the enormous new British Electricity Board and thus removed from the town a valuable asset which had hitherto been controlled by local people.

Water

Turning on the reservoir water. Pic: Walker-Neesam archive

Just the same thing as described above applies to water. When a group of local people raised money to establish the Harrogate Water Company, following a Parliamentary Act of 1846, the townspeople supported the project, and the little company grew as the town grew.

In 1897, an Act of Parliament empowered Harrogate Corporation to buy out the private water company, which was then run purely for the benefit of the townspeople. Under the inspirational leadership of Alderman Charles Fortune, the corporation undertook a massive programme of reservoir and distribution construction, which ensured Harrogate had an adequate supply of water for the next 50 years.

Harrogate’s municipal water undertaking was one of the jewels in Harrogate’s crown until the 1945 Water Act, which paved the way for the creation of the huge Claro Water Board in 1958/9, which covered an area of 420 square miles, between one fifth and one sixth of the area of the West Riding of Yorkshire, with a population of 119,000. On such a scale, it was inevitable that the concern would no longer be run purely in the interests of the people of Harrogate, nor would its profits be returned to the local economy.

Malcolm Neesam, Harrogate-based historian