Theakston’s Crime Writing Festival will return to Harrogate in July

The Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival will take place this year in person, after being forced online in 2020.

The festival is one of the most popular events on Harrogate International Festivals‘ calendar and organisers are confident it will be able to happen after the government said all covid restrictions could be lifted from June 21.

This year’s edition is set to take place from July 22-25 at the Old Swan Hotel.

It will celebrate all forms of crime fiction, with a programme curated by programming chair Ian Rankin alongside the festival committee and the Harrogate International Festivals team.

Sharon Canavar, chief executive of Harrogate International Festivals, said:

“We are adapting and evolving our plans to be able to deliver a safe and agile festival in line with the government regulations at the time, with additional safety measures where necessary, whilst also ensuring the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival retains the iconic feel that has ensured its place as the most successful crime writing festival in the world.

“We remain optimistic about the year ahead and, like people across the UK, we are very much looking forward to the return of live events.”

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Festival-goers can expect a range of live author talks, panels and special guests, as well as some hybrid events to ensure that audiences who are unable to travel can access the festival.

Over 80% of early ticket bookers for the 2020 festival have already transferred their tickets to 2021.

The full author line-up, and news on when tickets are on sale, will be announced in the coming months.

Menwith Hill to expand with new ‘golf ball’

Harrogate Borough Council has granted the Ministry of Defence planning permission to build a new 30-metre high radome and electrical substation at RAF Menwith Hill.

It follows an application last year from the MoD to build three more radomes at the site, which was also passed.

There are now over 30 distinctive radomes, or “golf balls”, at the secretive site. The radomes are believed to house satellites and transmitters.

Washburn Parish Council said it was concerned by the expansion, as well as the detrimental visual impact created by the new radome.

However, it said it “recognises the important security roll” that Menwith Hill plays.

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In granting the application, council case officer Mike Parkes said the national security benefits of the radome outweighed its “harmful effects” on the Nidderdale landscape.

Built in the 1950s on the edge of Nidderdale, Menwith Hill is the United States’ largest overseas surveillance base.

Since 2000, protestors have taken part in a weekly demonstration outside Menwith Hill, which has been halted due to lockdown.

Sarah Swift, from the Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign group, said:

“We find the expansion of the site and of the base’s operations very worrying indeed.

“We believe that the activities of the base do not enhance the security of our area, our country or our world.”

New Beech Grove sign to stop cars driving on Stray

A ‘no motor vehicles’ sign has gone up on the Stray to stop drivers using the land to avoid the new road closure on Beech Grove in Harrogate.

Harrogate Borough Council granted a request by North Yorkshire County Council, the highways authority, to put up the sign even though it is on Stray land.

Beech Grove closed to through traffic last week but some motorists have been mounting the kerb to avoid the newly-installed planters.

The decision to allow the sign has angered the Stray Defence Association, which was set up in 1933 to prevent building and encroachment on the Stray,

The Harrogate Stray Act 1985 says it is unlawful to erect items on the Stray without the permission of Harrogate Borough Council, which is the protector of the 200 acres of land.

Judy D’Arcy Thompson, chair of the association, said it could pave the way for more signs, which would harm the Stray’s appearance. She said:

“It might seem like a quick fix solution but if they put one sign up they might put up others.

“In any case, people could still drive round it.”

Ms D’Arcy Thompson said North Yorkshire County Council, which has closed Beech Grove to through traffic for six months on an experimental order, had made a mistake by not consulting adequately on the proposal. She said:

“They rushed into this without consulting local people and are now adding to the problem by including Stray land.”

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Melisa Burnham, North Yorkshire County Council’s highways area manager, said:

“We consulted on these measures in line with statutory legislation and guidelines.

“Consultation was initially undertaken with emergency services representatives, local members and other statutory bodies in December with no concerns raised.

“During engagement with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service, the need for designated emergency standby parking to aid ambulance responses in the town was identified and provided as part of the scheme on the nearby Trinity Road.”

Ms Burnham added the six-month experimental order allowed residents and road users to take part in the ongoing live consultation that is being held in conjunction with the road closure measures. She said:

“We will consider all feedback received during the consultation period.”

A Harrogate Borough Council report that recommended approving the sign on the Stray, which was approved on Friday, said:

“The proposal seeks to enhance the experience of people using the Stray for public access and recreation therefore the officer recommendation is that under the Harrogate Stray Act 1985 the proposed schemes for the road safety signs be approved.”

Row breaks out on first day of ‘Station Gateway’ consultation

A row appears to have broken out between businesses and the two local councils on the first day of the Harrogate Station Gateway consultation.

North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council secured £7.8 million for the project in ring-fenced funding.

Plans include pedestrianising James Street, building cycle lanes on Station Parade and improving cycling facilities in the town centre.

However, business owners on Prince Albert Row have questioned how their stretch on Station Parade comes into the proposals, which they say are vague.

Prince Albert Row is the name the businesses have given themselves along this short stretch of Station Parade.

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A spokesman on behalf of Rigby & Peller, Helen James and Woods of Harrogate said:

“We are being asked for our views, but until we know what is actually being proposed for the entire length of Station Parade, including Prince Albert Row, we can’t make a reasoned judgement.

“The plans are incredibly vague. We’re not sure if the parking bays outside our businesses will stay or go, and we don’t know if this section of road will remain as two lanes or be reduced to a single carriageway.

“And to add insult to injury, the ‘Zone Two’ survey only covers Station Square and James Street. Those who designed this questionnaire need to go back to the drawing board and include this section.

“Our livelihoods are dependent on ease of access. Our businesses occupy Listed building in a Conservation Area, and we have regular need for deliveries, from flowers to furniture and heavy linens to kitchen appliances, fittings, televisions and hi-fis. Loading and unloading takes places throughout the day.

“Our customers also rely on the parking spaces outside our shops, and if they disappear, I’m afraid our customers may well go the same way.”

“A vibrant town centre is what we all want, one that is welcoming and accessible for all. And as more than 70 per cent of visitors to Harrogate arrive by car, we mustn’t turn our back on them.”

It comes after Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce, Harrogate BID and Independent Harrogate questioned if the money could be better spent elsewhere.

The groups suggested East Parade and Cambridge Street as places they feel the money would be better spent.

However, Harrogate Borough Council has said the funding can only be spent improving the bus and train station area only and has to be focussed on transport-related activity.

Harrogate Nightingale closure expected to be announced next month

Expectations are growing that the NHS will decommission the Nightingale hospital at Harrogate Convention Centre next month.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of cautious reopening over the coming months, and news that the vaccination programme is already having an impact on covid infection and illness rates, speculation is mounting that the Nightingale hospital will be dismantled when its contract ends on March 31.

It has never been used to treat covid patients, even through the peaks of the crisis when hospital admissions were at their height. With increasing evidence that the chances of severe illness requiring hospitalisation are lower among those who have been vaccinated, it looks likely that the Nightingale will not be needed in future.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Newby, who lives in Ripon and has long argued for the convention centre to be returned to Harrogate Borough Council (HBC) use, told the Stray Ferret:

“I suspect that the contract won’t be renewed. It certainly should not be.

“There is no immediate or foreseeable use of the convention centre as a hospital – even in the very unlikely event that there were a further major spike in the disease. It has been a costly white elephant from the start and should be returned to the council without delay.”

NHS paying Nightingale bills

The NHS has been paying bills of between £125,000 and £160,000 per month for utilities at the convention centre. While local hospitality businesses are keen to have the centre back up and running to deliver trade for the town, some argue it makes more sense for it to have a steady income which at least covers its costs while major events are not possible.

Kimberley Wilson, chair of guesthouse association Accommodation Harrogate, said:

“The NHS are paying to have the Nightingale in there, so it keeps the bills paid. If they pull out and we can’t use it, it’s haemorrhaging money. If the NHS are happy to pay those bills, it keeps it from being a strain on council resources.

“What’s more important is when can we have events. We want it there until we can get big events in and then we want it out. Let’s just make sure it’s all ready to go when we can.”

Ms Wilson said guesthouses are taking bookings for events from the summer, including the Home and Gift Fair and the Bridal Show, and were hopeful that restrictions would be lifted in plenty of time to allow them to go ahead.

However, she was also keen to hear what the new destination management organisation (DMO) has planned to encourage people to come to the Harrogate district once travel and overnight stays are allowed again, to enable businesses to begin planning.

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The new DMO appointed a manager, Gemma Rio, who began work in October. She was not available for interview with the Stray Ferret, but a spokesman for HBC, which set up the DMO, said:

“Work is underway to establish a new Destination Management Organisation and position the Harrogate district as an exceptional place to live, visit and invest.

“An integral part of this work is the development of a destination management plan that will ultimately guide the activities of the DMO and its partners. In the short term, we have a plan to capitalise on the ‘staycation’ opportunity and attract visitors to the district when it is it safe to do so.”

Announcement expected soon

The NHS has not commented on its intentions for the site, or the other Nightingale hospitals around the country, other than to say it remains on stand-by to be brought into use if needed. However, it is expected that an announcement will be made soon by the government about its future.

Last summer, an initial three-month contract for the Nightingale in Harrogate from April to June was extended by a month to the end of July. Negotiations then continued before it was finally confirmed in mid-August that the hospital would remain in situ until the end of March.

It has since been used to offer CT scans to non-covid patients, helping Harrogate and District NHS Trust to catch up with patient referrals delayed during the early months of the pandemic.

The Stray Ferret asked Harrogate Borough Council and Harrogate Convention Centre about when the convention centre might re-open.

A Harrogate Borough Council spokeswoman said this week’s government route out of lockdown meant the earliest visitors could return to the district was April 12.

A spokeswoman for Harrogate Convention Centre said:

“We cautiously welcome the fact that all lockdown restrictions could be lifted in June.

“As ever, the devil is in the detail and we don’t yet have clear guidance on what these mean for our industry.

“We will continue to monitor the situation over the coming months as we develop our plans for reopening.”

Harrogate lingerie shop to close

The Lingerie Room in Harrogate is to close this year.

Owner Nicola Silcock moved the business from Settle to its current site on Tower Street five years ago.

But she says the changing retail landscape has led her to shut up shop for good in July.

Ms Silcock plans to reopen in April when lockdown restrictions ease but only to sell the last of her remaining stock.

She said that despite having a loyal customer base, a reduction in footfall in Harrogate made the shop less financially viable.

She said:

“People are too busy and ordering shopping online is so easy.”

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The landlord of the building recently submitted a change of use application to Harrogate Borough Council to convert the shop into a home.

Ms Silcock was positive about the future of retail in Harrogate despite the ongoing challenges.

She added:

“I still believe Harrogate can sustain all the small businesses and you’ll always have smaller independent shops here. There’s entrepreneurial people out there.”

Harrogate diving club prepares to jump back in

Harrogate District Diving Club is planning to resume training in April following this week’s government roadmap out of lockdown.

Outdoor pools and lidos can reopen from March 29.

Indoor pools can reopen for individual use or within household groups from April 12. Indoor children’s activities, including diving club sessions for under 18s, can also resume from this date.

But organised indoor adult sport, including diving, is not allowed to resume until May 17.

This means divers aged up to 18 will be jumping back into the pool from April 12.

Leanne Jalland, the club’s chair, said lockdown had highlighted the club’s mental health benefits and members were looking forward to returning.

She said:

“One of the most important things we have learnt from this pandemic as a club is how diving as a sport benefits both the mental and physical wellbeing of our divers.

“Therefore, we are keen to bring those benefits to others in our community and make diving accessible to all.”

The club hopes to introduce a disability diving squad in April.

It ran, in conjunction with Harrogate Borough Council, one of only two disability diving schemes in England but these haven’t taken place since March last year.

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The diving club is working with Brimhams Active, which is the new company brought in by the council to run leisure facilities, to ensure diving has a future in the district.

Mark Tweedie managing director of Brimhams Active said:

“We are working with our clubs to produce a long term development plan for aquatics.

“This plan will ensure we make the most of the opportunity presented by the multimillion pound council investments to improve the district’s leisure centres over the next three years.”

Harrogate business groups want Station Gateway cash spent elsewhere

Three Harrogate business groups have come together to ask for some of the money set aside for cycle lanes on Station Parade to be spent elsewhere.

North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council launched a four-week public consultation on the Harrogate Gateway Project today.

The councils set out plans last week to pedestrianise James Street, build cycle lanes on Station Parade and improve cycling facilities in the town centre.

Under the government’s Transforming Cities Fund, the county council secured £7.8 million in ring-fenced funding.

Now that the public consultation has started, the Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce, Harrogate BID and Independent Harrogate have had their say.

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The groups suggested East Parade and Cambridge Street as places they feel the money would be better spent.

However, Harrogate Borough Council has said the funding can only be spent improving the bus and train station area only and has to be focussed on transport-related activity.

Sandra Doherty from the chamber, Robert Ogden from Independent Harrogate and Sara Ferguson from Harrogate BID said:

“The challenge we are facing is how do we achieve a net-zero carbon town centre economy and simultaneously create a trading environment in which todays’ businesses can thrive?

“The Harrogate Gateway project gives us the opportunity to start the job of achieving this.

“While we welcome measures to reduce traffic congestion on Station Parade, we feel East Parade would be best placed for the new cycle lanes.

“We also believe that money would be better spent enhancing Cambridge Street, as this is very much the ‘gateway’ into Harrogate town centre from both the bus and railway stations.

“Also, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that previous studies have revealed that between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of visitors to Harrogate arrive here by car.

“Considering Harrogate’s role in Bicycling Touring Club, the Tour de France Grand Depart and the UCI World Cycling Championships, the town has somewhat lagged behind others.

“If this project is about making Harrogate accessible to more sustainable forms of transport, we particularly need to encourage visitors with electric and hybrid vehicles.”

Call for inquiry into Harrogate’s Nightingale hospital

A health scrutiny board could investigate the building and use of the Nightingale hospital in Harrogate.

The West Yorkshire Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee will consider next month whether to accept calls for it to hold an inquiry into decisions made about the facility.

Cllr Jim Clark, who represents Harrogate Harlow division, spent 10 years as chair of North Yorkshire’s scrutiny of health committee and now sits on the West Yorkshire equivalent, ensuring a voice for people in the Harrogate district who are treated at its hospitals.

Speaking to the committee yesterday, he said:

“This was a tremendous success, building the Nightingale hospitals, and the one in Harrogate was built in about four weeks after 10 years of bed closures in North Yorkshire…

“This has always been a campaigning committee and I have been proud to be a member of it… But I think we need a public inquiry into why did we never use the Nightingale hospital? They say now that it was an insurance policy, but if we had needed to use it, could we have used it?

“I wrote to the secretary of state in 2018 saying that we were so short of staff in the Harrogate CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) at that time that it was affecting performance. So if we had needed the Nightingale hospital there wouldn’t have been people there to man it.”

The health scrutiny committee wrote to the NHS twice last August calling for the Nightingale hospital to be kept open, and again in November suggesting it be used for vaccinations. Cllr Clark praised the work of those running the Great Yorkshire Showground site, but said the awarding of contracts and the ability to make any use of the Nightingale hospital needed to be scrutinised.

He said the example of trouble at Welcome to Yorkshire which was only revealed years after the 2014 Tour de France served as a warning about the need for close scrutiny at the right time.

“We need to get this done now. I would welcome any help you can give me to get a proper public inquiry and it shouldn’t affect the on-going work of the pandemic.”

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Scrutiny committee chair Cllr Helen Hayden told Cllr Clark that a working group meeting in March would decide whether to take his call for an inquiry forward.

Responding to Cllr Clark, Anthony Kealy, NHS England director in West Yorkshire, said the Nightingale was still being used for diagnostic scans and its future beyond the end of March was yet to be announced by the government. He added:

“We have regarded it largely as a success that we have never had to use the Nightingale for in-patient care. It was, as Cllr Clark suggested, developed as a bit of an insurance policy agains the NHS being overwhelmed.

“The Nightingale programme was rolled out very rapidly at the point where we were looking at northern Italy and its health services being overwhelmed. If the NHS had got to that point in April, the Nightingale would have certainly opened, but we managed to avoid that.”

He said while it was true to say it would have had to bring staff in from existing hospitals from the system, that was to be expected. Staff were busy in their daily roles, as would be expected, and would have been redeployed from routine care to run the Nightingale.

However, committee member Cllr Betty Rhodes said “robbing Peter to pay Paul” with staff moving from hospitals to the Nightingale would not have been a workable solution. At the time, she said, the hospital trusts were looking at cutting routine services and could not have spared staff.

She also supported calls for an inquiry, including into the procurement processes used during the pandemic to ensure they represented value for money.

Cllr Hayden added:

“This discussion will go on about procurement, about the Nightingale hospital… We will discuss as a board, looking back at the pandemic and assessing what went right, what went wrong, what do we need to learn from it. It’s going to be an on-going process.”

Harrogate hospital coronavirus patients down by 19 in a week

Harrogate District Hospital still has more coronavirus patients than during the peak of the first wave but the number has started to drop sharply.

It was revealed at the weekly North Yorkshire coronavirus media briefing today the hospital had 48 coronavirus patients yesterday. Last week there were 65, only a couple away from the record number of 67.

The hospital is the only one in North Yorkshire treating more patients than during the first wave but the situation appears to be heading in the right direction.

It was also revealed today that one more person died at the hospital after testing positive for coronavirus. The latest death, which happened on Sunday, brings the total to 156.

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The Stray Ferret asked today’s briefing whether public health officials were concerned about the high number of patients shortly before lockdown measures ease.

Amanda Bloor, accountable officer for North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group, said in response:

“Last week one of my colleagues reported that the numbers had not come down but they have dropped this week from 67 to 48.

“They are still higher than the first wave so we are keeping an eye on it but in terms of the lockdown easing, that is obviously a national decision.

“But we are pleased that the number of coronavirus patients in Harrogate is starting to come down.”

Public Health England confirmed another 13 covid cases in the Harrogate district today.

The district now has a seven-day rate of infection of 89 people per 100,000, which is just above the North Yorkshire average of 83 but below the England average of 117.