Harrogate family hit by childhood cancer urges charity support

A Harrogate family is urging people not to forget vital charities this Christmas.

The Riley family found out first hand just how important support from a specialist charity can be when it is needed, after daughter Rosie was diagnosed with cancer.

Rosie – aged just six at the time – was found to have acute myeloid leukaemia just before Christmas 2015. Suddenly, the family was thrust into a world of tests and treatment, and found the support of children’s cancer charity Candlelighters invaluable.

Mum Lisa said:

“During her treatment, we lived at the LGI for five months and Candlelighters made Rosie smile every day. They would visit her room when she was too poorly to go to the playroom, they would bring little gifts to cheer her up and they always had time for a chat.

“The sweetie trolley was a weekly highlight and the presents on Christmas Eve were very exciting – and Santa’s visit of course!”

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Candlelighters has continued to support families this year and said it will make Christmas special for them. Children spending Christmas in hospital will be able to enjoy gifts, themed events and a virtual visit from Santa.

Read more:

The charity’s support for children does not end when they leave the hospital, either. This year, it has adapted its work to support families facing the additional complications of covid, from worries about keeping their children safe from the virus to dealing with even more financial pressure.

Like many charities, Candlelighters’ fundraising opportunities have been limited this year by the pandemic. Reliant on donations from the community to continue supporting families, it is appealing for people to keep contributing towards its efforts this Christmas.

Rosie had successful treatment in 2016, with four rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, before returning home and getting back to school. Now aged 11, she continues to be helped by Candlelighters, which says its support lasts a lifetime.

Lisa added:

“If you are thinking of raising money for Candlelighters, I absolutely urge you. They make a rubbish day a good day and turn a sad face into a smiley face.

“We absolutely can’t thank Candlelighters enough, we would have been lost without them”.

Child abuse images offender sent back to jail for breach

A former hospital IT expert who downloaded more than three-quarters of a million indecent images of children has been jailed again after breaching a court order designed to prevent reoffending.

Martin Richard Shepherd, 49, was jailed for five years in 2017 after police found 748,000 illegal images of children on his computer equipment.

Shepherd, who was working as an IT support officer at Harrogate District Hospital at the time, was released from jail part way through his sentence but remained subject to strict curbs on his internet use, which meant he had to make his computer devices available for inspection and prohibited him from deleting his search history.

In September this year, however, supervising officers found that he had been removing evidence of his internet activity, York Crown Court heard.

Police seized a tablet from his Harrogate home and discovered Shepherd had downloaded a “vast amount” of pornography including indecent images of children, said prosecutor Matthew Collins.

Shepherd told officers that he “couldn’t help himself” and that he needed to be “institutionalised”.

York Crown Court

The IT expert – who was forced to resign from his job at Harrogate Hospital in October 2016 following his arrest for the first set of offences – appeared for sentence on Thursday after pleading guilty to four counts of breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

Mr Collins said that police found “large amounts” of data on Shepherd’s Android tablet after the unannounced visit on September 2, used over a four-month period between May and September. Mr Collins said:

“The defendant claimed that this could be explained by (deleting) some (video) games. He suddenly became very upset, distressed and apologised.”

Shepherd admitted to officers that he had been deleting his internet history “because he had been embarrassed about what they might have found”. Mr Collins added:

“He admitted watching both adult and child pornography. He said he couldn’t stop himself (and that) he kept going back to a protected site.”

‘Couldn’t resist the urge’

Shepherd confessed that he had been viewing indecent videos of children at least “twice a week” and sometimes on a daily basis. He said it was mainly sex scenes involving female children aged 10 and over.

He would then “delete the account” on the website for fear of being caught. Shepherd told police he “couldn’t resist the urge to watch child pornography on a daily basis”.

Shepherd, formerly of Chatsworth Grove, was described as a loner who had never had an intimate adult relationship. He was said to have a “particular interest” in the sexual abuse of girls between the ages of 10 and 14.

In 2016, police cyber-crime detectives found that he had amassed about three-quarters of a million indecent image of children after using his computer skills to avoid detection for about 14 years, using his expertise to encrypt the images.

Shepherd, who worked in the IT department at Harrogate Hospital for 22 years, trawled the dark web for indecent images from May 2002 to the time of his arrest in June 2016. Police found a “massive library collection” of photos and videos featuring the serious sexual abuse of “very young” children including 12-month-old babies and youngsters who had been drugged or plied with alcohol.

Of the 748,000 illegal images found on his equipment, just under 9,000 photos and videos were rated Category A – the worst kind of such material.

Shepherd had painstakingly catalogued the images in 22 encrypted volumes and used an “extremely complex” system of passwords to hide them. Other images were deleted. He also distributed at least 19 videos on a paedophilic file-sharing site and spied on naked and barely-dressed teenagers at a property in Harrogate after setting up covert video equipment.

The sentencing judge at the time said it was “the worst case of its type that I have had to deal with in a long time in the law”.

In January 2017, Shepherd was given a five-year jail sentence and placed on the sex-offenders’ register for life for making and distributing indecent images of children, as well as gaining unauthorised access to private computer files at Harrogate Hospital and two counts of voyeurism related to webcams he had set up to take video footage of two female teenagers getting undressed in 2005 and 2012.

Read more:

Richard Reed, mitigating at this week’s breach hearing, said Shepherd still had problems  “controlling his urges”. He said:

“He says the only way forward is for him to have a complete ban on accessing the internet in any form.”

Judge Simon Hickey said Shepherd was clearly a “dangerous” offender who had breached the order before. He told Shepherd:

“You said you were deleting (video) games, but the vast amount of material deleted (was) over 125 gigabytes. It must have been a vast amount of indecent material. Like you say, you can’t help it.”

Shepherd was given a two-year jail term and told he must serve two-thirds of that sentence behind bars, or until the Parole Board deemed him fit to be released.

Mr Hickey also ordered that Shepherd must serve an extended four-year period on prison licence upon his eventual release from jail.

Harrogate bus passenger worried by lack of face masks

A Harrogate bus passenger has complained to the bus company after finding that more than half of people on board were not wearing face masks.

Chris Hill had just paid his fare on Monday when he realised that only two people out of five on the bus were wearing face masks.

It has been the law to wear face mask on public transport since June but there are some exceptions to the rule.

When Mr Hill questioned the driver he said that drivers do not have to enforce any rules or question anyone.

Read more:

Unhappy with that response, he took his complaint to the parent company of the Harrogate Bus Company Transdev and the Stray Ferret. He said:

“I think that if you drive around with a sign saying the buses are clean and safe then you have to enforce this. It’s not a problem on trains.

“When someone gets on the bus they should be able to prove that they have an exemption. If not the driver should refuse entry.

“If the bus driver cannot enforce the rules then they should make that clear to other passengers who may feel at risk. It’s difficult but more can be done.”

Frank Stanisauskis, the general manager of The Harrogate Bus Company, said:

“Since the rules came into place in June we’ve taken several steps to make sure all our customers know that, unless they are exempt, they need to wear a face covering.

“That includes giving away free face coverings, selling our own reusable ones in our bus station shop, adding notices visible when customers board and alongside every row of seats on the bus, as well as including information about face coverings to our audio announcements on board.

“Because the Government has allowed some broad exemptions to the face covering rules, many of which relate to disabilities or difficulties which are not visible, we do still expect to see customers on board who aren’t wearing one.

Buses are clean and safe – reported as ‘the safest places on earth’ by leading scientists, and backed up by national and international studies into covid-19. We can reassure any customer, that when they are on board our buses we’ve taken every precaution to ensure their safety and that of our driving and cleaning teams.”

Man jailed for murder of Harrogate woman

A Bradford man has been jailed for 16 years for the murder of a Harrogate woman.

Dale Tarbox was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court today for the murder of Susan Howells, who was a close friend.

A police investigation started in August 2019 when Susan, who was 51, was reported missing.

North Yorkshire Police passed the case onto West Yorkshire Police after its enquiries suggested she had been in the Bradford area at the time.

Dale Tarbox.

The police elevated the missing persons investigation into a murder investigation after officers failed to find her.

Officers arrested Tarbox in September 2019 in Doncaster and charged with the murder of Susan at his home address in Bradford.

Read more:

Police enquiries led officers to a caravan park when Tarbox was living. A few days later the police found human remains.

Further investigations led to the arrest of Keith Wadsworth, who was convicted of assisting an offender in preventing lawful burial.

Tarbox, 40, of Independent Street in Little Horton, was jailed for 16 years for Susan’s murder and given two years to run concurrently in preventing her lawful burial.

He refused to attend court to hear the sentence.

Keith Wadsworth.

Keith Wadsworth, 61, from Doncaster, was sentenced to three years and seven months for assisting an offender in preventing a lawful burial. He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing.

Speaking after sentencing, Detective Chief Inspector Vanessa Rolfe, said:

“I hope today’s outcome provides some closure for Susan’s family, knowing that the man who murdered her has been given a significant prison sentence.

“Susan regarded Tarbox as a close friend and someone she could trust, but he showed no regard for her – taking her life in a cold and callous way and then teaming up with Wadsworth to try and dispose of her body.

“He is clearly a dangerous individual and the people of West Yorkshire should feel safer knowing he will be behind bars for many years.”

Harrogate church opens doors to homeless people

A church in Harrogate is preparing to open its doors to homeless people, with its lower hall soon becoming a day service for the foreseeable future.

The Wesley Centre will be the site for the Harrogate Homeless Project’s (HHP) Springboard service, which is currently in the adjoining Wesley Chapel House in a much smaller room.

It provides food, shower facilities, a laundry service and support for homeless people and is open from 10am to 2pm every week day

With social distancing making it more difficult to use the current small space, HHP will take over the lower hall of the Wesley Centre.

Read more:

To accommodate the move and keep the upper floor available for church services, the Wesley Centre will install new toilets and refurbish the kitchen.

The National Lottery’s Coronavirus Community Support will give the church £37,500 for those works.

Pippa French, the manager at the Wesley Centre, said:

“Coronavirus meant the closure of our building and many of our usual groups haven’t yet returned.

“Meanwhile, the Harrogate Homeless Project next door were unable to maintain their services at a safe distance because they didn’t have the space.

“Wesley Chapel was responsible for the founding of the Project nearly 30 years ago, so it’s fantastic that it can step in once again when there is a need.

Wesley Centre events will continue in the Chapel space upstairs, which will be available for hire in early 2021.

Liz Hancock, CEO, Harrogate Homeless Project said:

“Our day centre premises at Springboard had become difficult to run.

“The numbers attending were growing and the space was not sufficient to provide the care and activities we wanted to.

“Now coronavirus restrictions have made things even more problematic.

“The lower hall at Wesley Centre will be ideal for us and matches and surpasses everything we were looking for.”

HHP is now busy planning its move into the lower hall at the Wesley Centre and hopes that the project can move in early next year.

Harrogate BID manager to stand down

Simon Kent, who had been acting as interim manager since April, is to step down when a new manager is found.

Mr Kent, former director of the Harrogate Convention Centre, has brought some stability to the Harrogate BID during a difficult year.

In April the BID’s chairman and three directors resigned saying there was too much council influence and secrecy on the board.

The Council Leader, Richard Cooper then resigned his position on the board in June. No reason was given for his departure. He was replaced by Trevor Watson, HBC’s director of economy and culture.

Much of this year has been taken up with helping town centre businesses, particularly retail, survive the pandemic.

Sara Ferguson the acting chair of the BID paid tribute to Mr Kent. She said:

“We have been extremely lucky to have had Simon Kent as our Interim BID Manager. He has been a tower of strength, and from day one got on with the job in hand. I’m delighted to say he’s agreed to stay with us until his successor has been found.”

Read More:

The meeting this afternoon will introduce 5 new board members and elect a chair and deputy chair. Ms Ferguson who took over as acting chair in April said:

“My reason for standing in the first place was because I’m passionate about Harrogate. And being the owner of two town centre businesses I have a vested interest in the ongoing success of Harrogate.

“I’ll admit the last 12 months has certainly had its ups and downs. However, we have weathered these storms and I’m very pleased and proud of what we achieved this year. Words have become actions and we are delivering the aims of our businesses plan.

“Our sights are now fixed on the coming 12, 24 and 36 months. Our job has only just begun, and we still have a lot more to do”.

The new BID board consists of:

Speed sign to be installed outside Western Primary School

A speed sign is to be installed outside Western Primary School in Harrogate as part of the school’s long-running campaign to improve road safety.

Western is one of the largest primary schools in the Harrogate district, with 500 pupils.

It is also situated on one of the busiest streets — Cold Bath Road.

Tim Broad, headteacher of Western Primary School, has spoken of his fears a child could be killed crossing the road.

He and teachers have lobbied North Yorkshire County Council for action.

The campaign finally bore fruit when John Mann, who represents Harrogate central on North Yorkshire County Council, agreed to fund a vehicle-activated sign from his locality budget.

Each county councillor receives a locality budget of £5,000 per year to spend on local needs, and councillor Mann’s allocation covered the £3,200-plus VAT cost of the sign.

Read more:

Mr Broad said the school was “very grateful” to councillor Mann. He added:

“This will make a significant difference to the safety of our pupils and it is a relief to know that somebody is listening to our concerns and taking some positive action.

“However, there is much more that needs to be done and I am hoping we can work with North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council to make the whole of Cold Bath Road a safer and healthier environment for everyone who uses it.”

The sign, which has a five-year warranty and a life expectancy of 10 years, will be fixed to the street lamp immediately outside the school.

A radar in the sign detects vehicles travelling above the 20mph speed limit from at least 50 metres away and this triggers a ‘slow down’ message.

The sign will be spun round every few weeks to face traffic from the opposite direction.

Harrogate builder James Moss in court

A judge has adjourned a civil claim against Harrogate builder James Moss, after he told the court he was self-isolating.

Karen Macgillvray-Fallis says she paid Mr Moss over £30,000 to convert a garage in Burton Leonard into a living space for her mother-in-law, but she was not happy with the quality of the work.

Ms Macgillvray-Fallis is claiming £9,996 through the small claims court, which is close to the maximum threshold of £10,000.

At Harrogate Justice Centre, Judge Ross attempted to proceed with the case against Mr Moss via a hybrid hearing, which would involve him defending himself via telephone.

Read more:

Ms Macgillvray-Fallis is suing James Moss, trading as Yorkshire Outdoor Design, but Mr Moss told the judge he was only an employee of the company, whose sole director was his wife, Paula Moss.

He also claimed that building control signed the work off, which Ms Macgillvray-Fallis disputed.

However, as proceedings continued Mr Moss repeatedly told the judge that the telephone line was poor and he was unable to hear what was going on in the court, which forced Judge Ross to adjourn the case until January.

Harrogate care home resident enjoys first window pint

A Harrogate care home resident has been able to enjoy a pint with his son for the first time in months.

Colin Jameslund, who moved into The Manor House, Harrogate earlier this year, saw his son Phillip through a window this weekend.

The pair have always bonded over a drink and Colin knows his ale, having previously worked as a sales director at John Smith’s Brewery.

It has been a tough few months for the pair but Colin is optimistic about the future. He told the Stray Ferret today:

“My son lives in Chester but visits as often as he can. It was good to have a pint with him, we both had some Black Sheep beer.

“It’s not nice when I have to stay away from my family so being able to see them through a window means an awful lot to me.

“I do really feel for those who haven’t been able to have any visitors. I feel lucky here, the staff have been wonderful.”

Read more:

Colin is in a high priority group for the new coronavirus vaccine but says he is happy to wait his turn.

Caryn Ferguson, the client liaison manager at The Manor House, told the Stray Ferret:

“It is really nice to see something so positive happening in the care home. It has been a tough time for everyone.”

The care home is trying to lift spirits this Christmas by putting up decorations and will even have pupils from Brackenfield School round to sing carols outside the building this Friday.

Stalemate continues over Harrogate Spring Water’s tree-felling plans

Harrogate Spring Water and local voluntary groups have failed to reach agreement on where to plant trees to replace ones that would be lost as part of the company’s plans to expand in the Pinewoods.

Trees in the area of Pinewoods known as Rotary Wood, which were planted by families in 2015, would be felled as part of Danone’s plans to expand its bottling plant.

The plans are controversial, and the groups are putting pressure on Danone to ensure the loss of trees and biodiversity will be compensated for.

The groups have met representatives from the company’s owner, Danone, twice over the last month. Further meetings are planned for late December and early January.

The groups include Harrogate Civic Society, Harrogate and District Green Party, Pinewoods Conservation Group, Zero Carbon Harrogate, the Rotary Club of Harrogate and Duchy Residents’ Association.

A spokesperson for Pinewoods Conservation Group said Danone’s current proposals to re-plant trees close to the site were not satisfactory as the area is not currently open to the public.

The spokesperson said:

“It is felt the current plan does not take account of the full ecological loss and this area would not be open to the public. As such it does not account for the loss of public space and amenity either.

“The working group has therefore suggested a few alternative suggestions that the consultants have agreed to investigate further.

“Should planning be agreed there will still be a need for public consultation on the loss of public land and the disposal of an asset of community value.”

Read more:

Danone’s plans were originally due to be considered by Harrogate Borough Council’s planning committee in December but were delayed to allow for more talks between the company and the public.

The committee is now due to discuss the proposal on January 26 and the Pinewoods Conservation Group spokesperson said there was still time for an acceptable solution for all parties to be found.

Nicky Cain, brand manager at Harrogate Spring Water, told the Stray Ferret last month the company hoped to find a solution that will satisfy all parties.

She said:

“The delay gives us longer to consult with local stakeholders and discuss the issues around landscaping.”