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09
Mar 2021
Council's £500k Welcome to Yorkshire loan extended for 'technical reasons'
A loan given by North Yorkshire County Council to tourism body Welcome to Yorkshire will be extended for another six months.
The £500,000 agreement was taken out in September 2019 to help cashflow and was originally due to be repaid by November last year.
However, the council agreed to extend the term by a year to November 2021, and has now added a further six months to the term. NYCC's executive today voted unanimously to support the deadline of April 2022 for the loan to be repaid.
Cllr Gareth Dadd, deputy leader of NYCC, said:
The loan was secured on a property owned by WtY on Tadcaster Road in York, and will continue at an interest rate of seven per cent. Cllr Dadd added:
Read more:
- Welcome to Yorkshire requests extension to £500,000 council loan
- Welcome to Yorkshire posts losses of £200,000
WtY posted losses of £198,997 in the last two years, according to its latest accounts. It published two sets of accounts last month, which covered the six months to March 31, 2020, and the 18 months to September 30, 2019.
The organisation, which is a limited company, was bailed out last year by Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council, plus other local authorities across the region.
Both authorities approved funding totalling more than £300,000 after WtY warned it faced a £1.4 million funding gap amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A spokesperson for the organisation told the Stray Ferret previously that it had been a “difficult time” but added the organisation had undergone “significant operational, staffing, cultural and strategic changes” since the periods covered by the two sets of accounts.
The spokesperson said:
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