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10
Jul
‘A cock-up’: Council review of snow and ice response in Harrogate criticised
A council review into heavy snowfall and ice which caused chaos in Harrogate town centre last winter has been criticised by councillors.
North Yorkshire Council came under fire in January when pavements and minor roads in the Harrogate district were left in treacherous conditions after temperatures plummeted to lows of minus 12 degrees.
The wintry weather caused schools to close and residents told the Stray Ferret the conditions were “absolutely lethal”.
Businesses in the town centre claimed the council should have done more to make the town safer and encourage people to visit.
However, council officials defended the authority's response to the adverse weather and pledged to review its performance.
In a report published this week which evaluated its response, Nigel Smith, head of highway operations at the council, described the heavy snow in January as “an exceptional event” which “challenged” the authority’s resources, in particular for footpaths.
He said:
Under normal circumstances, resource and response provision in recent years has generally been proportionate with winter weather conditions and the more ‘typical’ winter weather events we have experienced in those recent winter seasons.
The event of January 2025 has to be acknowledged as an exceptional event and the existing resource capability was challenged given the event’s severity, duration and extent, particularly where footway treatments were concerned.
Mr Smith said Harrogate was a “particularly challenging” area for footway treatments due to “widespread freezing” of footpaths.
He added that further resources from the council’s parks and grounds department were made available, but said it is “recognised that the extensive urban footway network in the urban centre was widely impacted”.
Icy pavement outside Western Primary School in Harrogate in January.
‘A cock-up’
However, the report came in for criticism at a meeting of Harrogate Town Council last night (July 9).
Cllr Paul Haslam, an independent who also represents Bilton and Nidd Gorge on North Yorkshire Council, said the review failed to recognise the impact on people.
He said:
It fails to look at the impact on people and businesses and therefore it did not put a price on the cock-up.
People were admitted to hospital and people missed appointments. That is the price. What was the impact of this?
Cllr Chris Aldred, Liberal Democrat mayor of Harrogate, said the report was “reasonable”, but could have been better.
The report on the council's performance in January will be further discussed by North Yorkshire councillors at a transport overview and scrutiny meeting tomorrow (July 11).
The council currently spends £7 million on average each year tackling adverse weather events such as floods, storms and heavy snowfall.
In January, hundreds of staff and contractors worked to attempt to grit icy roads and footpaths in Harrogate.
NY Highways, the council-owned company which looks after the county’s road network, had 250 staff responding to conditions on the roads.
The council also said 100 farming contractors worked with the authority to grit roads.
In his report, Mr Smith said the council would now look at where its winter service could be “supplemented or enhanced”.
He said:
Alongside ideas that were already in train, reflection on this event has been a catalyst to explore opportunities where existing service provision can be supplemented or enhanced. This includes making the best use of our wider staff resource availability within the council now that North Yorkshire Council is a unitary authority.
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