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01
Dec
Campaigners call for Harrogate Station Gateway funding to be withheld amid legal challenge
Campaigners have called for public funds earmarked for the £14.6 million Harrogate Station Gateway scheme to be withheld while a legal challenge is ongoing.
In November, the Court of Appeal granted permission for the Get Away campaign group to review a judge’s decision to dismiss their original legal challenge.
However, senior North Yorkshire councillors gave the go-ahead for the scheme to begin in the New Year despite the appeal going ahead.
Now, legal advisers for the campaign group have written to both York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (YNYCA) and West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) urging them not to release public funds while the challenge is ongoing.
In a letter, the group has called on WYCA to refuse approval to release £11 million from the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund at a forthcoming decision meeting on the December 4. It is also pressing YNYCA not to proceed with its £2 million contribution to the scheme.
Steven Baines, spokesperson for the Get Away campaign, said:
No responsible funding body should sign off millions of pounds of public money for a scheme that its own promoter accepts is high risk and low value, and which is facing a Court of Appeal challenge with real prospects of success.
WYCA and YNYCA must not give North Yorkshire Council the monies to start works in the New Year while the courts have yet to decide whether the underlying traffic regulation orders are lawful.
The campaign’s legal advisers have asked both combined authorities to confirm that they will not release any funding for the Harrogate Station Gateway, or at the very least to postpone decisions until all current and forthcoming legal proceedings have been dealt with.
The move comes as North Yorkshire Council’s Conservative-run executive gave its backing to press ahead with the scheme on November 18, despite the legal challenge.
At the time, senior councillors spoke of their frustration that “a few people who don’t like something” had been able to hold up the Harrogate Station Gateway scheme.
Designs for Station Parade under the Harrogate Station Gateway scheme.
Councillor Simon Myers, executive member for culture, the arts, leisure and housing at the council, said:
The ability of a few people who don’t like something to throw every possible stone under the wheels is absolutely staggering.
Here’s a project that’s been developed over time that has the support of people who are elected by the residents of Harrogate to deliver for them and if we didn’t make this decision today, there is every chance it would simply hit the buffers and the residents of Harrogate would lose out on £12 million worth of investment.
The scheme will see the redevelopment of One Arch and Station Square, improved traffic signals, a bus lane, a southbound cycle lane on Station Parade, new paving for pedestrians and cycle parking at Harrogate Railway Station.
In a report before senior councillors, Alex Richards, Transforming Cities Fund programme manager at the council, said it was the council’s position that it was “entitled to rely on the High Court’s decision as a valid basis for moving forward”.
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