Council finance bosses have warned long-awaited transport schemes in Harrogate, Selby and Skipton will put taxpayers’ money at risk.
A meeting of North Yorkshire Council’s executive on Tuesday saw the Tory-led authority push forward an £11.2m project for Harrogate, £28.7m of improvements for Selby and a £7.8m initiative for Skipton, as part of the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund programme.
Before the meeting, the council issued a press release saying the schemes would be “transformative” for the towns. But all three have been scaled back from their original proposals and there are concerns costs could rise due to inflation.
In Harrogate, the latest plans focus on public realm improvements to Station Square and One Arch, improved access to the bus station and better coordinated of traffic signals.
More ambitious aspects, such as the part-pedestrianisation of James Street, reducing a stretch of Station Parade to single lane traffic and changes to the Odeon roundabout have been dropped.
In Selby, works will see improvements to pedestrian and cycling access along Station Road and Ousegate, the new station access and car park to the east, along with improvements to the station building and the new plaza entrance into Selby Park.
In Skipton the scheme will focus on a canal path connection from the railway station to the cattle mart and college, and a walking route to the bus station, including Black Walk and a replacement Gallows Bridge.
In response to the proposals, the authority’s Labour group leader Cllr Steve Shaw Wright issued a statement saying Selby “deserved better” and that the proposal had been stripped back so much it now represented “a relatively, cheap and cheerful, superficial facelift”.
Read more:
- Councillors push ahead with scaled-back £11.2m Harrogate Station Gateway
- Lib Dem leader accuses Tories of ‘pinching’ Harrogate Station Gateway ideas
- Harrogate BID says amended Station Gateway scheme ‘should proceed’
Harrogate Conservative councillor John Mann told the meeting the business group Independent Harrogate was convinced the scheme would fail to tackle traffic issues in the town, and a bypass or relief road was needed, particularly with more than 3,000 homes set to be built in the town’s west.
However, executive member for transport Cllr Keane Duncan replied that a consultation over congestion in Harrogate had concluded residents wanted sustainable public transport improvements more than new roads and the authority was not about to “open old wounds”.
He said the proposals represented “landmark” improvements for the three towns, before underlining concerns over funding large scale projects “in this era of high inflation and supply chain issues”.
Cllr Duncan said the authority needed to be “realistic about what we can achieve”, and said the revised proposals focused on “core elements with the most public support” and were based on “frank, honest conversations”.
The meeting heard while the authority was set to submit full business cases to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority for the Skipton and Selby schemes in December, and for the Harrogate scheme, as soon as possible, key elements of the project would now be brought forward at later dates.
Cllr Duncan said:
”We are not reneging on the ambition and scale of our overall vision.”
The council’s finance boss, Cllr Gareth Dadd said:
“These three projects, whichever way you cut it, are risky in terms of financial over-runs. A 10 per cent over-run could put this authority at £5m of risk.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it but we have to justify any cost over-run to every member right across this county. At what point can we get off the hook if it all becomes unsustainable?”
The meeting then heard the council would not be able to “mitigate against all the potential cost over-runs”.
The authority’s environment director Karl Battersby said the council would not enter into contracts unless they represented good value for taxpayers and were affordable within the proposed budgets.
