This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
    • Politics
    • Transport
    • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Business
    • Crime
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Education
    • Sport
    • Harrogate
    • Ripon
    • Knaresborough
    • Boroughbridge
    • Pateley Bridge
    • Masham
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts

Interested in advertising with us?

Advertise with us

  • News & Features
  • Your Area
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts
  • Politics
  • Transport
  • Lifestyle
  • Community
  • Business
  • Crime
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Education
  • Sport
Advertise with us
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Latest News

We want to hear from you

Tell us your opinions and views on what we cover

Contact us
Connect with us
  • About us
  • Advertise your job
  • Correction and complaints
Download on App StoreDownload on Google Play Store
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Statement
  • Comments Participation T&Cs
Trust In Journalism

Copyright © 2020 The Stray Ferret Ltd, All Rights Reserved

Site by Show + Tell

27

Feb

Last Updated: 27/02/2025
Environment
Environment

Stray Ferret Focus: How we followed up a reader's tip to learn a lesson about masterplans

by John Grainger

| 27 Feb, 2025
Comment

1

hgtemasterplan-strap
The scheme would see a tiered performance space in Montpellier Gardens.

Some articles can be written quickly. Others take time — sometimes rather a lot of time.

Welcome to our monthly look at what goes on behind the scenes when we are working on articles at the Stray Ferret. 

We think the effort we put in distinguishes us from the pack and hopefully provides an additional reason, beyond our seven-days-a-week rolling news service, to subscribe.

One recent example of this was my investigation into why the council's 10-year masterplan never left the drawing board – 10 years ago. 

Sometimes, it takes a well-informed reader with a good memory to put us on the track of a good story.

When Richard Flinton, chief executive of North Yorkshire Council, said recently that Harrogate hadn’t had a formal investment masterplan for some time, reader Malcolm Margolis was quick to tell us he was wrong.

In fact, said Mr Margolis, a detailed one was drawn up in 2015 and covered the 10 years to 2025.

In other words, had it been pursued, it would still have been in force.

But the Harrogate Town Centre Strategy and Masterplan 2015-25 wasn't pursued, so we took a long look at it and asked some searching questions: what was supposed to change, and why did it never happen?

We won’t go into the details here – you can read the story for yourself.

The masterplan was drawn up and officially adopted by Harrogate Borough Council, which was abolished at the end of March 2023. But some of the people who sat on the council back then are still councillors today, so we asked some of them what happened.

We approached four ex-Harrogate Borough councillors, but three of them couldn’t recall what had derailed the plan. One could, though, and was very helpful. Malcolm Margolis apparently has a better record-keeping system than some of our elected officials and was able to provide us with plenty of valuable information.

It turned out that the answer to the mystery of the masterplan’s fate largely boiled down to money. The strategy was ambitious and so required deep pockets to see it realised, but the funding wasn’t secured and the whole thing was shelved. Or almost the whole thing – one component, the Station Gateway scheme, survives in reduced form.

There was a valuable lesson to be drawn from this episode, which you can read about in the article, but that wouldn’t have been evident without Mr Margolis’ intervention – or the Stray Ferret’s drive to follow it up.

Why is it so important to support local news?

The Stray Ferret is here for the good of the Harrogate area.

We provide extensive coverage of local issues so you are fully informed.

We are the local source for trusted information.

The digital world means traditional advertising revenue is not enough to provide high-quality journalism.

For less than £1 a week you can support the Stray Ferret to continue in its pursuit of holding those in power to account.

Please subscribe to read all our content. Subscription costs £4.99 a month or £49.99 annually, which works out at less than a pound a week. You will also enjoy exclusive subscriber discounts. Click here to subscribe.

StarStray Ferret Focus: How we investigated the crisis in special educational needsStarStray Ferret Focus: How we probed the GP appointment problemStarStray Ferret Focus: How we protected the source of our County Lines interview