Strayside Sunday: Now is a time for Harrogate council to listen and not make big changes

Last updated Sep 7, 2020

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.

We live in strange and disconcerting times.

Uber, the largest taxi company in the world owns no cars. Airbnb, the largest ‘hotel’ company in the world owns no property. Both are examples of what are known in the jargon as technology platform “disruptors,” companies that upend existing business models and established values and norms of behaviour in order to increase the risks borne by others (in this case by taxi drivers and homeowners) and, by so doing, derive greater profit for themselves.

At busy times, Uber’s algorithm (now where else have we heard that word recently…?) simultaneously proscribes “surge pricing” for customers – that’s you and me – and increases competition for jobs among the drivers who use the Uber platform. In other words, Uber operates by price gouging its customers and forcing competition between its own drivers, none of whom it employs. The model may be an unbridled capitalist’s wet dream, but it reflects an economy and society that increasingly values and celebrates the immediate gratification of individual customer convenience over collective fairness and decency. I am not a fan.

The always sensible Matthew Parris has written in The Times this week of the dangers of bringing this desire to disrupt, to change and to remake, into the realm of government and public service provision. Especially now. Now when we remain gripped by the anxieties and uncertainties unleashed by a global pandemic. When business is struggling to survive, when unemployment is a long way from cresting its inevitable wave and when the level of public sector borrowing makes inevitable a coming fiscal tightening of asphyxiating strength.

The curse of the social media age is that politicians seem to perceive that it is more important to be seen to do something interesting than it is for them actually to do something meaningful, however mundane. Keeping your head down and getting on with the job of delivering the fundamentals of government has become distinctly unfashionable. This affliction affects Harrogate Borough Council’s leadership in spades and, for you grammarians out there, I do mean affect, as in affectation. Quietly getting on with delivering excellent and value-for-money public services is not this lot’s style, more’s the pity.

Let’s do a quick rollcall of examples to demonstrate what I mean. I’ve written here before about the fact the council have announced a spin-out of our leisure services into a Local Authority Controlled Company (LACC), sacrificing people, place and wellbeing in the name of costs savings, efficiency and commercialisation. They are spending a £1m on a design study to redevelop Harrogate’s unprofitable Convention Centre, a redevelopment that will, by the council’s own estimates, cost local taxpayers £46m. They reside in glass-fronted splendour on Knapping Mount, built at vast expense on valuable land when they could have opted for a much cheaper, more modest and utilitarian building elsewhere. It is rumoured too, that in the no doubt laudable interests of environmental protection, they intend to become a Carbon Negative council, with the pedestrianisation of James Street being a notable first step.

Which brings me to the subject of consultation, public engagement and “listening.” The pedestrianisation of James Street is to be imposed against the wishes of local business owners and without authentic consultation. Having asked for their opinion it transpired the council had already made up its mind and done a deal with North Yorkshire County Council. This is arrogant, insulting and typical. Harrogate business fears that at this time of deep uncertainty about their future prospects, the council is pursuing eye-catching environmental measures over the basic interests of economic viability and, let’s face it, the protection of local jobs. The occupancy of retail outlets on Oxford and James Streets already offers the appearance of swiss-cheese; with holes everywhere. Surely the council should zero in on what it will take to protect further atrophy of local business and make that its overriding priority during deeply uncertain times.

Devolution is also on the agenda. This week North Yorkshire district councils held a video consultation to discuss their plans with local people. It seems we couldn’t care less. The video consultation attracted just 22 people. A number reduced when taking into account the virtual attendance of several councillors. Is this a sign of consultation fatigue? A recognition evidenced by indifference that the councils’ motivation to Zoom is not to thoroughly understand the needs and wants of the people they purport to serve (actually to consult) but rather much more about being seen to consult, to box tick, while they get on with pushing what they alone want.

Matthew Parris makes the case that what we need now is “not disruption but protection, not upheaval but steadiness, not the sweeping aside but continuity; this should be the call; the call of the known, the tried, the familiar. Conservatives, of all people, should hear it.” Harrogate Council’s wannabes take note. Setting aside your bluster, bumble and bullying, unless you focus on your everyday knitting, unless you take the time and care to truly understand local people’s real needs now, for employment, housing and security, unless you work with local business to help them thrive and deliver jobs creation, you cannot in good conscience call yourselves Conservatives. Announcing what you hope are grand and eye-catching schemes is no substitute for governing effectively, responsibly and sympathetically.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.