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

“Thousands have lived without love.  None without water.”

So said the great poet and York’s own W.H. Auden in his poem ‘First Things First.’

Water is elemental, an essential building block for life on earth.  The human body comprises up to 60% water and global water security is, in my view, one of the most under-reported threats faced by contemporary civilisation.  The World Health Organisation reports that 1 in 3 humans in the world today have no access to an improved water supply, which is to say they have no access to clean and drinkable water.  And at current rates of global climate change the United Nations predicts that 6 billion of us will face water scarcity by 2050.

All of this to inject some context and perspective into the debate raging in this parish between Harrogate Spring Water, the council and a coalition of locals and environmental campaigners over the future of Rotary Wood, a publicly accessible green oasis planted in 2005 by Harrogate residents.  French consumer goods and yogurt giant Danone (revenues €25 billion or thereabouts) has asked Harrogate Borough Council (revenues a great deal less) to consider an application to expand its Pinewoods spring water bottling plant, create a few new jobs and level some much cherished woodland.

On January 18^th Harrogate Borough Council published a report recommending conditional approval for Danone’s expansion plans; on the grounds that  Harrogate Spring Water is a ‘global brand’ and a ‘strategic employer.’  This in the face of 328 planning objections (only 28 in support) and a weekly Friday protest at the town hall by local primary school teacher Sarah Gibbs, dressed like a tree for the occasion.  It should be noted that not only do the council already benefit from an annual ground rent of £13,000 – they also own the land on which the bottling plant sits – and therefore benefit from what is known as a ‘turnover rent’ (a share of turnover), cannily negotiated when the plant first opened.

I have some sympathy with the council’s dilemma.  Harrogate Spring Water is globally known; the company promote our town’s name from Tokyo to Toronto.  Indeed, to his astonishment, a good friend of mine was once served Harrogate Spring Water at a restaurant in Moscow.  Spasiba!  The council is in a tough spot; the global (let alone local) economy is on its knees and their books are short close to £5m as a result of Covid-19.  Apparently the council won’t (or can’t) reveal the full extent of what we stand to gain from our share of any increased turnover resulting from the expansion.

As regular readers of this column will know, I don’t believe, as a matter of principle, that commercial dealings between government and business should be kept private in any circumstances.  Transparency means accountability.  In this case if we knew how much the council stood to gain financially from Harrogate Spring Water’s expansion then we could take a more informed and nuanced view of whether or not to lend our support.  As it stands all we know is that we must lose a significant slice of nature and public access to it for a meagre 12 new jobs.  I’m not convinced it’s worth the sacrifice, even with Danone’s Section 106 agreement requiring them to plant replacement trees and promote biodiversity on another site.

I am convinced however that, in a world where so many don’t have access to clean drinking water, it is the height of wasteful and selfish consumerism to drink bottled spring water when we in the developed world have a perfectly good alternative from the tap.  I’m convinced too that the production of even one more single-use plastic bottle, recyclable or not, is one too many.  Is my own conscience clean in this matter?  Of course not: Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now etc.  Indeed, only if all those who oppose the expansion at Pinewoods so vehemently, can look one another in the eye and say in truth that they don’t drink bottled water from plastic bottles, are they entitled to vent anger. As Auden says in ‘First Things First’:

I can’t let the week pass without mentioning the inauguration of President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, which I watched with a mixture of relief and wonder on Wednesday.  I found the ceremony deeply moving; for me it represented a return to the United States in which I spent 11 of my most formative years – idealistic, international, aspirational.  Neither Lincoln nor JFK in his rhetorical skills, Biden’s speech was nonetheless gripping.  I thought its best passage was “Through civil war, the Great Depression, world war, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifices and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us — ENOUGH OF US — have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now,”

On his first day in office Biden signed Executive Orders that returned the US to the Paris Climate Change Agreement (in time for the COP21 conference in Glasgow at the end of November) and to the World Health Organisation.  Thank goodness.  Globally, in the United States and here at home in Harrogate, if we are to slow and reverse global warming and its awful effects - melting ice caps, famine and, yes, drought - it will take enough of us to come together and act for the common good.  The number of people on the planet without access to safe drinking water or indeed any water at all grows every day.  For the people of Harrogate, water, tap or bottled spring, is not a matter of life and death.  For 2.2 billion people around the world it is.  We should remember that when we make decisions in the narrow and parochial economic interest, rather than in the global interests of the environment.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Read More:

• Harrogate Spring Water welcomes recommendation to approve expansion plan,


• How Harrogate council benefits from Harrogate Spring Water plant