Strayside Sunday: That sinking feeling in Ripon

Last updated Jun 5, 2021

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

Hitherto I haven’t found it necessary to use this column to discuss matters of geology. However, recent events in Ripon have forced my hand.

It turns out that Ripon is built on ground heavy in gypsum; chemical formula CaSO 4·2H₂O. Gypsum, Wikipedia informs, is a soft sulphate mineral composed of calcium sulphate dihydrate. The dihydrate bit is important to this story because it means 2 crystalised molecules of water.

By the way, gypsum is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard/sidewalk chalk, and drywall; just FYI. It should not be confused with flotsam, the wreckage that remains afloat when a ship has sunk, or with jetsam, the cargo thrown overboard from a ship in distress.

Currently, neither gypsum, flotsam nor jetsam would be able to float in Ripon Spa baths. Alongside the leisure centre to which they are attached, the new baths remain shut, while the works to build them and to upgrade the adjoining leisure centre are delayed. It seems that a large void (a sinkhole to you and me) has opened on the leisure centre site. It turns out that Ripon’s new leisure centre and baths is being built on ground with obvious stability issues. You see, when crystalised dihydrate is exposed to the right conditions (water and heat), it dissolves and leaks away, creating a hole in the ground. Let’s hope and trust that, when eventually completed, Ripon baths don’t leak.

Chartered Geologist Dr. Alan Thompson has written to Harrogate Borough Council to warn them of the inadequacies of the ground investigations undertaken so far and of the ongoing risk of subsidence. In his letter he expresses his support of the concerns raised by Ripon resident and Chartered Engineer Stanley Mackintosh “regarding the ongoing risk subsidence, the inadequacy of recent ground investigations, and the prospects of instability being exacerbated by the techniques being used”. I hope that the council takes note of those serious and legitimate concerns. My fear is that they won’t,

The void itself needs to be remediated at a cost of £110,000 of Her Majesty’s Pounds Sterling and the council’s insurers need to be reassured that the £3 million plus they have underwritten the site for is based on, ahem, sound footings. Meanwhile, notwithstanding Freedom of Information requests from the Ferret’s intrepid staff, HBC continue to hold the line that the final costs for the leisure centre are commercially sensitive and will therefore remain confidential. I bet they are. For ‘commercially sensitive’ read expensive, over-budget and wasteful. If they are not, then what does the council have to hide and gain from confidentiality?

Meanwhile it transpires that the council has again awarded a large single source contract, without competitive tender, for the design work of a new leisure centre in Knaresborough and for the refurbishment of Harrogate Hydro. Alliance Leisure are to be paid £2,107,161 for the eleven months of work on the £26 million projects.

Eyebrows have been raised all around the district because Alliance hail not from our local economy but rather from Somerset. The contract to build our facilities has, in short, been awarded to “comers-in”. It won’t do. Still, I suppose local hostelries will benefit from a rise in cider sales and will need to stock up on Cheddar. No doubt Alliance is a fine company but, in all seriousness, awarding their contract this way is yet another example of a council that doesn’t know how to behave. It is secretive, arrogant and unaccountable.

Meanwhile, the good people of Starbeck find their own historic baths remain shuttered. The council blame staff shortages and the difficulties of operating ‘covid-safe’ for its continued closure. No re-opening date has been announced and fears are rising that the council plan to close the baths permanently and sell the site for development. I’ve written here before about the potential dangers of spinning off the district’s leisure facilities into a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC). In the pursuit of a commercial approach to running the show there will, by definition, be winners and losers. That’s what makes it commercial. In my view leisure is a public good and ought to be operated by the council as such so that it offers universal access to all the district’s residents.

Each year the NHS spends roughly £60 billion, roughly 40% of its budget, on treating people for avoidable chronic health conditions. Physical activity is a modifiable risk factor for up to 50 chronic conditions, from obesity to diabetes, from cardio-pulmonary disorder to heart failure. And we know that those suffering from these illnesses have disproportionately borne the brunt of both Covid-19 serious illness and mortality. The bottom line is this; the less well off in our society suffer striking health inequality, the costs for which we all bare. We must make getting people active a local as well as a national priority. We should be opening more leisure facilities, not closing them. If we don’t then we will be building on gypsum, not just in Ripon, but across the district.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.