This story is sponsored by Truth Legal.

A Harrogate law firm is celebrating supporting those most in need of legal advice for 10 years.

Truth Legal, which is based on Victoria Avenue, was founded by Andrew Gray back in 2012.

It was set up to help provide access to justice for those who may find the law difficult to navigate and has prided itself on having a “honest and ethical” ethos.

Since then, Truth Legal has gone onto support people for personal injury, clinical negligence, employment, small businesses and immigration cases and even expanded its client base into Leeds with a new office.

Georgina Parkin, the Managing Director at the firm, said the purpose of the company continues to be helping those people who find the law hard to access. She said:

She said:

“Truth Legal was set up in 2012 with the ethos of providing ethical and affordable access to justice. Access to justice has been reduced over the last 12 years with reductions in legal aid and increased court fees.”

“There has been a lot of changes to various areas of the law over the years, such as legal aid and employment tribunals.”

Georgina, who started out as a trainee back in 2013 before rapidly rising to director, is set to oversee the next milestone in the company’s history.

Truth Legal at their 10 year anniversary celebration.

Along with Louis MacWilliam and Navya Shekhar, Georgina will take on majority control of the firm. Catherine Reynolds will continue in her role as a Director of the firm. Andrew will continue to provide support as a consultant.

Going forward, Truth Legal wants to undertake another ambitious recruitment drive and look at setting up another office.

It also intends to take on more social justice cases and expanding its immigration, employment and clinical negligence teams.

For Georgina, the mission of the firm will remain the same – providing access to justice for those who need it most.

For more information on Truth Legal and how to get in touch for legal advice, visit their website here or call 01423 788358.

Harrogate Borough Council has received almost £500,000 from Harrogate Spring Water since 2017 as a share of the company’s annual turnover, new figures reveal.

The council owns the land where the company is based on Harlow Moor Road and receives £13,000 a year in ground rent.

Harrogate Spring Water also has to pay a percentage of annual turnover to the council. This is known as turnover rent.

The turnover rent agreement was drawn up in the early 2000s when the council granted planning permission to build a bottling plant on land leased to the company.

However, the figure has never been made public.

Two-year battle

For almost two years, the Stray Ferret has tried to find out exactly how much the council benefits from the success of the Danone-owned company.

We first asked the question to HBC in a freedom of information request in January 2021, almost two years ago.

But the council refused to tell us. It said:

“This information is deemed to be of commercial value and, if disclosed, may impact on the council’s ability to negotiate and harm its legitimate interests, putting it in a commercially disadvantageous situation.”

We then requested that HBC undertake an internal review of this decision.

However, Joanne Barclay, acting chief solicitor at HBC, came to the same conclusion, adding “confidence may be eroded if commercial rents were to be disclosed”.

In summer 2021, we submitted a complaint about the council’s decision not to disclose the sum to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

ICO is an independent government body that promotes openness within public bodies.

After a long delay due to a backlog, it investigated HBC’s refusal and asked the council to look again at the Stray Ferret’s question. It has now decided to publish the figures for the last five years.

Read more:

• Harrogate Spring Water reports £23m turnover but still makes a loss

• Campaigner accuses Harrogate Spring Water of ‘greenwashing’ over expansion plans

Finally publishing the figures

Earlier this year, the BBC’s Local Democracy Service revealed that HBC receives 0.5% of the company’s annual turnover.

It estimated the council received £853,033 over an 18-year period, however, new information suggests that is likely to be a higher figure.

Since 2017, HBC has received £495,000.

Company accounts published on Friday revealed turnover has returned to pre-covid levels after dipping significantly due to the pandemic.

Each year, the council has received the following sum from Harrogate Spring Water in turnover rent:

2017  – £92,811.87

2018  – £138,026.18

2019  – £91,153.15

2020  – £152,332.02

2021  – £21,995.79

Global brand

Harrogate Borough Council and Harrogate Spring Water’s histories are intertwined.

Water has been bottled in Harrogate for centuries but in the early 1990s Harrogate Spa Water, as the company was previously known, was selling just 1,000 bottles of water a year.

The company’s fortunes changed in the late 1990s when HBC, run then by the Liberal Democrats, identified an opportunity to explore water resources at the current site on Harlow Moor Road.

Harrogate Spring Water has since gone from strength to strength to become a global brand.

The relationship between the two organisations has come into focus due to Harrogate Spring Water’s attempts to expand its bottling plant into Rotary Wood.

The council has always maintained that its status as planning authority and Harrogate Spring Water’s landlord are separate.

A Harrogate Borough Council spokesperson said:

“We have had a base rent and turnover rent agreement in place with Harrogate Spring Water Ltd since 2002.

“As with all of our rental agreements, the money generated is used to help deliver valuable front-line services across the Harrogate district.”

Harrogate Spring Water saw sales return to almost pre-pandemic levels last year but still made a loss.

The company, which is owned by French multinational Danone, last week published its latest annual financial report covering the period from December 2020 to December 2021.

During this period, the company reported a turnover of £23m and a gross profit of £6.9m.

However, despite the improved sales figures for 2021, the company still made a loss of £1.3m after costs, expenses and tax.

Bouncing back

The healthy sales figures reflect how the bottled drinking water firm bounced back after its previous report, which covered March 2020 until December 2020, and saw revenue fall sharply.

The decline in 2020 was mainly due to hotels and restaurants that serve its water being closed due to covid.

Turnover in 2021 returned close to its pre-covid figures for 2019/20, when it recorded a turnover of £26.2m in the 12-month period ending March 31 2020.

Harrogate Spring Water declined to make a comment on the accounts.

Read more:

• Harrogate Spring Water investigating new water sources on council land
• Harrogate Spring Water ‘finalising’ latest expansion plans

The Pinewoods expansion

Meanwhile, Harrogate Spring Water is preparing to submit a new planning application to expand its bottling plant in the Pinewoods.

The company was granted outline planning permission to expand to the west of its existing site in 2016, which meant the principle of development had been established but the details had not been agreed.

The reserved matters application provoked a major backlash due to the loss of trees at Rotary Wood. In January 2021, councillors on the planning committee voted overwhelmingly to reject it— against the wishes of council officers who had recommended approval.

The firm held a consultation on plans for its Rotary Wood site this summer and said it would now provide a further update “in the coming weeks”.

Harrogate Business Improvement District manager Matthew Chapman will leave the organisation in November to take up a new position at North Yorkshire Council.

Mr Chapman, who took up the role in May last year, was previously Leeds BID operations manager in 2016 before becoming Huddersfield’s BID manager in November 2019.

Businesses within Harrogate’s town centre pay the BID 1.5% of their rateable value a year on top of their usual business rates.

Harrogate BID brings in around £500,000 from local firms, which it spends on projects to improve the town and increase the number of visitors.

During Mr Chapman’s 18 months in Harrogate, BID campaigns include power washing 80,000 square metres of the town centre, painting drab walls with colourful murals and buying over 500 pieces of outdoor furniture for businesses to use.

Read more:

• Electric-powered gritters coming to Harrogate district roads
• Yorkshire Water gives £70 account payments to low-income households

He is set to take up a managerial role within North Yorkshire Council, which is the new council that will replace Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council from April.

Harrogate BID chair Sara Ferguson paid tribute to Mr Chapman in a statement and said the search for his replacement had begun.

“Since joining us in May 2021, Matt has been a highly effective, dedicated and extremely popular BID manager. I have certainly enjoyed our working relationship, and that is echoed by all my fellow directors.

“During his time with us, he has become one of the most recognised faces in the town centre. He’s built terrific relationships with the district and county councils, business organisations and business owners and their employees.

“We will be extremely sorry to see Matt go, but the good news for us, and the town centre, is that he will continue to play a role within the organisation, offering guidance and support to the board and BID team, within a part-time role to aid the recruitment process and ensure a smooth transition and handover.

“The BID team is now primed to continue delivering the high impact projects which benefit the town as a whole, and the job of finding Matt’s replacement has now begun.”

There are fears up to three million litres of water went to waste in Ripon yesterday, after a Yorkshire Water mains pipe burst on North Street.

The pipe burst at around 5am and meant around 4,000 homes in Ripon and the surrounding area woke up to no water.

It wasn’t fully restored until 7pm later in the day, with the company setting up two emergency bottled water stations at Ripon fire station and Ripon Racecourse for residents.

Emergency bottled water stations were set up in the city.

The Bishop of Ripon was among those criticising Yorkshire Water’s response to customers, saying its lack of communication was “unacceptable”.

https://twitter.com/HartleyHAM/status/1560284278331678720

A source at the scene told the Stray Ferret that engineers working on the leak said 70 litres of water were lost every second before it was fixed.

In a 12-hour period, this would have meant over three million litres could have been lost in total.

We put this figure to Yorkshire Water. A spokesperson said the figure was “inaccurate” but was unable to say how much water had been lost.

They said as soon as the leak was located engineers managed to stem the flow.

However, according to the company’s Twitter account, the leak wasn’t identified until 12pm, seven hours after it was first reported.

This suggests between 1.5 million and 2 million litres of water could have been lost.

Engineers on the scene Pic: Paul Smith

Read more:

• Ripon residents collect thousands of bottles of water as taps run dry

• Water returns to some properties in Ripon

The burst main has come at a bad time for Yorkshire Water. The Harrogate district is now officially in drought and a hosepipe ban will come into force from August 26.

We asked Yorkshire Water what caused the leak and a spokesperson sent the following statement:

“Our pipework has been under a lot of pressure recently – with high peaks of water usage and the dry ground causing soil to contract, which causes pipes to fracture more easily. We’ve increased resource in our field teams over the last few weeks, so that we can catch more small leaks before they turn into bursts and fix the big bursts as soon as possible.

“It took a little bit longer than usual to locate the burst pipe and complete the fix yesterday, as it was underground and tricky to locate. We delivered bottled water to customers on our priority services register and updated our customers via the website, social media and text, as to where they could collect bottled water.

“We’re grateful to our customers for their patience whilst we fixed the issue – those eligible for compensation in relation to the water supply interruption will receive it automatically.”

Business Breakfast is sponsored by Harrogate law firm Truth Legal.

Redcentric makes another acquisition

IT service provider Redcentric has completed the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of 4D Data Centres for £10m.

4D Data Centres is a data centre operator and cloud services provider. It operates centres in Surrey, Gatwick, London and Kent.

Redcentric’s headquarters are at Central House on Otley Road and has made a number of acquisitions over the past 12 months.

In June, the company acquired three data centres as well as network services from Sungard Availability Services (UK) Ltd, which went into administration.

In March it acquired security testing firm 7 Elements for around £4.5m. Last October, it bought York IT company Piksel IS for £9.5m.

Read more:

• Chamber meeting to focus on business support
• Ripon business gets Dragons’ Den star endorsement

Free business advice at Harrogate drop-in

A business support drop-in session will be held at Harrogate Co-Lab next Wednesday, July 13.

Hosted by Harrogate Borough Council’s business services department, the free event will have experts from the growth manager service, Ad-Venture and York and North Yorkshire Growth Hub.

Each will be available to answer questions about starting and growing a business, as well as free support and grants available for businesses in the Harrogate district.

The event runs from 9am to 5pm at the Co-Lab base on Kings Road, Harrogate.

For more information, email business@harrogate.gov.uk.

This advertorial is sponsored by Reed Boardall.

Harrogate man Tom Cowgill is proud to work at Reed Boardall.

The long-established Boroughbridge company is a local success story and has grown into the UK’s largest single-site cold storage facility with an 800‐strong team.

It stores and delivers stocks of the UK’s leading chilled and frozen brands across the UK, Europe and further afield to all of the best‐known supermarkets and food service providers.

Tom joined the company straight out of school aged 18 and works in its warehouse operation. He said he enjoys being an important cog in a well-oiled machine and says “there’s no place” like Reed Boardall.

Family values

Reed Boardall’s HQ is capable of storing over 168,000 pallets of frozen produce at any one time.

It’s a huge operation but Tom, who is now 24, said the company has strong family values.

However, that wasn’t a surprise to him as his dad, Paul, works there too – he’s been with the company for 12 years and is currently a Development Manager.

Tom has earned three promotions and is currently a team leader in the picking department. He said the company is “great for advancement”.

Reed Boardall, which is based in Boroughbridge. Picture: Reed Boardall.

He added:

“They’ve looked after me really well and I got promoted quickly. They obviously see something in me. 

“You build good relationships with management and they’ll help you as much as you help them.”

Every day is different

Tom manages a tight-knit team of seven people who he said can have a laugh together. He considers them to all be his friends.

The facility is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and Tom said shifts are flexible to fit around employees’ lives.

He said there are always opportunities to earn extra money too by doing overtime.

Tom hopes to progress further with the company and said there are teams that specialise in engineering, transportation, packing or office-based roles.

He said:

“There are always different career paths at Reed Boardall.”

He added:

“It is a challenging job, especially in a picking department. It’s different every day and it’s a great place to work.”

Click here to find out more about what careers are available at Reed Boardall.

Harrogate-based law firm Haddletons has announced a merger with Leeds firm SCE Solicitors.

SCE provides specialist employment, HR support and health and safety services.

The merger is expected to provide the enlarged firm with the opportunity to bolster the range of services it offers to clients.

The company will trade under the name of Haddletons

The merger is expected to provide the enlarged firm with the opportunity to grow, strengthen and further develop the range of services offered to clients.

James Haddleton, chief executive of Haddletons, said:

“We are delighted to welcome Samira and the SCE team into the Haddletons family.

“At both SCE and Haddletons we know our clients well and we know what we want to offer them. For that reason, the tie-up is a strategic and mutually beneficial move for both our firms’ clients, bringing them excellent practical support borne of decades of experience. We can’t wait to get going with our extended team.”

Read more:

• Harrogate district village wins eight-year battle for more planning control
• New Conservative Wathvale councillor puts young people at top of agenda

Harrogate business group celebrates 125th birthday

More than 100 business people attended the 125th birthday celebration for Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce last night.

The event, which was held at Roosters taproom at Hornbeam Park, included the presentation of several awards, including the President’s Cup, which was given to Robert Ogden (pictured above) of jewellers Ogden of Harrogate for services to the town.

The chamber’s 125 birthday was actually last year but the celebration was postponed for 12 months due to covid.

Harrogate-based S&SA Architects will be expanding the company to Leeds city centre.

The architect practice, which operates out of a head office in Harrogate, will open its new office at Park House in Park Square in April.

The company had continued to grow during the pandemic and received several notable commissions in the healthcare and residential sectors, which created a demand for its expansion.

Inside the new office at Park House Credit: S&SA Architects

It plans to recruit people in roles at all levels, including in apprenticeship and senior positions.

Chris Paraskos, associate architect at S&SA Architects, said:

“We’re incredibly excited about this expansion. The office location is easily accessible for our diverse London and Leeds clients, being only a few moments’ walk from the station.

“It also offers all our staff the ability to work flexibly at home and across both offices. It will encourage collaboration between teams and better wellbeing, which is a part of our cultural response to the changing world of hybrid work post covid.”

S&SA Architects specialises in residential, retail, logistics, healthcare, sports and leisure sectors. Clients include Tesco, Keepmoat, Exemplar Healthcare and Broadacres.

Read more:

• Bank machines to be fitted in Knaresborough Library building
• Harrogate bakery expands with £250k project