Councillors have criticised North Yorkshire Council after it confirmed not all meetings will be live streamed online.
North Yorkshire Council replaced the seven district and borough councils, including Harrogate, as well as North Yorkshire County Council on Saturday.
It is the largest council area in England, spanning over 3,000 square miles with most of its meeting taking place at County Hall in Northallerton.
During the covid pandemic, the government passed legislation to allow council business to continue online. Meetings took place on apps such as Microsoft Teams and were live streamed for residents to watch on YouTube.
Since pandemic restrictions were lifted, Harrogate Borough Council continued to live stream all of its meetings whereas North Yorkshire County Council only routinely live streamed executive and full council meetings.
Following a question by a councillor, a senior officer at the new council confirmed in an email that the previous North Yorkshire County Council live streaming arrangement will continue.
County Hall in Northallerton
This means that at the moment, the only chance residents will get to see what is happening in a host of other meetings, including those concerning public health, education and transport, is if they travel to Northallerton.
However, meetings in Harrogate, such as planning committee, licensing committee and area constituency committee, will be streamed using equipment bought by Harrogate Borough Council.
But they will no longer include developments affecting Ripon, Masham and Pateley Bridge as meetings in Harrogate will cover the Harrogate and Knaresborough parliamentary constituency.
The email concludes by saying the new council is reviewing “what is possible and practicable” regarding live streaming meetings in the future.
Three-hour round trip
In some parts of Craven such as Ingleton or Bentham it’s a three-hour round trip to County Hall.
Andy Brown, Green Party councillor for Aire Valley, said residents should not be expected to travel to Northallerton to “watch democracy in action.” He added:
“Working online can save hours of travelling and make the meeting more efficient. It is crazy that I am travelling for 90 minutes to attend meetings that could be done online.
“It is wrong that meetings which could be steamed into the homes of every interested member of the public are not conducted as openly as possible.”
Andy Solloway, Independent councillor for Skipton West and West Craven said:
“The outgoing Craven District Council have been recording meetings for years, and live streaming them, especially decision making ones, would be a good thing for local democracy and for public participation and engagement.”
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Arnold Warneken, Green Party councillor for Ouseburn, also said he was in favour of the council live streaming all meetings:
“Someone should be able to open their laptop in their house and see what the council is up to. Sometimes it’s like watching paint dry but you can have it on in background. That is transparency and engagement.
“The meetings should all be streamed if we’re serious about carbon and the impact we make ourselves. There’s a lot of support for it.”
What the council says
North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for democratic services, Cllr
David Chance, said:
Online meetings during covid saved council £4m“We are committed to ensuring that the new North Yorkshire Council has local
communities at its heart, despite serving such a vast area across the county.“The online streaming of council meetings has been an important way of making sure that access is available as widely as possible to both councillors and members of the public.
“Meetings of full council and the executive will be routinely streamed online, and we will continue to record and broadcast planning and licensing meetings that were previously overseen by district and borough councils.
“We will consider broadcasting or recording other meetings when there is a strong public interest or where there are facilities in place that enable it to be readily done.
“The new council is the third largest in the country, and now oversees services that were previously delivered by eight authorities in North Yorkshire. There are therefore a significant number of meetings each year, which is in the region of 200.
“We are reviewing what is possible and practicable regarding the recording and broadcasting of meetings, taking into account the facilities which are available across the county, the IT and democratic support that is needed as well as investment in IT infrastructure.”
The introduction of online meetings due to covid saved North Yorkshire County Council £4 million.
An officer’s report to a meeting of the authority’s executive tomorrow reveals the huge amount of money saved as well as environmental benefits.
The staff mileage bill fell by more than £1.7 million In the year to April 2021 compared with the previous 12 months.
Staff drove 4,117,062 fewer miles to meetings than in 2019/20.
The introduction of online meetings by the authority, which employs 15,000 staff, saw a total saving of almost £4 million, the equivalent to more than 2,700 average annual council tax bills.
The report estimates over the two years it saved 369,500 hours, or 49,200 working days, the equivalent to some 233 full-time staff.
It states:
“Over 2,000 employees had moved quickly to work from home at the start of the pandemic and the way in which teams can work remotely and virtually has been transformational.
“There has been a carefully considered approach to developing future ways of working post-covid following whole organisation engagement in 2021.
“Hybrid working has been welcomed by council staff. This new approach provides great flexibility for many roles.”
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The authority, which aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, reduced carbon emissions by 2,710 tonnes over the two years because of the reduced mileage.
The council aims to generate further post-pandemic savings by rationalising its extensive property portfolio as more work is completed virtually and demand for physical meeting spaces has been reduced.
The officer’s report states:
“It should also be noted these savings are just in terms of travelling to and from meetings.
“The savings to individual members of staff working from home, fuel cost and time, and to the environment, will be significantly bigger.
“Although some of these figures will start to increase again as staff return to the office on a more frequent basis, there will be many other benefits that new ways of working have brought us that can be retained.”
7m fewer documents printed
The report highlights other benefits of changed working practices, including improved attendance at multi-agency meetings, the ability to attend more meetings and arrange meetings sooner than if relying on getting people together at the same place.
With many staff working from home and attending meetings online, there has been a sharp reduction in the number of documents being printed.
In the year before the pandemic the council’s staff printed some 14.5 million sheets of paper compared to 7.6 million last year. Over the last two years the reduction in printing has saved the equivalent of 1,800 trees.
The authority’s deputy leader, Councillor Gareth Dadd, said while it remained unclear as to the level of savings that the work practice changes would produce in the coming years, how technology could be used to cut travel would “feature very heavily in our thinking moving forward”.
Have devolution fears that Harrogate will be voiceless come true?One of the key concerns in the run-up to this year’s shake-up of North Yorkshire local government was that the vast new unitary authority could leave the Harrogate district without a strong voice.
This week, when the dust settled on the local elections and Carl Les, the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire County Council named his new 10-person executive team, the concerns appeared to have merit.
Just one councillor from the district — Michael Harrison, who represents Killinghall, Hampsthwaite and Saltergate, was included on the executive.
It means many of those making key decisions affecting Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough, Boroughbridge, Pateley Bridge and Masham might not even have been to some of those places.
For the last 48 years, local political decision making has been shared between North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council.
But with the latter in its death throes, it seems likely that all local political decisions will soon be made at County Hall, the 1906 Grade II listed building in Northallerton, a market town in Hambleton, firstly by North Yorkshire County Council and then by North Yorkshire Council.
The 10-person executive table at Wednesday’s meeting, with Michael Harrison far right.
Just nine of the 47 Conservative councillors on the county council are from the district. So will the Harrogate district not have adequate representation?
‘Strong voice will remain’
Despite the changes, Cllr Harrison told the Stray Ferret he is confident the district will continue to have a strong voice.
He said local councillors will shape the executive’s decisions, firstly through task groups that will inform the transition to the new North Yorkshire Council next year and then through the Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee.
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The six area constituency committees are expected to be given stronger powers next year, possibly over key issues such as planning, as part of Cllr Les’ ‘double devolution’ pledge. The Lib Dems will have eight of the 13 councillors on the one for Harrogate and Knaresborough.
Cllr Harrison said:
“There will be real power devolved to the area constituency committees and the fact that the Conservatives don’t control the one for Harrogate and Knaresborough won’t stop that.”
Cllr Harrison added that he expects Harrogate Borough Council’s offices at Knapping Mount to continue to play a key operational role when staff transfer to North Yorkshire Council next year because “it’s a modern fit-for-purpose flexible office space”.
Harrogate Borough Council’s offices at Knapping Mount.
The Conservatives were returned to power in North Yorkshire with a greatly reduced majority of four on May 5.
Andrew Williams, an Independent who was elected in Ripon Minster and Moorside, said the more even political composition since the May 5 elections meant the views of opposition parties would be heard more, whereas in the past the previous huge Tory majority meant many issues were just waived through. He said:
“If you go about things in a constructive and positive manner it’s possible to get things done.”
Harrogate town council
Cllr Williams, who is also the leader of Ripon City Council, said the best way to ensure Harrogate’s voice was heard would be through the creation of a Harrogate town council.
He said Ripon City Council had effectively provided a voice for the city and suggested the same could happen in Harrogate.
He added that such a move would pave the way for more independents.
“People will be looking for voices on a town council that stand up for Harrogate and will appreciate a less partisan approach.”
Five Harrogate Independents failed to come close to winning a division on May 5. But Cllr Williams suggested they got their tactics wrong:
“They started campaigning too late. You can’t just rock up at election time and win.
“To win an election as an Independent you have got to be known by a lot of people and campaign early.”
A referendum could take place in Harrogate to see if people want to create a town council.
But Cllr Harrison said people ought to know what the purpose of a Harrogate town council would be and what the added charge to their council tax precept would be before any vote takes place.
County Hall in Northallerton
Whatever one’s political persuasion, the political scene has been enlivened by the shake-up to local government.
But whether local voices are heard strongly at County Hall, the 1906 Grade II listed building where the county council is based, remains to be seen.
The Stray Ferret asked the Liberal Democrats in Harrogate and Knaresborough to comment for this article but did not receive a response by our deadline.