Plans for 9 more warehouses at business park near A1(M)

Plans have been submitted for a further expansion of the Harrogate 47 business park next to the A1 (M) near Knaresborough.

Described as a “sustainable employment development,” the site is off junction 47 of the motorway and once completed will include employment space for office, hi-tech and logistics businesses.

It’s one of the key employment sites in the former Harrogate Borough Council Local Plan with the potential to bring 2,000 jobs to the district.

The development is being brought forward by Flaxby Investment LLP, which is a joint venture between Opus North and Bridges Fund Management.

The developer won planning permission from Harrogate Borough Council to develop part of the site last year.
It is bringing the development forward in stages and is now seeking permission to build nine further warehouses with a total size of 129,953 sq ft.

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The first four warehouses would be located close to the Flaxby roundabout that was completed in 2014. These will be smaller starter units for business with a size of under 5,000 sq. ft each. The remaining larger units would be situated close to the Ilke Homes factory which produces modular homes. The plans include 72 car parking spaces that would also be added to the site.

Speaking previously about the scheme, Ryan Unsworth, development director at Opus North said:

“This development is key for the Harrogate and wider North Yorkshire economy due to its capacity to transform vacant land into office and industrial space for local, regional and national occupiers, and the vast job-creating potential it has.

“The delivery of Harrogate 47 will allow local companies to expand and grow within the region in addition to attracting inward investment into the district.”

The application will be decided by North Yorkshire Council at a later date.

Harrogate council’s judicial review bill amounted to £74,000

Harrogate Borough Council has revealed it paid Flaxby Park £17,000 in legal costs after last year’s judicial review between the two parties.

The sum is in addition to the £57,360 the council spent on its own legal fees to contest the case.

It means the council’s full legal bill for the long-running saga amounted to £74,360.

The developer brought the judicial review after the council opted for a site at Green Hammerton over Flaxby as the location for a new 3,000-home settlement in the district. It claimed the process was flawed.

At October’s High Court hearing, Mr Justice Holgate ruled in the council’s favour by saying it did not have to make the decision again.

But he ordered the council to pay 15% of Flaxby’s legal costs because it failed to adequately consider an environmental assessment of alternative locations for the settlement.

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The council initially refused to say how much it had spent on legal fees.

The Stray Ferret sent a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the information but the council said it was exempt from disclosure because its lawyers’ legal fees should remain private.

We requested an internal review of this decision. Joanne Barclay, acting chief solicitor for corporate services, overturned the council’s decision and revealed the fee paid.

Today’s revelation of the sum paid to Flaxby means the full legal cost of the review is finally known.

Strayside Sunday: Computer says ‘No’ (if you are a badger…)

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

The comedian David Walliams’ brilliant early-2000s Little Britain series of sketches in which a gormless, obstructive female bank clerk, shop assistant or council worker parrots an automated rejection of a loan, credit or welfare application were so funny because they captured one of the great frustrations of modern life:  The outsourced, de-humanised, jobsworth enabled, machine-based decision making of our times;  the imposition of an electronic barrier between the customer and unseen service provider; the replacement of an accountable human face with programmed software and technology.

Scroll forward almost twenty years and our good friends at Harrogate Borough Council have, in this spirit, added to their ever-lengthening list of “you couldn’t make it up” bungling howlers.  This week, the Stray Ferret reported that Harrogate resident and keen birdwatcher Bill Shaw, was shocked to find that his objections to Richborough Homes planned 95-dwelling development at Granby Farm had been heavily redacted on the council’s planning portal.

Mr. Shaw’s objections were not a matter of national or local security and they did not expose the names and secret activities of individuals in the sensitive employ of the state.  Rather, Mr. Shaw had made the point that Granby Farm is rich in wildlife; with roosting owls, feeding kites, setting badgers and buzzing bees about to be evicted from their homes in favour of upright and two legged animals.

It turns out that Harrogate’s planning department is now so resource strapped that an algorithm (defined by the way by Google’s own algorithm as ‘a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer’) has replaced the planning officer who used to read planning objections and, using their experience and discretion, mark out anything that might identify, embarrass or compromise concerned individuals.  The ‘redaction algorithm’ (how sinister is that?) got the bit between its teeth and blacked out any reference to Mother Nature and her bounties.  And, in what must have been one of most egregious displays of misplaced irony I’ve seen – because I can’t possibly believe they could have been serious – the council put out a public statement in which it said that “our redaction algorithm has been overzealous.”  I wonder if the redaction algorithm has been hauled into Richard Cooper’s office for a dressing down, told to “cool it,” or perhaps is in receipt of a written warning?

This episode is both comic and troubling.  As well as making us laugh it shines a light on the creeping ethical and practical dangers of replacing human with artificial intelligence.  Beyond making sure that the any algorithms we use actually work well, and in this case it most certainly did not, we need to ask the first principles question; does the use case sufficiently protect the principles of transparency and accountability that are fundamental to our democratic system?

When the future of our environment and wildlife is at stake, when our need for housing stock is urgent and when we must surely make nuanced and well-informed choices that balance the benefits and risks of these two competing factors, I want skilled, informed and accountable people and processes to assess the plans before them in light of any objections made.

In example after example Harrogate Borough Council demonstrates a willingness to bend the rules and ignore the spirit of accountability and transparency.  Having sat on its hands for four months following the damage caused to the Stray by the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire it ignored normal procurement and competition rules on the grounds of an ‘emergency’ and awarded contractor Glendale Services a sole source contract worth around £40,000.  Thank goodness the Stray has been repaired because I’m sure it will see a huge increase in foot traffic as a result of the Council’s sole source award of a £165,000 contract to an Ipswich based company, the Jacob Bailey Group, to build a new ‘destination management system’ (website) for Visit Harrogate.  This decision justified on the basis that we now face an economic ‘emergency.’

It’s been revealed too that the council spent £57,630 on a judicial review defence in respect of the decision to press ahead with the housing development at Green Hammerton, instead of Flaxby Park.  Having initially refused to say how much of our money they spent on lawyers defending a planning decision they made in our name; and having received a Freedom of Information request for their troubles, the offending number was finally revealed in a tweet.  The initial refusal to share the lawyer’s fees was justified with the absurd claim that lawyer’s fees should remain private.  What cobblers.  We have every right to know what the council spends on professional services so that we can make an assessment about whether they (we) received value for money.

And here’s the rub.  The council is spending taxpayer money.  Millions of pounds of it.  It is our right to know that it has been spent well.  It is our right to know who made the decision to spend it and why.  It is our right to be able to judge the decisions and actions of those who presume to govern and administer.  It seems to me this council will hide behind any old excuse to act as they please and combine arrogance and incompetence in equal and generous measure.

“Computer says no.”

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Do you have a view on this column or is there a political issue you’d like Paul to write about? Get in touch on paul@thestrayferret.co.uk