Council to debate petition to lift Harrogate’s Beech Grove closure

A 770-signature petition calling for Harrogate’s first low traffic neighbourhood to be removed is to be debated by councillors this week.

Members of North Yorkshire County Council’s Harrogate and Knaresborough area constituency committee will meet on Thursday to discuss the traffic restrictions.

They were introduced in February and have proved popular with pedestrians and cyclists but caused complaints from some locals.

The trial restrictions have seen planters placed on Beech Grove to stop through traffic and create quieter streets where residents feel safer walking and cycling.

It has made getting around the area by car more difficult and that is the idea behind it – to decrease car use.

David Pickering is one of the 770 residents who have signed the petition against the restrictions, which he said have only made traffic worse on surrounding streets.

He said: 

“I continue to be surprised by the enthusiasm of North Yorkshire County Council and Harrogate Borough Council to spend taxpayers’ money on projects which are universally unpopular with local residents.

“It is all very well for public sector employees to sit around examining ways of maintaining budgets and tinkering with local roads to divert traffic when it has no material impact whatsoever on their personal lives.

“But on the ground it will concentrate traffic down certain roads.

“Anyone with a modicum of common sense would be able to work out that it will just concentrate traffic on Cold Bath Road and Queens Road.

“I just don’t see the point of the initiative.”

The low traffic neighbourhood was introduced by highways authority North Yorkshire County Council and received the strong backing of Harrogate Borough Council.

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Last month, the county council ended a public consultation on the restrictions ahead of a decision on whether to extend the 18-month trial, make the road changes permanent or scrap them altogether.

Barriers on Victoria Road

Last month the county council also announced plans to introduce a one-way traffic filter on nearby Victoria Road in another trial to improve road safety and encourage cycling and walking.

These restrictions will be trialled from this month and involve erecting a barrier to prevent vehicles from leaving to join Otley Road.

Mr Pickering said many residents were also against these plans, which he fears will make traffic “unbearable” on nearby Queens Road and Cold Bath Road.

The county council was contacted for comment but did not respond by the time of publication.

Harrogate’s Local Lotto raises over £160,000 for good causes

The Local Lotto celebrated its third birthday at the weekend having raised over £160,000 for local causes

Harrogate Borough Council set up the lotto to raise money for local voluntary sector organisations.

Players have won a combined total of £41,000.

Every 60p in £1 goes to 108 local causes, including Autism Angels, Harrogate Easier Living Project (HELP), and Woodfield Millenium Green.

Beneficiaries paid tribute to the fund.

Low Harrogate Crown Green Bowling Club said in a statement the Local Lotto had “provided a revenue stream that has enabled the bowling club to invest in new equipment”.

Ripon Community Link added the initiative had provided “a regular, reliable income stream when charitable income can be erratic, especially in such turbulent times”.

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A pie chart showing where the money goes

Cllr Sam Gibbs, chair of Harrogate Borough Council’s voluntary and community sector liaison group, said:

“These vital funds can sometimes be a lifeline for smaller community groups and I’d like to thank everyone for getting involved and signing up to play the Local Lotto.”

The Local Lotto takes place every week, with the winning draw every Saturday night.

For more information, see the local lotto’s website.

Harrogate salaries increase as number of EU workers drop

The average salary of jobs advertised in the Harrogate district from January to March 2021 rose by 28% compared with the same three-month period last year, according to a report by Harrogate borough council.

The quarterly economic overview of the Harrogate district says that the average salary for jobs advertised in the first quarter of this year was £32,000 – up from £25,000 in 2020.

The five sectors providing the largest number of employment opportunities were human health and social work; education; professional, scientific and technical; wholesale and retail trade; and accommodation and food services.

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However, the number of vacancies in the care and hospitality industries in particular are causing headaches.

It was reported this week that around 500 care workers in North Yorkshire could be forced out of their jobs when compulsory vaccines come into force in November.

Mike Padgham, chair of the non-profit organisation Independent Care Group, which provides care services in North Yorkshire and York, told the local democracy reporting service about the scale of the crisis. He said: 

“The staffing crisis is now so bad that providers are battling day-to-day to cover shifts both in homes and in looking after people in their own home.

“Many say it is the worst they have known in more than 30 years and so we need urgent action now before the added pressures of winter turn this into a total meltdown.”

EU nationals in the Harrogate district

Meanwhile, the number of national insurance number (NINO) registrations by EU nationals has decreased year-on-year by 64%.

Between January and March 2020, there were 67 NINO EU registrations.

In the same period this year, there were only 24 NINO EU registrations in total.

There are some signs that this may change though. Last month, the branch manager of Travail Employment Group, which recruits front-of-house and catering positions across the district, spoke to the Stray Ferret about the impact of Brexit on hospitality recruitment.

Lisa Headford believed it’s overly simplistic to blame Brexit on the recruitment crisis in hospitality. She said:

“It’s not definitive. We’ve had a number of people come back to Harrogate from Poland as during the lockdown they didn’t have a permanent job, and they wouldn’t have got furlough. They are now gravitating back.”

Good news for the high street

The council report also shows an improving picture for the town centre, with the retail vacancy rate decreasing from 8.6% in January-March 2020 to 6.8% in 2021.

Councillor Graham Swift, Harrogate Borough Council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for economic development, said:

“It is really encouraging to see that the economy is recovering well across the Harrogate district. Especially with shop vacancy rates reducing.

“As the district starts to exit coronavirus lockdowns and returns to a more normalised ways of living, we are keen to ensure that key investment projects are pushed ahead to ensure the local economy recovers and thrives.

“We will also not want to do this alone, and have already been working proactively with a wide range of people and organisations and will continue to work in collaboration with our partners to share ideas and maximise resources we have available to us.”

Meeting next week to plan return of original Harrogate Christmas Market

Organisers of the original Harrogate Christmas Market are holding a meeting next week to discuss moves to bring the event back as soon as possible.

Harrogate Borough Council refused a licence to Harrogate Christmas Market Ltd in July because of safety concerns about the site on Montpellier Hill.

The council subsequently revealed it was holding formal talks with Manchester firm Market Place Europe about hosting a smaller 10-day event in December. The location has yet to be revealed.

In an email sent to supporters, seen by the Stray Ferret, Harrogate Christmas Market Ltd said Harrogate’s White Hart Hotel would hold a meeting on Monday afternoon. It said:

“We have had many communications expressing a desire that this should resume as soon as possible as an annual event in Harrogate’s calendar.

“If this is to be possible then we need a forward strategic plan which will include a succession plan for this limited by guarantee company.”

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Brian Dunsby, one of the volunteers who established the Christmas market in 2012, told the Stray Ferret that he didn’t know yet what his next steps will be. He said:

“I’m very disappointed that events had to be cancelled, when traders have given us a massive vote of support.

“I’m at my wits’ end. We are devastated. We can’t find a way forward.

“I can’t understand the council’s attitude. I think the town centre needs the Christmas market to continue, and there’s no better location than in Montpellier valley.”

Harrogate town centre offices to be converted into apartments

A plan to convert an office block in Harrogate town centre into new apartments has been given the go-ahead.

Harrogate Borough Council approved proposals to transform the building on Cambridge Road into eight apartments.

Developers Lake House Investments, which is based near Brighouse, submitted the plans for the three-storey building.

The plans would see the first and second floors converted for residential use. The ground floor is currently occupied by bakers Greggs and a YMCA charity shop.

In its proposals, Lake House said the site had “excellent transport links” and was just a few minutes walk from the train station.

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As a result, the developer said no parking would be necessary.

It said in its planning documents:

“Given the sustainable town centre location close to a range of services and amenities, no off street parking is considered necessary as any impact to any pre- existing problems of access, road safety or traffic flow would be minimal.

“Visitor parking will be provided by local pay and display on street spaces.”

A similar application to convert the offices to apartments was approved by the council in 2019.

Battle to save Ripon Spa Baths being sold for housing receives boost

The battle to prevent Ripon Spa Baths being sold for housing received a major boost today when the historic building was listed as an Asset of Community Value.

Harrogate Borough Council put the historic baths on the market in February, leading to concerns it could be sold to a private developer and turned into housing.

Ripon City Council, Ripon Civic Society and Ripon Together called for any sale not to be rushed through and applied for the 116-year-old Grade II listed building, which has a distinctive terracotta-clad frontage, to be listed as an asset of community value.

Ripon city council leader Andrew Williams told the Stray Ferret today the application had been accepted.

It means the local community now has six months to put together a bid to buy the building, which Harrogate Borough Council has said will be ‘surplus to requirements‘ when the new Ripon Leisure Centre opens this year.

Cllr Williams said he was “highly delighted” by today’s news. He added:

“I hope it means we can now guarantee a future for the site that doesn’t involve it being turned into expensive apartments.

“People across the community have been calling for it not to be housing. There has been very broad support for it remaining as a community asset.

“We now need to explore all the options open to the local community with proper professional advice, to secure the long-term use of the spa baths for community use.”

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Next steps

Cllr Williams said it seemed unlikely the baths would remain as a swimming pool and what happened next remained unclear.

“I’ll be talking to the full council on Monday, looking to appoint professional advisors on what can be done with the building and to create a development brief for how it can be used by the community.

“A new use needs to be found, and I doubt it will still be a swimming pool. But it does provide an exciting opportunity to reinvent the site and city as a whole”.

The Stray Ferret has asked Harrogate Borough Council for comment but has yet to receive a response.

What does Asset of Community Value status mean?

According to Harrogate Borough Council’s website, a building or land can be listed as an asset of community value if:

Once an asset is listed, owners can’t dispose of it without:

The owner doesn’t have to sell the asset to the community group.

History of plans to sell Ripon Spa Baths

 

Plan to convert former Hampsthwaite surgery into a house

Plans have been submitted ti turn a former doctors surgery in Hampsthwaite into a house.

Dr Bannatyne and Partners, which was based at Winksey Cottage, High Street, in the village closed in March.

The surgery was part of Church Avenue Medical Group and shut down after practitioners felt the cottage was no longer a viable place for a medical practice.

A proposal to close the surgery submitted to North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group said:

“The branch surgery is no longer fit for purpose and has limited possible use. Approximately 800 patients are registered as using the branch but the majority of these patients also use the main site at Church Avenue.

“The practice is not asking patients to re-register with another practice and will accommodate all clinical capacity provided in Hampsthwaite within the Church Avenue site so there is no loss of service delivery.”

Now, Mozaffar Mari, a developer who bought the property, has submitted plans to Harrogate Borough Council to convert the former surgery into a house.

The developer said in an application to the council that the building had been previously used as a house before becoming a surgery and could be “readily converted back” into a home.

The borough council will make a decision on the proposal at a later date.

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Lost planning appeals have cost Harrogate district taxpayers £209,000 in legal fees

Planning appeals lost by Harrogate Borough Council have cost taxpayers almost a quarter of a million pounds in legal fees over the last nine years, it has been revealed.

Figures obtained by the Local Democracy Reporting Service show the council has spent £209,411 on lawyers plus £15,765 on covering developers’ costs when being found guilty of “unreasonable behaviour” in unsuccessful legal battles over where new homes and businesses should be built.

The findings have prompted questions over how willing the Conservative-run council is to take on developers and why third-party lawyers are sometimes used over in-house legal teams.

It also comes at a time when the authority is waiting to hear how much it will have to pay developers behind plans for a Starbucks drive-thru on Wetherby Road which was approved by the government’s planning inspectorate at an appeal in June.

Councillor Pat Marsh, leader of the Liberal Democrats and a long-serving member of the council’s planning committee, previously expressed her disappointment over a decision by council officers not to contest the Starbucks appeal and instead leave it to residents.

She has now said:

“The council should be prepared to defend the decisions using staff at an appeal, after all they are the qualified staff with local knowledge, what could be better.

“Every time they employ outside help it also adds to the cost.

“And even when they refuse to defend members’ decisions, as they did with the Starbucks application, they still had costs awarded against them so it would have been better for them to at least defend the council’s decision.”

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Councillor Marsh also took aim at the “unfair” planning system which allows appeals to be lodged by developers, but not by councils or residents.

She added:

“Why should developers have the upper hand? Why not a more level playing field? You never see a poor developer but you can see poor, underfunded councils.

“The planning system is very unfair and the balance is on the side of the large developers, in particular, those with the biggest purse.

“Appeals are costly and councillors are aware that it is council tax payers money that is at risk so would only proceed if they truly felt they were making the right decision for their community.

“There have been successes and also failures, but that is the cost of decision-making.”

Flaxby costs

Legal costs are only made against the council if it is found to have acted “unreasonably” when making planning decisions.

These costs are also made regardless of whether the council has won or lost an appeal, meaning successful appeals can also prove costly.

Last year, the council was successful in an appeal against rejected plans for 2,750 homes at the former Flaxby Park golf course, but spent £57,360 on external legal teams and paid £17,000 to cover a proportion of the developer’s costs.

These figures are not included in the total £225,176 spent over the last nine years because this sum only focuses on lost appeals.

Defending its record, the council said the majority of appeals made against it are unsuccessful, with 80% of applications referred to the planning inspectorate over the last two years resulting in defeat for the developers.

A council spokesperson said:

“This is positive as, by and large, the inspectorate has noted that our recommendations and decisions align with national and local policies.

“Costs would only be awarded to the council if it had deemed the actions of the applicant to be unreasonable, had made an application to the planning inspectorate and this had been successful.

“This only occurs in a very small number of cases.

“It is inevitably disappointing for the actions of the council to be judged as unreasonable. We work hard to ensure such occurrences do not occur, and to learn from the rare examples where a costs award is made.”

When has the council paid legal costs to developers at lost appeals?

And how much has been paid to external legal teams?

Findings of UCI review to be published before end of the year

The findings of a council-run review into Harrogate’s hosting of the 2019 UCI Road World Championships could be revealed before the end of this year.

Members of Harrogate Borough Council’s overview and scrutiny commission are running the review into the cycling event, which was hailed as a success by organisers but criticised by many businesses and residents who had complaints over road closures and diversions.

The nine-day event will also be remembered for leaving West Park Stray severely damaged after it was used as a spectator area during heavy rainfall, with repairs works and upgrades later costing £130,000.

Cllr Nick Brown, who is one of several councillors leading the cross-party review, told a meeting on Monday that the commission had asked residents to give their views on the event as part of a consultation which will now be opened up to businesses.

He said: 

“The public consultation has been undertaken – we have got about 700 responses which for a consultation is quite a lot.

“Those have been analysed and we are going to do some further consultation with the business community and a number of other organisations.

“This has taken rather longer than I would have liked, but obviously we have had covid so it has not been a very easy time.

“We will hopefully have a report to the commission in December.”

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If the findings are published in December, it will mark more than two years since the event was held in September 2019 when hundreds of international cyclists competed in races starting in different towns and cities across Yorkshire but with each finishing in Harrogate.

The review of the event was launched last year with the aim of “building on its successes and identifying any areas for improvement to inform the organisation of future events,” the council previously said.

It is also separate to an economic impact study of the event which was carried out by accountancy firm Ernst and Young at a cost of £19,000 to the council.

The study concluded the championships was watched by a global television audience of 329 million and resulted in an economic boost to the local economy of £17.8 million.

However, it did not take into account losses by businesses affected by road closures and a reported drop in town centre footfall – something the new review is aiming to cover.

Harrogate’s Oatlands Drive set to get double yellow lines?

A review into traffic measures on Harrogate’s Oatlands Drive is likely to include new double yellow lines, according to a senior county councillor.

North Yorkshire County Council is due to publish a new set of measures this autumn to improve walking and cycling in the Oatlands Drive area.

The Oatlands Constituency Feasibility Study is being drawn up after the council ditched proposals to introduce a one-way system on the road following complaints from residents.

Cllr Don Mackenzie, executive councillor for highways at North Yorkshire County Council, told the Stray Ferret that he expected double yellow lines to be included in the feasibility study.

It follows concern that drivers have been ignoring signs erected by Harrogate Borough Council warning drivers they face a £100 fine or being towed away if they park on Stray land next to the cycle lane on Oatlands Drive.

Oatlands Drive

The new signs on Oatlands Drive.

One side of Oatlands Drive has double yellow lines but the other side — where cars park — does not.

The signs only appeared last week but pictures have already emerged of cars parked right next to the signs blocking the cycle route.

Double yellows expected for Oatlands

Although Cllr Mackenzie said he could not guarantee where the proposals would suggest the double yellow lines be placed, he said they were likely to be included in a “comprehensive scheme” for the area.

He said:

“I’m pretty sure it will be included.”

Cllr Mackenzie added that the county council had outlined plans for double yellow lines in its rejected proposals for Oatlands.

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But he added that introducing double yellow lines might just increase parking congestion on other streets.

Cllr Mackenzie said:

“We could have put in yellow lines, but we are also aware that residents on St Hilda’s Road are already suffering from long term parkings problems.

“While those people are not breaking any laws, it does make it difficult to get in and out of driveways.

“Every time we introduce them [double yellow lines], it tends to shift the problem elsewhere. If it did not have a knock on affect then we would have done it.”

Cllr Mackenzie said he expected officers to bring the review into Oatlands to him “in the next few weeks”.

A ‘more permanent solution’ needed

Following the introduction of the signs on Oatlands, a borough council spokesperson said the authority hoped people would “think twice” before parking on the street.

The spokesperson added council officials were working with the county council on a “more permanent solution” to the parking problem.

They said that parking on the Stray breached the Stray Act 1985:

“A breach of the act allows the borough council — as custodians of the Stray — to issue a £100 fine to anyone caught parking on the Stray, or to have their vehicle towed away.

“We hope that the signage will make people think twice about parking on Oatlands Drive and allow cyclists to use the cycle path as intended.”

In a letter to the Stray Ferret, Judy d’Arcy-Thompson, chair of the Stray Defence Association, said yellow lines was the “simplest solution” to parking problems on Oatlands Drive but the county council had been “ridiculously uncooperative”.