Harrogate gallery organises charity Christmas tree for refugees

A Harrogate gallery has set up a charity Giving Tree in aid of children from Syria and Afghanistan.

Watermark Gallery has organised the Christmas tree, which is decorated with a tag for each of the 73 refugee children in the Harrogate district.

Anyone who would like to support the project is being asked to take a tag and buy a gift of up to £20 suitable for the age and gender given.

Two-year-old Agatha (pictured above) was the first to buy a gift.

Anna Martola, from Watermark Gallery who has organised the project, said:

“We were struck by how much these families have been through and wanted to do something positive and creative to help welcome them to our region.

“These children have so little and will be surrounded by others who are receiving so much.”

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The gallery is working with Ripon City of Sanctuary, a charity that supports families throughout the Harrogate district, many of whom have recently arrived from Syria and Afghanistan.

For those who are not able to buy their own gift, the gallery is taking donations and will buy on their behalf. It is also donating colouring books and coloured pencils to each family. 

A spokesperson for Ripon City of Sanctuary said:

“We are so delighted that Watermark Gallery has chosen Ripon City of Sanctuary as their charity this year. It is such a positive and welcoming project and we know just how grateful our families will be”.

Anyone wishing to donate a gift is asked to do so before December 18 to give the charity time to distribute them out to each family. 

Watermark Gallery can be contacted on 01423 562659 or in person at 8 Royal Parade, Harrogate, HG1 2SZ.

34 Claro Road to be demolished under plans to build more homes for disabled

Disability Action Yorkshire has submitted plans to demolish its 20-bed care home in Harrogate and build a 36-home facility instead.

The charity wants to construct three new apartment blocks on the site of its current home at 34 Claro Road and an adjacent parcel of disused land.

The development aims to partly the shortage of accessible supported housing for local disabled people.

Disability Action Yorkshire plans to complete the scheme in partnership with Highstone Housing Association, which is in the process of buying 34 Claro Road from the charity and the disused land from Harrogate Borough Council.

If the land sales go ahead, and the council grants planning permission for the scheme, work will begin in March to build two apartment blocks consisting of 24 one and two-bedroom flats.

Claro residents will then move in to these and their current care home will be demolished and the final block built.

All current residents will be guaranteed a flat to live in.

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It is hoped the project is completed by the end of 2023.

Jackie Snape, Disability Action Yorkshire’s chief executive, said:

“Our vision is to empower disabled people to live the lifestyle of their choosing, and independent living is at the heart of this.

“This is an incredibly exciting move for us, and something we have been planning for a number of years. Our partners, Highstone Housing Association, are experts in building supported housing.

“Whilst they will develop the site, it will be our staff supporting the residents, all of whom will have tailor-made care packages put in place before moving in.

“Our customers at 34 Claro Road have been fully consulted, and they looking forward to having their own front doors!”

Independent living

Founded 84 years ago, Disability Action has its headquarters and training centre on the town’s Hornbeam Park, a residential care home on Claro Road, and a holiday lodge in Lincolnshire.

It aims to empower disabled people to live the lifestyle of their choosing, through its training, preparation and other living skills.

Gareth Lloyd, Highstone Housing Association’s development and partnerships director, said:

“Highstone have over 30 years of development experience specialising in the delivery of bespoke quality accommodation for people with learning and physical disabilities, alongside complex needs.

“Our developments enable our tenants to have their own front door, living independently, with support.”

 

 

First suspected omicron cases found in Harrogate district

The first suspected cases of the omicron covid variant have been found in the Harrogate district.

Data from the UK Health Security Agency shows there have been five possible cases so far.

in the week to December 6, one covid sample in the district failed an S-gene test, which is a sign that a sample may be omicron.

Four failed in the previous week.

The UKHSA estimates that if omicron continues to grow at the present rate, the variant will become the dominant strain, accounting for more than 50% of all covid infections in the UK by mid-December.

Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at UKHSA, said:

“These early estimates should be treated with caution but they indicate that a few months after the second jab, there is a greater risk of catching the omicron variant compared to delta strain.

“The data suggests this risk is significantly reduced following a booster vaccine, so I urge everyone to take up their booster when eligible.”

The Great Yorkshire Showground vaccine site in Harrogate is asking people to turn up for walk-in boosters between 1.30pm and 4pm today as it was busy with booked appointments this morning.

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Stray Views: Valley Gardens was the perfect place for Xmas market

Stray Views is a weekly column giving you the chance to have your say on issues affecting the Harrogate district. It is an opinion column and does not reflect the views of the Stray Ferret. Send your views to letters@thestrayferret.co.uk.

Valley Gardens was perfect place for Christmas market

I’ve just walked up through Valley Gardens from town and want to say that the sun colonnade is the perfect place for the artisan market! It’s sheltered, on hard paving, atmospheric and includes so many stalls.

What an improvement on the overcrowded, muddy Montpelier location. Well done Harrogate Borough Council!

Jenny Thompson, Harrogate

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Bikes aren’t an option for many older people

Last week’s letter from Malcolm Margolis makes many comments regarding clear and clean streets for the elderly to walk around in traffic free conditions but fails to tell the elderly how to easily come into Harrogate town centre from outlying districts without coming by car. Most of the elderly have no bus or train services and riding bikes is not an option.

Nor does he mention how we carry our purchases home. His last comment, ‘I believe it’s time to stop HGVs from using many of our urban streets without restriction day or night’, destroys his credibility. Some 90% of goods are delivered by lorries and have been for the past 50 years. How else does he think shops can be supplied ?

Brian Hicks, Pateley Bridge

The council needs an app so more people can report accidents

I recently fell over a raised paving stone in the Valley Gardens sun colonnade and broke my arm, bruised my face and split my lip. I telephoned Age Concern to ask if there is a mobile or iPad app to report incidents to the council as I think it would have been very useful.

In Australia, I have been told that there is an app called Snap Send Solve to report such as accidents as well as falling trees and potholes.

Does anyone know of the existence of a similar app in the UK?

For older people and people living on their own, this type of technology would be very useful.

The app forwards details of an incident or accident to the correct council by simply pressing a button.

Any information on this subject would be gratefully received.

Jane Blayney, Harrogate

Do you have an opinion on the Harrogate district? Email us at letters@thestrayferret.co.uk. Please include your name and approximate location details. Limit your letters to 350 words. We reserve the right to edit letters.

 

Harrogate lottery a ‘lifeline’ for charities during covid

Yorkshire’s only council-run lottery has been described as a “lifeline” for charities during the pandemic after thousands of pounds was raised for good causes in the Harrogate district.

Harrogate Borough Council launched the Local Lotto in 2018 despite some concerns over encouraging gambling and it has since raised more than £161,000 through the sale of £1 tickets with funds from each going to the buyer’s choice of charity.

This includes £56,000 raised over the past year when many charities have struggled to survive due to donations drying up during covid.

Ann Duncan, partnership and engagement manager at the council, told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the lottery had been a “lifeline” during this time. She said:

“The supporters of the Local Lotto have remained strong and this has been really important for those good causes because traditional fundraising methods have been limited.

“The Local Lotto provides unrestricted funding so there are no stipulations as to what the charities can spend the money on.

“They can spend it on their electricity or insurance, it’s up to them, so for some of the good causes it has been a real lifeline when funds have been quite desperate over the last 18 months.”

£25,000 jackpot

The council takes no income from the £1 ticket sales with 60p from each going to the buyer’s choice of charity, 20p into the prize fund, 17p to an external lottery manager and 3p to cover VAT.

Funds raised are paid to signed-up charities selling tickets and around £19,400 has been handed out in winnings over the past year.

Some buyers have won up to £2,000, although the top prize of £25,000 has yet to be claimed.

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The Local Lotto is also linked to the council’s Local Fund – a pot of cash which charities can apply for grants from.

Councillor Stanley Lumley, a Conservative who represents the Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale Moors ward, described the council’s decision to launch the lottery as “controversial” but said it had proved to be a “great success”. He said:

“We took a gamble, if you’d pardon the pun, three years ago when we introduced this. It was controversial and people were sceptical whether it would work.

“It clearly has worked and worked extremely well.

“The beauty of this lottery is that a person buying the ticket decides where they want a portion of the money to go.

“My ticket money goes to something close to my heart – Nidderdale Plus at Pateley Bridge which is a really good community hub that needs support.”

Meet the showground heroes boosting Harrogate’s vaccine programme

About 20,000 people are expected to receive booster jabs at Harrogate’s Great Yorkshire Showground between December 6 and 22. Another 35,000 are set to follow in the New Year.

Most people who go agree it’s a slick, well-run operation. That it works so well is down to the efforts of 50 staff and 60 volunteers behind the life-saving operation.

The Stray Ferret spoke to some of those on site this week. The 60 volunteers are divided into four teams of 15 volunteers a day supplied on alternate days by community groups Boroughbridge Community Care, Harrogate and District Community Action, Nidderdale Plus and Knaresborough Connectors.

The Boroughbridge team, led by volunteer coordinator Jan Seymour, was on duty when we visited.

Ms Seymour was holding a box of chocolates, donated by a patient. All such gifts get shared between the helpers. She jokes:

“The people we like most are the ones that bring us chocolate and cake!

Jan Seymour

The set-up at the Yorkshire Event Centre is the same as it was from February to August this year when some 120,000 first and second dose vaccines were administered.

The volunteers remain relentlessly cheerful and helpful but there is a wearier feel to the place than there was in spring. Ms Seymour says:

“When we opened in February everyone was absolutely desperate to get it. Now the attitude is ‘I’m a bit busy today, can I come tomorrow?'”.

Volunteers typically do half a day each, either from 8am to 1pm or 1pm to 6pm. They meet and greet people, direct traffic and take people to one of the 16 vaccination pods, which can cater for up to eight vaccinators. Ms Seymour says:

“During lockdown it was easy to get volunteers but recently it’s become harder. Some people are back at work and many volunteers are older people who have childcare duties.

“The majority of patients are absolutely wonderful. They could not be more thankful. We get the odd one who isn’t. One guy had a go at me on Monday when he said ‘why can’t I go to my doctor for this? But that’s unusual. Most people are great.”

Staffing fatigue

Yorkshire Health Network, which is a federation of the 17 GP practices in the Harrogate district, manages the vaccination sites at Harrogate and Ripon racecourse.

Tim Yarrow, operations manager for the network, says the Harrogate site can handle greater numbers of walk-in patients because of its size and abundant parking.

Tim Yarrow

The quietest time, he says, is early to mid afternoon, then numbers soar towards the end of the day as many people try to get in at the end of their working days. The decision to allow walk-ins this week sparked a surge of visitors with queues of up to an hour at peak times.

Mr Yarrow says:

“We set this up in one-and-a-half days. It was easier second time round. We knew the snagging points from last time.

“The main challenge is staffing fatigue. During lockdown we had a lot of people with not a lot else to do. As people have gone back to their day jobs their availability has become more sparse.”

Yorkshire Agricultural Society, which owns the site, has “bent over backwards to enable it to happen”, says Mr Yarrow. When the site re-opens in January, jabs will take place in another building at the showground so the society can resume holding events in the Yorkshire Event Centre.

Moderna provided

Barnaby Roe, general manager of Yorkshire Health Network, oversees the operation at the showground.

In a makeshift office on site, he explains that the 50 staff are comprised of GP practice staff, who are helping for free on their days off, members of Yorkshire Health Network, pharmacists, pharmacist technicians and nurses. Half work the morning shift and half work in the afternoon.

“This programme will be for 20,000 to December 22 then going forward we think it will be another 35,000.”

Barnaby Roe

The site is giving doses of the Moderna booster but also administers some Pfizer jabs to children from immunosuppressed families.

“The people who work here have done it for some time and it’s down to a fine art.”

Booster appointments can be booked at the showground here. The site provided some walk-in appointments this week for over-18s who were eligible for jabs and has yet to decide whether they will be available next week.

Green Shoots: What it’s like to own an electric car in Harrogate

Harrogate residents Ralph Armsby and his partner Judy Carrivick ditched their petrol car for an electric Kia e-Niro earlier this year.

They got the car on a four-year lease and pay around £450 a month plus £460 a year in insurance.

Because it’s a low emission vehicle they pay zero car tax, and when they charge it at home it ends up costing just over 1p a mile to drive.

Mr Armsby said switching to an EV was “a no-brainer” due to the environmental cost of driving a petrol car.

“We’re very aware of air pollution, not just from the car but it starts when they take the oil out of ground, to tankers driving around the UK.

“You should get something that is powered down a wire rather than being pumped out at stations all over the place.”

Mr Amsby said it’s important to check with Northern Powergrid that your home is able to install a charging point because there was a lack of fast public charging points in Harrogate.

It cost the couple around £600 to install one, which they plug into the car overnight whilst they sleep so they can wake up with a full charge.

If they decide to charge the car throughout the day, it works out at around 3p a mile.

Range anxiety

Mr Armsby said he sometimes suffers from “range anxiety”, the phenomenon where EV drivers are worried their car will run out of charge before they find somewhere to power it up. But on a full charge, their car can manage over 280 miles, depending on driving style.

They use an app called ZapMap to find public charging points. During a recent trip to Wales, they found towns much smaller than Harrogate were better equipped for EV drivers with more places to charge.

Harrogate has several public charging points, with 7kw, 24kw and 50kw connections.

The only fast 50kw charging points are at Harrogate Borough Council’s civic centre at Knapping Mount, where it costs more to charge than at home. There are also three fast charging points outside Lidl in Knaresborough.

If you charge your car at the civic centre it takes around half an hour to get a full charge.

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Mr Armsby said the council charging points were welcome, but Harrogate needed more and was poorly equipped for business travellers who might be using the convention centre.

He said:

“If you come here on a conference, you’ll be fighting for a space there.

“We desperately need more fast charging points.”

There are other slower charging 7kw charging points around the district, which are able to give an EV a short boost.

There are even now charging points at the almost 1,000-year-old Fountains Abbey. Mr Armsby said he has visited twice because he could charge his car outside the ruin.

In total, the Harrogate district has 53 EV charging points in 30 different locations, but some can only be used by Teslas.

Mr Armsby plugging in

Mr Armbsy said many more on-street charging facilities were needed in Harrogate so people can plug in whilst they shop.

He added:

“Other countries have had on-street charging and had it for years, we’re not world beating in the UK, we’re miles behind European countries.”

Joy to drive

The couple are retired and use their car mainly for leisure and shopping. 

Mr Armsby said:

“It’s a joy to drive, we’re fighting each other on who’s going to drive!”

Whilst electric vehicles still produce emissions through their tyres — and there are concerns over the mining of minerals to make the batteries — Mr Armbsy said he would never go back to driving a petrol car.

He said:

“Harrogate is quite polluted. Cold Bath Road, for example, is a rat run in the mornings with kids being dropped off in Range Rovers. It would be so much nicer on these roads if everyone was driving electric.”

Do you have an interesting project or passion that improves the environment and could feature in Green Shoots? Contact thomas@thestrayferret.co.uk

Dog thefts more than double in Harrogate district

The number of dog thefts in the Harrogate district more than doubled in 2020 compared with 2019, according to police statistics.

The figures were released after a member of the public made a Freedom of Information request to North Yorkshire Police.

They show there were eight thefts in 2020 compared with three in 2019. The three previous years saw just seven thefts in total.

Although the numbers are small, the 2020 figure represents a significant increase.

The Harrogate district also had the highest number of thefts in North Yorkshire in 2020, with Scarborough and Ryedale the closest with five.

The figures also revealed only two thefts ended in a person being charged. Most reports didn’t lead to court action either because no suspect was identified or there were evidential difficulties.

A table showing the number of crimes where a dog has been recorded as stolen. Photograph: North Yorkshire Police

Border Collies and Pugs were the most commonly stolen breeds in North Yorkshire, with 10 and eight thefts recorded respectively between 2016 and 2021.

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The police recently appointed its first officers dedicated to dealing specifically with pet theft.

Amongst other duties, the officers will conduct reassurance visits, in which they accompany pet theft victims on walks to help them feel more confident when walking their dogs.

Harrogate vaccine walk-ins: go in afternoon tomorrow to avoid queues

Staff giving vaccines at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate have advised anyone planning a walk-in booster jab tomorrow to go in the afternoon.

The decision to allow over-18s to just turn up and get boosters prompted a wave of visitors to the showground today. Some people queued for an hour to get jabbed.

Tim Yarrow, operations manager for Yorkshire Health Network, which is a federation of the 17 GP practices in the Harrogate district, said the site had a lot of booked appointments tomorrow morning but the afternoon was quieter.

Anyone arriving for morning walk-ins would receive a booster, said Mr Yarrow, but they might have to wait for up to an hour.

He said it was likely to be quieter after 12.30pm.

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Another 102 covid infections were reported today in the Harrogate district.

The district’s seven-day infection rate has fallen slightly to 422 cases per 100,000. The North Yorkshire average is 380 and the England average is 505.

No further covid-related deaths have been reported at Harrogate District Hospital, meaning the overall total remains at 200.

Live: Harrogate district traffic and travel

Good morning everyone. It’s Connor here this morning to try and keep you up to date with all your latest traffic and travel news from across the Harrogate district.

If there’s anything I’ve missed, and only if it is safe to do so, give me a call on 01423 276197.

These blogs are brought to you by The HACS Group.

9am – Full Update 

That is all from me this morning. I hope you find the blog helpful and have a good weekend. I am heading over to the news deak now but Suzannah will be back with you on Monday morning.

Roads

The roads are starting to become busy this morning, here are the hotspots on our traffic map:

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses

8.30am – Full Update 

Roads

The roads are starting to become busy this morning, here are the hotspots on our traffic map:

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses

8am – Full Update 

Roads

The roads are starting to become busy this morning, here are the hotspots on our traffic map:

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses

7.30am – Full Update 

Roads

The roads are running smoothly so far this morning, but keep checking back as things will likely get busier as the morning goes on.

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses

7am – Full Update 

Roads

The roads are running smoothly so far this morning, but keep checking back as things will likely get busier as the morning goes on.

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses

6:30am – Full Update 

Roads

The roads are running smoothly so far this morning, but keep checking back as things will likely get busier as the morning goes on.

Road closures:

Temporary lights:

Trains

Buses