Harrogate town council referendum will be held ‘as soon as possible’

A referendum to decide whether Harrogate should create a town council will be held “as soon as possible,” the county’s leader has said.

Harrogate and Scarborough are the only major places in North Yorkshire not to be parished and could be given control over areas including parks, tourism and events when the seven county and borough councils are abolished in April.

Councillor Carl Les, leader of North Yorkshire County Council, said he has faced calls from local politicians, businesses and community groups for the town councils to be created.

But he added it would be up to residents to decide via a vote whether the plans should go ahead.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service:

“I’m a great advocate of parish and town councils, and I do believe Harrogate and Scarborough would be well served if they had them.

“That said, it is for the people to decide whether they want them or not.

“I’m very keen that we start the process as soon as possible and we will go to the public in Harrogate and Scarborough at the earliest opportunity.”

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The creation of town councils would require a community governance review and it is understood that legal powers to start the process have been handed to the county council’s new executive.

Cllr Les said the legislation was now being examined and the authority would work alongside Harrogate and Scarborough’s borough councils.

Could take a year

He also said it would be “logical” for the town councils to be created after the new North Yorkshire Council launches next April.

His comments come after Cllr Pat Marsh, leader of Harrogate’s Liberal Democrats, called last week for the process to start “within the next couple of months”.

When asked when the referendums could be held, Cllr Les said this was currently unclear but he added it would be “as soon as possible”. He said:

“We are getting a lot of requests about town councils made to us from people including local politicians, as well as the business community and groups like Harrogate Civic Society.

“There is clearly an appetite to do something about this.

“And of course the sooner we can do it, the sooner we can find out whether there is an appetite amongst the general population.

“They are the key people in all of this. They have to be asked for their opinion and will say yea or nay.”

Councillor Les also said there was a possibility that more than two town or parish councils could be created – if that’s what voters wanted. He said:

“Another aspect to this of course is – how many councils?

“Would Harrogate or Scarborough just want one town council each, or perhaps there are options to consider about the various parts of the towns being parished.

“This is all part of the work that will have to be done.”

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey says Conservatives have ‘taken Harrogate for granted’

Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey has said the Conservative Party has “taken Harrogate for granted” in the wake of this month’s local election results.

Ten Liberal Democrat councillors were elected in the Harrogate district, compared with nine Conservatives, one Green and one Independent. However, the Tories still have a majority across North Yorkshire as a whole.

The positive results for the local Lib Dems has spurred the party on to make further gains in the area, with the ultimate prize being the seat of Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, Andrew Jones.

The party previously identified the constituency as one of its top 30 target seats in the next general election, which will be held no later than May 2024.

Mr Davey said:

“Harrogate has been taken for granted by the Conservative Party and clearly people have had enough. This month Harrogate joined countless other parts of the country in voting Liberal Democrat to send Boris Johnson a message.

“His government is failing to help people with the cost of living crisis and making matters worst through grossly unfair tax hikes.”

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Mr Davey criticised the Conservative-run Harrogate Borough Council for spending £17m on new offices as well as £5,000 on a snow globe at King’s Cross station.

He said the soon-to-be abolished authority had “stopped listening to local people”.

“The Conservative party in Harrogate has wasted huge sums of taxpayers’ cash on giant snow globes and a council office for a council that is being abolished.

“They’ve stopped listening to local people, as developers build all over Harrogate and Knaresborough’s green fields and they’ve failed to deliver on the long-promised electrification on the rail line to Harrogate.”

General election

Andrew Jones has been the MP since 2010 and has won four elections. He succeeded Liberal Democrat Phil Willis.

In the 2019 general election, Mr Jones won 29,962 votes, beating Lib Dem candidate Judith Rogerson by almost 10,000 votes. The Lib Dems did gain a 12-point swing on 2017, which largely came at the expense of the Labour Party.

Mr Davey added:

“At the next general election it will be a two-horse race in Harrogate between Boris Johnson’s Conservative party and a hard working team of local Liberal Democrats.”

The Stray Ferret asked Andrew Jones for a response but we did not receive one.

Strayside Sunday: bailing out Welcome to Yorkshire was the right thing to do

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

Gary Verity once bestrode the Yorkshire scene. Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, God’s own county’s tourism promotion body, Verity succeeded in bringing the 2014 Grand Depart of the Tour de France to Leeds. Glorious weather bathed riders in sunshine as they rode through our unmatched scenery, watched by spectators ten and twenty deep.  Such was its success that Verity was knighted for his efforts and the subsequent Tour de Yorkshire became a permanent fixture on our calendar, ensuring an annual pay day for the local economy (although Covid-19’s long shadow has caused its postponement to 2022).

All was not as it seemed.  Behind the scenes, the mercurial Mr Verity was accused of creating a culture of bullying, had to attend behavioural management counselling and eventually left Welcome to Yorkshire on health grounds under the darkest of clouds, facing, among other things, allegations of misuse of funds.  To spend more time with his sheep, no doubt.

In the aftermath, two investigations into the management of the body cost almost £500,000, a financial shock that would have been hard to bear even in good times.  On top of this came Covid-19 and a consequent £1m collapse in the business rate and membership fee income upon which it ordinarily relies.  All of this required the body to ask for a £1.4m bailout from contributing councils across the county.  Harrogate Borough Council is the latest to help, pitching in £31,000  to enable Welcome to Yorkshire to continue to “support tourism in Yorkshire and the Harrogate district at a time when it is needed the most.”

We are blessed to live in this beautiful county and it is important to bring its joys to the world.  Bailing out Welcome to Yorkshire is the right thing to do, but let’s hope that the money from Harrogate and other councils across the ridings (and South Yorkshire) comes with the oversight and governance that public money warrants and which, sadly, was so lacking during Verity’s tenure.  Yorkshire is a brilliant brand, the challenge for Welcome to Yorkshire now is to rebuild its own reputation to match.

Another mercurial bully on his way out this week is Dominic “Barnard Castle” Cummings.  Back in the day Cummings worked as Director of Strategy for Iain Duncan Smith.  His volatility was legend in Conservative Party circles and, during his five months in post he managed to offend almost every member of shadow cabinet.  During his brief tenure he introduced IDS to the plight of those in our inner city sink estates.  His “help the vulnerable” campaign exposed Duncan Smith and the Conservatives to the horrible reality of life for some in Gallowgate and elsewhere in contemporary Britain.  It made a lasting impression on IDS and informed his desire to reform the welfare state while Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.  Now lost in the mists of time we should remember that the reforms were initially welcomed and praised by civic society organisations and even the Labour opposition.

Cummings left the party having told Michael Howard to go forth and multiply during a typically foul mouthed and shouty display around the shadow cabinet table.  Dominic was then and remains a disruptor in the fullest sense of the word.  In fairness, Michael Howard didn’t much like advisors, nor did he in any way agree with those of us who felt that fairness needed to become a central pillar of party policy in the post-Thatcher era.  A point he made crystal clear when he fired me a day or two after becoming leader when IDS was ousted.

Cummings is a formidable campaigner, as his Vote Leave triumph demonstrated.  But he is simply not temperamentally suited to government.  In his time in government (can it only be a year?) he wanted to focus on three things only; getting Brexit done, the levelling up agenda and reforming the civil service.  Like the rest of us he hadn’t bargained on what Harold Macmillan called “events dear boy, events.”  Covid-19 has so consumed affairs of state that winning the Brexit peace, balancing our economy and transforming Whitehall have become secondary.  The pandemic has robbed this government of the time and space it needs to pursue its agenda and, by definition, is so unpredictable that it makes it lays waste to the relevance and longevity of government by slogan.

In my experience many MPs have a pathological need to be loved, or at the very least to feel they are needed.  Warm and cuddly our Dom is not.  Contempt and disdain are more his style.  Given that and the manoeuvring and jealousy inherent in the political game, he is no doubt responsible at least in part for the growing sense of disquiet among parliamentary Conservatives.  Backbench Conservative MP’s are delighted he is going and his scalp may well buy the Prime Minister more time with the restive.  The irony of course is that for at least one faction, Jake Berry’s Northern Research Group, Cummings was the driving intellectual force behind the levelling up agenda in which they believe, and upon which, their parliamentary futures rest.  His departure damages their cause.  Be careful, they say, what you wish for.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Condemning Cummings is a political ‘freebie’ for Andrew Jones MP

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

This week has seen a flurry of proposals from local leaders to reinvigorate Harrogate and its economy as we begin to emerge from lockdown: North Yorkshire County Council has set up an in-house taskforce; Independent Harrogate has published a 1700-word mission statement with its proposals for Harrogate town centre; and we have even heard from Harrogate’s Lib Dems (remember them?) with their idea of creating multiple, Coronavirus Recovery Teams.  It’s reassuring to know that there is no lack of appetite, dearth of ideas or offers of industry to make Harrogate thrive.

My suggestion in last week’s Strayside Sunday that Harrogate lacked the magic ingredient – that of leadership – to harness this obvious and abundant energy seemed to touch a nerve and elicited lively correspondence, for which thank you.

In addition to innate qualities of vision and energy, leadership needs both a platform and method to flourish.  Around the world, imaginative governments, whether national or local, have used a technique called Citizen’s Assemblies to bring together often vehemently opposing groups to discuss and reach a negotiated settlement on highly contentious issues. This method, in which professionals facilitate a group of between 100 and 160 socio-demographically representative people for an intense period of what is called deliberative consultation, is well proven.  Among other successes, it led to a change to the Irish Constitution to allow gay marriage, to a new proportional voting system in British Columbia, Canada and to the creation of the NHS Constitution here at home.

If it can achieve those potentially contentious things, a Citizens Assembly here in Harrogate could certainly bring together Independent Harrogate and Zero Carbon Harrogate to work our way through the car versus bike, parking versus cycle lane debate.  So come on Mr Jones and Mr Cooper, grab your chance to lead and create a nation-leading model for unifying people and interests in the name of covid recovery.  You’ll find no shortage of willing and qualified participants, you’ll energise the town, and you’ll make a name for yourselves nationally. Think big, be big.

Talking of making a name for yourself, Dominic Cummings has been the national news story of the week. Dominic is a formidable political strategist, but, in common with many intellectually gifted people, he doesn’t suffer fools, nor is he in any way reticent with his views.  In my experience he holds the political classes in contempt, whether they be politician, civil servant or party apparatchik.  He is self-consciously out of step with the accepted norms of political behaviour.

Boris Johnson knows that without Cummings, the government will lose its’ policy conscience, lose the driving force behind the “levelling up” agenda, and still the beating heart of the Conservative’s stated objective for this parliament, coronavirus or no, to bring jobs and socio-economic progress to the Red Wall seats here in the North.  No wonder Boris is loath to let him go.  But let him go he must, or the Prime Minister risks fatally undermining his own position of trust with the Great British Public.

Harrogate MP Andrew Jones was quick to condemn him. It’s good to see our MP getting involved in a heated public debate for a change, even though in political terms going after Mr. Cummings is a freebie, with little or no personal political risk.  Andrew Jones is a remainer though (albeit one who voted for every iteration of the Brexit deal) who’s unable to find ministerial preferment in BoJo’s heavily Brexiteer team.  Nonetheless, more of this ‘sharp-elbowed’ engagement please Mr. Jones.

Finally, the town’s cyclists taught me a new word this week, namely Todesrinne.  This, translated from the German, means “death gutter” and is used to describe the narrow cycle lanes which are painted on the periphery of existing road surfaces.  The German’s have a knack for capturing the essence of a thing in their language and in this case its instructive. Not all cycle lanes are created equal and, when we do get them, as we must, they need to be properly planned and integrated, rather than painted on as a symbolic afterthought.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Got a view on my views? You can get in touch with me on paul@thestrayferret.co.uk