The Liberal Democrats have said it was “inappropriate” for the Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association to accept a £10,000 grant aimed at small businesses struggling during the pandemic.

The conservative group insisted the grant was necessary because the pandemic made it unable to generate income through its usual “activities”.

But the chair of the Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats said he struggled to see the similarities between the small, local businesses unable to open and a political group.

Michael Newby, said:

“I thought it was inappropriate to take advantage of the money for businesses who are struggling. I struggle to understand how their income has been impacted the same as small businesses.

“We are all struggling, we, as a party,  have lost out because we can’t have our fundraising events but we aren’t depending on customers or clients and that’s where I see the difference.”

The conservative’s grant came to light after an investigation by journalist Alexandra Rogers at Yorkshire Live, who found that Harrogate and Knaresborough was one of only four associations in the whole of Yorkshire to receive one.

The grant was introduced by the government for companies with a rateable value of £15,000 and received business rates relief. The local association met these requirements.

Cllr Graham Swift, Harrogate Borough Council’s deputy leader is quoted in the Yorkshire Live article and said the grant was used to cover staff costs and rent:

“Our association, like most businesses, was unable to carry out our regular income generating activities.

“The government’s specific support to all these businesses has prevented us from closure, prevented us from laying off staff and ensured that our landlord is fairly compensated for their service.”

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The Stray Ferret asked Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association for a comment but had no response at the time of publication.

Other Conservative associations in Wakefield, Selby and Ainsty and Shipley also accepted the grant. Their decisions have also been met with criticism.

Earlier this evening we showed a picture of the Harrogate Conservative Club, this was an error and we would like to clarify the club has no connection to the Conservative Association.

Harrogate Borough Council leader, Richard Cooper, has sent a letter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) asking for the local Lib Dems’ petitions to be investigated for “data harvesting”.

Cllr Cooper says none of the four petitions were submitted to relevant bodies and were instead an exercise to build a database of contact information. The Liberal Democrats say the accusations are false and a cynical ploy to put people off signing petitions.

In the letter Mr Cooper says he believes the party “may have breached at least three tenets of data protection”.

The ICO was set up to uphold an individual’s data privacy. The ICO told the Stray Ferret it is yet to receive the letter but a spokesperson added:

“When we receive the letter we will assess the information provided and decide whether we need to make further enquiries.”

Cllr Cooper criticised the Lib Dems in the letter saying the purposes of the petitions put forward were not fulfilled:

“My contention is that these petitions breach data protections rules because there is a pattern of behaviour which demonstrates that people’s details were collected for a purpose and then not used for that purpose.”

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The Liberal Democrats have called his accusations “ridiculous and laughable”.

The party says three of the petitions were not submitted but insists the Stray FM petition was sent to Bauer Media.

The campaign manager for the Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats, Conor McKenzie, said:

“Let’s set the record straight though. The Stray FM petition was submitted, while other petitions achieved a u-turn before we even had chance to submit them.

“No data has been collected improperly as only those who explicitly told us they would like to will hear from us in future. To falsely suggest otherwise is a blatant attempt to put people off signing any group’s petitions in future. Doing so would be hugely damaging to community engagement and council scrutiny.”

A political row has broken out after Harrogate Borough Council leader Richard Cooper criticised the credibility of the local Liberal Democrats’ petitions.

Mr Cooper claimed two of the Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats’ petitions were never handed into the council and therefore had no impact on any decision making.

The Lib Dems group has hit back, saying these claims are “ridiculous” and “laughable”.

The group has confirmed neither petition was submitted but said the impact of the signatures was still apparent.

It said the Conyngham Hall petition wasn’t submitted because the group was told the decision was “years away” so it decided to continue building momentum.

Matt Walker, the ‘Hands of Conyngham Hall’ campaign spokesperson said:

“With the petition still gathering momentum, why would we have handed it in so soon? But then, without any notice – ‘years’ ahead of schedule – the council decided to announce a preferred option.”

The Lib Dems set up its petition to save Conyngham Hall from development.

“Every person who signed it thought they were supporting a local campaign but all that happened was that their contact details were taken electronically.”

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

The Liberal Democrats used to be hugely effective local campaigners.  Not least here in Harrogate where Phil, now Baron Willis of Knaresborough, was a formidable and highly popular Liberal Democrat MP.  Willis served 13 years in parliament and retired ahead of the 2010 election.  From potholes to streetlights, and from parking to dog poo – no issue that affected the daily lives of residents was too small for the Lib Dems to champion.

During these past few months of crisis, the local Lib Dems insipid contribution has largely been to criticise our MPs for returning to Westminster, suggesting the creation of Covid Recovery Response Teams, calling on Harrogate council to declare a climate emergency (something that has even proven beyond Greta Thunberg), and worrying about the council’s “abysmal communication.”

Granted, it is difficult to make any real political impression when you occupy just 7 seats on a council of 40, but an effective Lib Dem opposition should look to serve as a locus for local issues, campaigns and activism, and attempt to frame and lead local political debate.  Let’s hope they can shake their somnolence in the months to come.  The people of Harrogate need a functioning opposition.

In last week’s column I argued against Harrogate Council’s plan to create a Local Authority Controlled Company (LACC) to manage the area’s sport centres and deliver leisure services across the district.  On Wednesday evening, the 7 Conservative members of the council’s cabinet approved unanimously plans to create the new company, called ‘Brimham Active.’  This will now be put to a full vote of the council on July 8^th.  If the council rubberstamps cabinet’s recommendation, as the thumping Conservative majority will surely do, it will be a decision taken in the face of public opinion, that was sought through a ‘consultation’ exercise, bought and paid for with public, read our, money.

During my professional life in politics and communication I have written, conducted and commissioned a myriad of polls, surveys and consultations. From experience, I can tell you there is no legitimate basis upon which the leisure service consultation results can be interpreted as supportive of the council’s privatisation plan.  Of 433 opinions sought, just 27% of us agreed with the council’s scheme.  That’s just 117 Harrogate residents who support £300,000 in venture start-up costs and borrowings of £26m to fund the facilities upgrades on which the plan for leisure depends.  In fact, the balance of public opinion was undeniably negative; 46% of us disagreed with the plan.  You have to hand it to the council; it takes some kind of brass neck to ignore a poll result that is 2 to 1 against.  And no, there’s no excuse for the Lib Dems ,who arrived too late in the debate, and then howled about being kept in the dark – this proposal was covered in this publication and others well ahead of the vote.

This week the district has seen the closure of Henshaw’s Arts and Crafts centre in Knaresborough.  These pages also reported on their announcement that its Assisted Living Centre is to shut this coming October.  It appears that Henshaw’s actually made the decision to close four long months ago but, for reasons passing understanding, delayed the news until now.  What has gone so wrong financially it has left 21 families urgently needing alternative arrangements to house their disabled loved ones?  Something else for the local Lib Dems to get their teeth into, perhaps?

Poor old ‘App-less’ Matt Hancock is having a bad war of late.  When appointed to his post, the technophile Secretary of State for Health and Social Care set up a shiny new unit called NHSx and tasked it with the digital transformation of healthcare.  It’s job is to bring the NHS’s prehistoric I.T. kit up to date, make it work well and work most of the time, link and share our patient data across care settings (between your GP surgery and hospital for example) and generally harness the power of innovation to improve care, and to make it more cost efficient for the taxpayer.  I can talk this way because, when I was Director of Communication for Paperless 2020, the former name of the digital transformation programme for healthcare in England and Wales, it used to be my job to talk this way.

The thing is, building technology at pace and scale is both hard and expensive, even if you are a technology company like, say, Apple or Google, to pick but two at random…  Matt Hancock actually has his own app, imaginatively called ‘Matt Hancock MP.’  You should download it.  An hour or so before the Downing Street daily press conference, at which he announced that our “world beating” track and trace app was being binned before it could be launched, he posted a message of congratulations to Frankie Dettori for winning the Ascot Gold Cup.  You couldn’t make it up. Could you?

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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