Another primary school in the Harrogate district with dwindling attendance could close.

Governors at Fountains Earth CE Primary School, in Lofthouse said today they have made the decision with a “heavy heart” to begin the process of applying to North Yorkshire County Council for a consultation for closure.

The news comes the day after a consultation closed on the proposed closure of Woodfield Community Primary School in Bilton.

Last year Kell Bank Church of England Primary School in Masham said goodbye after 200 years.

Baldersby St James Church of England Primary School is due to close next month.

A final decision on Fountains Earth is due next spring.

The school has 11 pupils on its register, with the same figure due to attend in September 2023.

It belongs to the Federation of Fountains Earth and St Cuthbert’s CE Primary Schools.

The closure proposal does not apply to St Cuthbert’s, which is in Pateley Bridge.

11 pupils on register

A press release by North Yorkshire County Council today said the lack of pupils meant sustaining a varied, thorough curriculum was impossible, due to the lack of age-appropriate peers and the wide age range across the class.

Abi Broadley, chair of governors, said:

“Despite the best efforts of our headteacher, staff and governors, we cannot overcome the challenges of having such low pupil numbers.

“Our pupil numbers have been declining over the last few years and we now have just 11 children. We understand there is no sign of the school population growing significantly in the future.

“With such low pupil numbers and no hope of them dramatically increasing them soon, we will continue to have limited children in each year group. Indeed, some year groups are void of children altogether.”

Ms Broadley added the governors had “exhausted all options”, adding:

“A lot of work has been undertaken by our headteacher and team which has improved the situation, but it just isn’t enough due to a lack of pupils.

“These interventions include introducing a more structured curriculum, structured sessions and interventions from subject lead teachers from across the federation, all in an effort to try to meet educational needs; and Federation Fridays to help to address the social and emotional needs of the children.

“Although Federation Fridays are successful in enriching the lives of our children, they can only cover certain subjects such as personal, social, health and economic PSHE education, music and PE.

“This cannot be a long-term solution and further highlights the fact that our Fountains Earth provision alone does not adequately meet our children’s needs.”

The county council will consider the request for consultation. Its executive member for education and skills, Annabel Wilkinson, the Conservative councillor for Morton-on-Swale and Appleton Wiske division, will decide whether to approve the proposal.

Read more:

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• Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi visits Harrogate school

If the consultation to close the school is agreed, it is likely to start early in the new academic year. It will consist of a six-week period of consultation through the autumn term, which will include a public meeting.

A final decision on closure would be made once the consultation responses had been reviewed. That decision is likely to be made in the spring of next year.

Fountains Earth CE Primary School will remain open throughout the process.

The full extent of the multi-million pound overspend on the upgrade to junction 47 on the A1(M) has still not been revealed, months after the delayed scheme was finally completed.

The project, which had an original budget cost of £7.7m, finished in April — seven months later than planned.

North Yorkshire County Council revealed 10 months ago the costs had spiralled to £10m and has not given an updated figure since.

The council issued a press release today in which business leaders praised the initiative, at Flaxby, for improving traffic flow and attracting enterprise.

It said the junction was “already having huge benefits for commuters, residents and holiday-makers amid the summer tourism season”.

Cllr Keane Duncan, the council’s executive member for highways, said:

“The upgrades to junction 47 have made a significant difference, reducing congestion and improving road safety.

“The scheme unlocks future growth in and around Harrogate, with the changes helping to manage significant residential and commercial development anticipated along the A59 corridor.”

David Simister, chief executive of Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce said:

“Having used it on a number of occasions since its completion, it is not only benefitting commuters exiting the A1(M), but also those accessing it as well as those travelling along the A59.

“Improving transport links to and from the Harrogate district will benefit business too.”

(from left) Y&NY LEP board member Jan Garill, NYCC project manager Richard Binks, Farrans operations director Jonny Kerr, National Highways head of service delivery Kate Wood, Farrans project manager Shane Daly, AECOM site supervisor Kevin Atkinson and Cllr Keane Duncan.

The scheme involved widening three of the four slip roads onto and off the roundabout to increase capacity, as well as a number of junction improvements.

Traffic signals have been installed on the roundabout to improve traffic flow and added to the T-junction between the A168 and the A59 a short distance from Junction 47 on the York side to benefit drivers turning onto the A59 and to improve safety.

To the west of Junction 47, between the A1 and the Flaxby roundabout, a lane has been added for traffic travelling east, so there is two lanes in each direction between those two roundabouts.

‘Bring more events to Harrogate’

Paula Lorimer, director at Harrogate Convention Centre, said:

“We welcome the upgrade as it has significantly reduced congestion and improved road safety for our visitors.

“The shortened travel time strengthens our competitive advantage and will help us bring more large-scale events to Harrogate.”

Delays were blamed on the discovery of a protected species, great crested newts, which legally had to be relocated, as well as poor ground conditions on the southbound slip road.

Asked why it was taking so long for the final costs of the project to be revealed, a council spokeswoman said:

“The latest estimated costs are the subject of detailed discussions with the county council’s contractor and will be publicly available once they have been agreed.”

Concerns have again been raised about the safety of pedestrian crossings at what has been described as Knaresborough’s “most dangerous junction”.

Former town councillor James Monaghan first raised the issue of drivers ignoring red lights at the four-way junction where York Place, High Street, Gracious Street and Park Row meet in 2017 – and he now says the problem is “as bad as ever”.

He said:

“On a daily basis cars and vans drive through the green man when pedestrians should be able to cross safely.

“This is dangerous enough, but on a crossing used by hundreds of school children daily it is an accident waiting to happen.

“With all the new houses that have been built across the district and the associated cars, congestion has only got worse and it needs to be addressed for everyone’s safety and convenience.”

Mr Monaghan said the problem has not been tackled by North Yorkshire County Council, which changed the traffic lights four years ago to allow more time for the junction to clear before pedestrians are invited to cross.

The county council said the detection system failed “a few months ago,” but has now been fixed with works being completed last week.

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Melisa Burnham, highways area manager at the county council, said:

“We know of the concerns around the pedestrian stage of the signal cycle at the junction of High Street and Gracious Street.

“The signals team will continue to monitor the effective operation of the signal equipment and timing.”

Ms Burnham also said it was the responsibility of motorists to ensure they follow the rules of the road. She said:

“We do all we can to ensure this junction operates as effectively as possible, but we also ask drivers who use this junction to respect all road users and the traffic light systems in place, ensuring they are driving safely in accordance with the local conditions.”

Opposition councillors on Harrogate Borough Council are set to call for Woodfield Community Primary School to be saved from closure.

A four-week consultation on a proposal to close the school on December 31 ends on July 4.

Some parents and unions have called for the school to remain open. But North Yorkshire County Council, which is the local education authority, has said it has exhausted all options to keep the school open.

At a borough council meeting next week, Liberal Democrat councillors Pat Marsh and Philip Broadbank are due to submit a motion requesting that the authority supports keeping the school open.

Cllr Broadbank said there was concern over the future of the school and what could potentially happen to the site on Woodfield Road in Bilton.

He said:

“I just worry what will happen to the site.

“It is a big building. I think they have to look at going through the options.”

School closure is ‘immoral’

The school was rated inadequate by Ofsted in 2020 and placed into special measures.

The rating meant the school had to become a sponsored academy, but it failed to find a backer.

A proposed merger with Grove Road Community Primary School fell through this year, prompting the county council to open a consultation on closing the school in the next academic year.

Read more:

• Woodfield school closure ‘an absolute disgrace’, says union
• Bilton has ‘sufficient primary places’ if Woodfield school closes
• Last-ditch campaign to save Woodfield school in Bilton

Gary McVeigh-Kaye, secretary of the North Yorkshire branch of the National Education Union, is also campaigning to save the school and has called for the consultation to be extended.

He said:

“Woodfield school has been through some traumatic times over the past decade and the school needs support, not criticism from Ofsted.

“Woodfield is a genuine community school, at the heart of the community and serving generations of families whose children have attended the school. To force the closure of this valuable community asset is immoral.”

A public meeting over the future of the school was held earlier this month.

Mr McVeigh-Kaye said he had secured meetings with local politicians, including Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative MP Andrew Jones about extending the consultation.

A poorly attended public meeting this month saw people express anger at how a school with good facilities, in a densely populated area of Harrogate, could end up in this position.

But, Adam Dixon, the county council’s strategic planning manager for children and young people, pointed to how Woodfield pupil numbers had fallen from 154 in 2018 to 37 this year.

Woodfield, he added, faced a cumulative deficit of £229,000 in 2023/34, due to low pupil numbers.

The consultation over the future of the school closes on July 4. You can have your say here.

One of Ripon’s busiest thoroughfares will be closed daily between 7am and 5pm for six days from Friday, to enable North Yorkshire County Council to carry out repairs and resurfacing works.

Minster Road, which runs past Ripon Cathedral, along with St Mary’s Gate, are part of an inner-city route that many road users take if travelling to Cathedral Primary School,  Aldi, Marks & Spencer food store, and homes on Residence Lane and those accessed off Priest Lane.

Signs, including ones for a diversion route that takes in Allhallowgate, Stonebridgegate, Magdalen’s Road, Rotary Way and the Ripon bypass have been put in place by NYCC.

With the St Mary’s Gate and Minster Road in their present condition, some motorists have been making their own diversionary route to avoid the potholes.

Stewart Readman, used a steel tape measure to emphasise the size of potholes on St Mary’s Gate.

Among them is Ripon resident Stewart Readman, who contacted the Stray Ferret in April to express concern about the state of the city’s roads.

At that time, he said:

“St Mary’s Gate and Minster Road are particularly hazardous and both my daughter and I had to have springs replaced on our cars because of damage caused by the potholes.

“Since then, it’s a route that we have avoided.”

St Mary’s Gate is currently a patchwork of temporarily filled-in potholes.

Read more:

With the road repairs and resurfacing due to start in four days, Mr Readman said this morning:

“I will be keeping a close eye on this work, but there are still many other roads in Ripon that also need to be attended to.”

The repair and resurfacing works will be carried out from the junction of Priest Lane with Allhallowgate and St Mary’s Gate and on Minster Road.

A resident, who lives on St Mary’s Gate, added:

“We’ve waited a long time for this pothole problem to be sorted out and I just hope that they make a good job of resurfacing the road

“Hopefully it will be up to the same standard as the resurfacing work on Cathedral Car Park, where the contractors did a great job.”

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Children’s community mental health services need a root and branch review, officials in North Yorkshire have said.

North Yorkshire County Council’s director of children and young people’s services Stuart Carlton, said ongoing concerns over a lack of available support had been highlighted to the Department for Education.

It comes amid concerns the strategy to deal with a post-pandemic surge in youngsters requiring support is grossly inadequate.

Mr Carlton said increasing the amount of help for children with mental health issues ranked alongside child exploitation and online safety as the most significant challenges his colleagues were facing.

He was speaking at a meeting of the authority’s children and young people’s scrutiny committee a year after the NHS announced it was rapidly expanding children’s mental health services to offer support teams in schools to almost three million pupils by 2023.

At the time, the NHS said by intervening in mental health issues early it was hoped to prevent problems escalating into serious concerns.

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Earlier this year the committee heard mental health services for children in the county and elsewhere were struggling to cope with an “exponential growth in demand” due to the isolation and upheaval of the pandemic, compounded by factors like pressure experienced by children on social media platforms.

In February, Tees Esk and Wear Valley NHS Trust bosses told the scrutiny meeting its community-based mental health team (CAMHS) was treating more than 2,500 children across the county.

They said referrals to its services for issues such as eating disorders had risen from about 100 a month at start of pandemic to more than 300 a month during 2021.

18-month waiting list

Four months on, a youth support worker told the committee the waiting list for CAMHS had risen to 18 months, which was not a sufficiently timely reaction to what children needed.

She said: 

“The biggest challenge we face on the ground is mental health. I cannot overestimate how challenging it is. Pretty much all the young people we work with have some element of mental ill health.”

When asked about a timeframe for getting mental health support teams into schools, Mr Carlton said the authority had told government officials the scheme was too being implemented too slowly and the ambition needed to be to get mental health teams available for all schools.

He added: 

“I just don’t see how that’s going to happen. I have called nationally for a fundamental CAMHS review because it is not working. It needs significant funding and significant review and enacting clearly across the whole of the country.”

Mr Carlton said the authority was providing support to schools through mental heath training while working with North Yorkshire NHS bosses to reassess what was needed from the service and how it could be modernised.

He said there had been promising collaborative work with the NHS, but financing extra support for children would be “very challenging”.

Mr Carlton said:

“We can see through the pandemic increased demand. The services are probably feeling a bit overwhelmed and overstretched and it’s an area of absolute focus.

“Any interaction with a child from a professional is a mental health opportunity. However, we need enough capacity for specialist support when it is required.”

A new bus service will operate from Knaresborough and Harrogate every Sunday from this weekend for the summer season.

Eastern DalesBus 825 will run to Ripley, Brimham Rocks, Fountains Abbey, Kirkby Malzeard, Masham, Leyburn and Richmond.

It will continue every Sunday and bank holiday until September 25, departing from Knaresborough bus station at 10am and stand three at Harrogate bus station at 1020am.

Eastern DalesBus 825 is run by York-based Reliance Motor Services , which provides rural bus services in North Yorkshire, as part of the DalesBus network, with support from the National Trust and North Yorkshire County Council’s Locality Fund.

Full timetable details are available in a leaflet available from Harrogate Bus Station and here.

Other DalesBus services running from Harrogate include double-decker DalesBus 59 on Saturdays to Blubberhouses, Bolton Bridge and Skipton, and DalesBus 74 on Saturdays to Ilkley, Bolton Abbey and Grassington.

DalesBus 24 runs daily between Harrogate and Pateley Bridge, with onward connections on Sundays and Bank Holidays to Upper Nidderdale and Grassington.

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Less than a quarter of children eligible for free school meals have accessed a high-profile holidays activities and food programme in North Yorkshire.

Council officials have put the issue down to a lack of public transport in rural areas, an insufficient number of groups and a perceived social stigma among parents.

A meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s young person’s scrutiny committee heard while the Department for Education had given the authority £1.36m to support healthy eating and activities during school holidays this year, 85% of the funding must be spent on youngsters in receipt of benefits-related meals.

Such is the weight given to ensuring children from poorer backgrounds are the focus of the scheme, which was launched following a campaign by Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, that the amount of funding is based on the number of eligible children in the local authority area.

Councillors were told although 2,554 children eligible for free school meals had attended the county’s Food, Entertainment, Art and Sport Together (Feast) programme last summer, they represented just 22% of the county’s children in receipt of free school meals.

The children receiving free school meals had been vastly outnumbered by 3,778 children attending whose parents did not receive benefits.

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The meeting heard the “significant challenge” over reaching children from poorer families had been exacerbated by the number of children eligible for free school meals across the county over the last year rising by 25%, or by some 3,000.

The meeting heard the scheme was seen as vital for vulnerable children, it had been designed to ensure every child from less affluent homes took part in confidence-building activities and learnt about healthy eating.

David Sharp, chief executive of North Yorkshire Youth, said one of the main challenges in attracting primary-aged pupils to Feast schemes was the social stigma parents associated with their children being on the programme.

He said: 

“It comes from parents not wanting their children to know that they on a programme, I’ve had that conversation with several, and also from peers – why have I got a letter and my friend hasn’t got a letter.”

Mr Sharp said Feast organisers were trying to create a strong brand that meant parents know about the provision without its promotion being targeted at them.

A lack of public transport in rural areas meant many North Yorkshire children had effectively been excluded from the scheme, the meeting was told.

Feast organisers said they were working on getting funding to transport children to groups and launch more localised activities.

Councillors were told the authority, charities and providers running the scheme had been given little time by the government to develop it last year and this year would see a significant increase in number of projects, places and activities on offer.

A Harrogate care home that closed after a highly critical report by government inspectors has indicated it plans to reopen after refurbishment.

Mary Fisher House, on Cold Bath Road, was rated inadequate and put into special measures in April by health and social care regulator the Care Quality Commission.

The CQC report, which followed an inspection in February, found evidence of rodent droppings in the kitchen, said some bedrooms smelled of urine, described medicines practices as unsafe and said there were insufficient staff to safely support people.

Residents were subsequently moved out of the four-storey home, which is run by private care provider Svivekcaregroup Care Group Limited.

The final residents left just over a week ago and the home closed.

But a statement by solicitors acting on behalf of Svivekcaregroup indicated the home, which caters for up to 24 residents, is likely to reopen.

The statement said the company was “naturally very disappointed with the CQC report”, adding:

“We have, however, used this as an opportunity to begin implementing a wide-ranging series of improvements and environmental upgrades at the home.

“Regrettably, the pace of the improvements was not as we had envisaged and we have therefore taken the difficult decision to close the home.

“This will enable a full refurbishment to take place and the new systems and processes in development to be completed.

“While we acknowledge and are sorry for the upset this will cause our residents and their families, we feel that this is the most responsible route to ensuring that we are able to deliver safe, good quality care in a welcoming and modern environment.”

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The Stray Ferret asked why the slow pace of the refurbishment had prompted the home’s closure and when it might reopen but we have not received a response.

After the home’s recent closure, Rachel Bowes, North Yorkshire County Council’s assistant director for care and support, said it had been “been working alongside NHS North Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group with the home’s owner to try to secure improvements”.

A CQC spokesperson, said it had “taken action to protect the safety and welfare of people living at the home” and its “legal processes do not allow us to go into further detail at this time”.

A proposal by the ancestral owner of a 17th century historic house to create a sand and gravel quarry near Ripon could create risks to human health from noise, air quality and vibration, a study has concluded.

North Yorkshire County Council planners have told Newby Gravels Ltd that its plan to extract up to 30,000 tonnes of materials a year from a nine-hectare site at Great Givendale, beside the River Ure south-east of Ripon, would have “significant impacts” and a series of measures would be needed to mitigate them.

Documents submitted to the authority ahead of an anticipated planning application state the firm estimates that quarrying work and restoration of the land would take place over a decade.

They state Newby Gravels, whose director Richard Compton is the owner of the nearby grade I listed Newby Hall, would remove the minerals from the site, which is currently agricultural land in open countryside opposite a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust haven, by 20-tonne trucks making 12 trips a day, joining the public road at Skelton Lane.

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The papers state transportation of the sand and gravel from the quarry, where at least four people would be employed, would be suspended during major events taking place at the hall.

They add the firm is currently exploring the feasibility of the establishing rental holiday lodges at the site following the quarry.

They state:

“Such a leisure activity would complement the existing activities of the hall and wider Ripon area including the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Yorkshire Dales National Park.

“Restoration would therefore be to a combination of wetland areas with surrounding amenity woodland and grasslands with up to 20 short-term let lodges for holiday use.”