£69m Kex Gill realignment beset by further delayWork on a major realignment of the A59 at Kex Gill has been further delayed as the scheme awaits sign off from government.
North Yorkshire County Council had earmarked work on the scheme to finally start in January.
The project will see a diversion built west of Blubberhouses on a stretch of road blighted by a history of landslips.
The scheme has faced numerous delays and following tender returns, the estimated cost of the scheme increased by £7.2 million to £68.8 million, which the council attributes to inflation affecting constructions costs.
In a statement to full council next week, Cllr Keane Duncan, executive councillor for highways, will say:
“We are almost ready to begin construction work to realign Kex Gill, which is amongst the council’s biggest ever infrastructure projects.
“The council has awarded preferred bidder status to John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd, a family-owned international civil engineering and construction contractor with a strong track record.
“We are in the final stages of completing land acquisition processes ahead of a decision on our full business case which was submitted to the Department for Transport in August.
“A decision is expected very soon to coincide with a planned start on site.”
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The project is due to be funded by a £56.1 million grant from the Department for Transport, with the council covering the rest from its reserves.
A further £11 million has been factored into the £68 million budget to cover any issues with ground conditions or bad weather.
It comes as senior county council officials have warned about the risk involved with the authority’s major projects amid soaring inflation.
Gary Fielding, the council’s director for strategic resources, warned previously that the “burden of risk” for major projects, such as the realignment of the A59 at Kex Gill, will fall on the authority amid soaring inflation.
The A59 at Kex Gill, near Blubberhouses, is the main route between Harrogate and Skipton. Since 2000, the route has been closed 12 times following landslips.
The estimated completion date for the scheme is May 2025.
County council to set up new estates companyNorth Yorkshire County Council looks set to establish a new property company to look after its estate.
Under plans outlined in a report due before the council’s executive, the new firm would be established with £200,000 working capital backed by a loan.
It would also see the authority’s current estates company, Align Property Partners Limited, operate on a commercial basis.
The new firm would be wholly owned by the council and would transfer to North Yorkshire Council from April 1.
As part of the plan, the company would adhere to “teckal” exemptions – meaning the council could directly award it contracts without open procurement.
Vicki Dixon, assistant director for strategic resources, said in a report that the current firm, Align Property, was “well-placed” to operate commercially.
She said:
“A substantial market exists for the services provided by Align, with the company well placed to capitalise on its existing reputation in the commercial space.
“The growth is being driven by non-NYCC externally generated income and indicates that Company trading aspirations have outgrown the initial Teckal-based operating model.”
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Ms Dixon added that the new company’s function would be to “continue providing high quality property, highways and estates services to the council and associated bodies, while being Teckal compliant”.
Senior councillors will discuss the plans at a meeting on Tuesday, February 21.
The move comes as the new North Yorkshire Council is set to take control over a host of district-council run companies.
Brimhams Active, the arms-length leisure firm, and Bracewell Homes – both of which are owned by Harrogate Borough Council – will transfer over to the new authority on April 1.
The county council has previously been criticised for the performance of its own companies after its Brierley Group of firms reported losses in recent years.
Opposition North Yorkshire councillors criticise ‘community networks’ planThe leaders of opposition political groups on North Yorkshire County Council have criticised plans to fill the void left by the abolition of seven district councils by launching 30 unelected and unfunded “community networks”.
A series of concerns have been raised ahead of the council’s executive next Tuesday, which will consider establishing community networks to act as the “engine rooms” for social and economic change.
The leaders of the Liberal Democrat, Labour, Green and Independent groups, which collectively secured 59% of the votes at last May’s election, said both they and some members of the ruling Conservative group, which has a two-seat majority, had significant reservations over the move.
A statement issued by the council on Tuesday, said the networks, which it is hoped will include representatives of organisations, such as parish councils, police and the NHS, were being seen as “a hugely important element of the new North Yorkshire Council”, which will be launched on April 1.
It is hoped the networks will build on existing relationships and partnerships between the public, private and community and voluntary sectors, including the close working arrangements that were developed during the covid pandemic.
Cllr Carl Les, leader of North Yorkshire County Council.
The statement highlighted how the networks would include councillors and receive support from senior council officers, but would be independent of the new authority and be responsible for driving forward action plans centred on a specific area’s priorities.
County council leader, Cllr Carl Les, said:
“While North Yorkshire Council will cover the largest geographical area of any local authority in the country, we are committed to being the most local too.
“The community networks will be invaluable to ensuring that the voices of communities across North Yorkshire are heard, and that local needs and priorities can be addressed.”
‘Don’t seem to make much sense’
Labour group leader Cllr Steve Shaw Wright said while the proposed organisations were “a start”, due to their lack of powers the networks would “end up like talking shops where people come and tub thump” and feature parishes with vastly different budgets and priorities.
He said:
“They don’t seem to make much sense at the moment. My patch is so diverse, trying to get something that works for everybody is going to be difficult.”
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Cllr Andy Brown, leader of the Green group, said he did not understand how community networks would help and that there was a risk of confusion between the roles of parish and town councils, the county authority’s area constituency committees and the unitary council and mayoral combined authority.
He said:
“I don’t understand when they were approved or how their geography was determined. My biggest concern is nobody consulted the local councillors about the geography of these networks.
“If you are going to have community networks they have to be communities.”
Independent group leader Cllr Stuart Parsons said the community networks would have “no power to make decisions or determine anything”.
He said:
“How these organisations are supposed to have any impact is beyond me.
“For example, if a Community Network was to make a recommendation to increase bus services the unitary council’s executive could just turn round and say it can’t afford it. There’s nothing for these networks to have any bite.”
Cllr Bryn Griffiths, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said although it was positive that members of communities would be working together to achieve a common goal, there were issues over the networks’ governance, accountability and how they would be financed.
He said:
“There is potential for these networks to be hijacked by individuals for their own purposes and the role of elected members could be circumvented. I also have concerns they will go their own way and do their own thing.”
Harrogate’s Otley Road cycleway has cost £2.2m so farThe Otley Road cycleway in Harrogate has cost £2,234,000 so far — almost triple the amount awarded to contractors to construct the first phase.
Hull civil engineering firm PBS Construction was awarded £827,000 in 2021 to build phase one from Harlow Moor Road to Cold Bath Road.
The much-criticised route opened in January last year but subsequent remedial work and design fees for phase two of the project — which has since been scrapped — increased the cost significantly.
The widening of the Otley Road and Harlow Moor Road junction was the main remedial work.
The figures are contained in a North Yorkshire County Council report, which raises questions over whether the council had sufficient funds to complete the second phase of the scheme.
Councillor Keane Duncan, the Conservative executive member for highways and transportation at North Yorkshire County Council, said phase two had been dropped because it lacked public support.
But the report reveals the council has just £565,000 remaining of the £4,275,000 it secured in 2018 from the government’s National Productivity Investment Fund for measures that enabled development and business growth in west Harrogate
The funding and spending figures contained in the report are reproduced below.
According to the document, council officers received “multiple reports” about the design and construction of the cycleway from residents and groups such as Harrogate District Cycle Action after it opened. It adds:
“These were then reviewed with our design consultants WSP, and a list of remedial works have now been prepared.
“These remedial works were planned to be completed in the early part of 2023. However, in May 2022 the fibre optic network company City Fibre contacted North Yorkshire County Council with a request to install fibre optic cables down the full length of the newly constructed cycleway.
“We have negotiated with City Fibre to reinstate the full width of the cycleway at their expense. We will therefore carry out our outstanding remedial works once City Fibre have installed their apparatus.”
The report adds £60,000 of the remaining funds are expected to cover these remedial works.
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The council has said it will come up with new traffic calming measures in the west of Harrogate to compensate for scrapping phase two of the scheme, which would have extended the cycleway from Cold Bath Road towards Beech Grove.
It still has aspirations to construct phase three out of town to Cardale Park at an unspecified time in the future.
North Yorkshire County Council’s highways area manager Melisa Burnham said:
“Although construction costs increased to £970,000 following completion, this was still within our anticipated budget. The increase was a result of additional design works and remedials found whilst on site.
“The remaining costs include design, feasibility, surveys and utility diversions required to deliver phase one and two of the cycleway, and the Harlow Moor Road junction improvement to date.”
Starbeck special needs school set to get another 45 pupilsNorth Yorkshire County Council has revealed plans to expand places at Springwater School in Starbeck.
The authority’s executive will discuss plans on Tuesday to create an additional 45 places at the school.
Springwater School, which is based off High Street, teaches children aged two to 19 with “profound and multiple, severe or physical difficulties”.
A report due before councillors says the move would help to provide “more local, quality in-house special school places” within the county.
As part of the plan, the council intends to spend £3.1 million from its High Needs Provision Capital Allocation, which is granted by government.
However, Gary Fielding, strategic director of resources at the council, said in a report it was “disappointing” the amount of funding allocated to the council.
He said:
“Whilst it is appreciated that the Department for Education has prioritised resources to address limited capacity in special schools nationally, it is disappointing that the level of funding allocated to NYCC is the lowest in the country (expressed in terms of £ per pupil aged 2 to 18).”
Senior councillors will make a decision on the proposal at a meeting on February 21.
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Harrogate district Greens call for opposition parties to co-operate moreThe Harrogate and District Green Party has said last week’s Masham and Fountains by-election result highlighted the need for opposition parties to co-operate if they are to overcome the Conservatives.
Liberal Democrat Felicity Cunliffe-Lister defeated Conservative candidate Brooke Hull in a two-horse race after the Greens decided not to stand.
The result reduced the Conservative majority on North Yorkshire County Council to two.
Shan Oakes, a member of the executive of Harrogate and District Green Party, said some Conservatives “knew that if a Green had stood, the opposition vote would have been split, potentially leading to a Tory win”.
Ms Oakes said the result confirmed the suspicion and vindicated the party’s decision, adding:
“The current national Conservative policy is extremely damaging, and the first-past-the-post voting system is stacked against more progressive parties in favour of the status quo.
“It is therefore imperative, despite naysayers, for progressive parties to work smarter to ensure their candidates can win so that we can break out of the terrifying downward spiral we are in.
“The Greens look carefully at each seat to decide how to get to the best outcome, for people and the environment , and we invite other parties to cooperate.”
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The Stray Ferret asked the Liberal Democrats if it agreed the Greens’ decision not to contest Masham was a factor in its success and whether it would reciprocate by standing down in some seats to allow the Greens to go head-to-head against the Conservatives.
Liberal Democrat Matt Walker replied by saying the result showed people were angry and “now is the time for change”, adding:
“It is ultimately voters who decide who they put their faith in to deliver much needed change and the Liberal Democrats in North Yorkshire will not take that for granted.”
‘Inspiring’ new £85,000 vision for Ripon remains unpublished — two years on
A report outlining a new “inspiring and innovative” vision for regenerating Ripon has not been published — more than two years after it was announced.
Harrogate Borough Council advertised a 12-month contract to draw up a masterplan for the city in December 2020.
But Ripon city councillors have discovered through a Freedom of Information request that no formal report for the Ripon renewal project has been produced yet.
The Stray Ferret reported in August that work on the masterplan had been paused due to negotiations over the £85,000 contract awarded by Harrogate Borough Council to Bauman Lyons Architects.
At that time, Trevor Watson, Harrogate Borough Council’s director of economy and culture, said he did not know when the project — originally scheduled for completion last February — would be finalised.
But he added the aim was to finish it before the launch of the replacement North Yorkshire Council, which comes into being on April 1.
He said:
“We are in dialogue with the consultants and it is very difficult to say when that conversation will be concluded.
“But it will be our intention to bring the project forward in that timeframe.”
At Monday’s full meeting of Ripon City Council, leader Andrew Williams, said:
“Both ourselves and Ripon BID, have been trying to obtain a copy of the consultants’ report and now we have discovered through a response to the FOI request we submitted to Harrogate Borough Council that no formal report has been produced.
“As we don’t want the work carried out to be a waste of time and money I propose that we ask Harrogate to report on where the consultants had got to, as this could be helpful for the future in areas such as seeking grant funding.”
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Councillors agreed unanimously for the request to be sent to Harrogate Borough Council and for it to be copied to Councillor Carl Les, the leader of North Yorkshire County Council and North Yorkshire County Council chief executive Richard Flinton.
North Yorkshire County Council and the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership were, along with Harrogate Borough Council, co-funders of the project. which aimed to create a vision for the future of Ripon that would help the city to win funding for infrastructure, planning and community projects.
A consultation was held in 2021 with residents, businesses and community groups which highlighted problems in the city.
These included not enough things for young people to do, traffic in the market place and a lack of affordable housing.
There were also calls for better traffic management on Low Skellgate and Westgate, and a new green route linking the Workhouse Museum and Ripon Cathedral.
Ex-ombudsman criticises North Yorkshire devolution consultation as biased ‘marketing exercise’A former local government ombudsman has launched a withering attack on two councils’ consultation over a North Yorkshire devolution deal.
Local government expert Anne Seex raised a litany of questions over the quality and results of the eight-week exercise to assess public support for a mayoral combined authority and government funding deal negotiated by City of York Council and North Yorkshire County Council.
However, a meeting of the county council’s executive heard just a single concern raised about the consultation’s mixed findings – that the deal could lead to an increase in bureaucracy – with numerous members instead expressing their excitement about the potential benefits of devolution.
Ex-ombudsman Mrs Seex told the meeting it was clear that those who took part in the consultation exercise in North Yorkshire had seen “more disadvantages than advantages” to the deal.
While the council has claimed “widespread support” for the devolution deal, Mrs Seex said online responses to the consultation amounted to just 0.3% of the electorate, which she described as a “pitifully small” sample.
She said advice from the Consultation Institute it had employed to help run the consultation that the consultation had been good was “a case of a private company marking its own homework”.
Mrs Seex told the meeting:
“The exercise that you have undertaken is better described as marketing.
“The information to the public was purely promotional and omitted important contextual information about the scheme, such as the only directly elected position would be the mayor, that York city would have three times the representation of North Yorkshire with two members for 200,000-plus people and North Yorkshire having two members for 600,000-plus people.”
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She said the powers of elected councillors on the York and North York authorities would be “sucked up” by the mayoral combined authority, rather than being devolved down.
Mrs Seex said the combined authority was set to be allowed to call in planning applications and make decisions against local views, while the funding attached to the deal was £200 million less than the two councils had asked for, and that government funding could not be relied on and could be subject to reviews.
She said:
“The funding amounts to £222 per person per year while council spending across the North has been reduced by £431 per person per year.”
She added most of the powers being trumpeted as being given to the combined authority were already in the hands of the councils.
Mrs Seex said the consultation results provided no breakdown of how York and North Yorkshire residents had responded and that it was crucial that elected community representatives across the county were aware of how their residents had responded to the exercise.
James Farrar, of the York and North Yorkshire LEP.
James Farrar, chief officer of North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership, which helped run the consultation, said the structure and content of the consultation had been shared with government officials before being launched and that details of the full devolution deal had been shared with the public.
He said:
“This was not a consultation on the relative merits of devolution. We were consulting on the scheme.
“The scheme sets out how the devolution deal will be implemented, it was therefore important we focus on the key elements in the scheme.”
Mr Farrar added the Consultation Institute had been employed due its experience in helping authorities examine support for devolution deals.
He said the ultimate decision over whether the authorities had met legal requirements lay with the councils and it would be for the government to assess the suitability of the consultation.
Cllr Carl Les, leader of the council, said the executive would forego its power to send the results of the consultation to the government for consideration, and instead invite all the authority’s elected members to voice their views at a meeting later this month.
He said he was delighted the authority had reached a position where it could progress towards achieving beneficial devolution deals, such as the one in neighbouring Teesside, and a point where North Yorkshire and York would have a more powerful voice.
Fees waived for Harrogate district street parties to mark coronationFees for street parties in the Harrogate district to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III will be waived.
North Yorkshire County Council today confirmed the move, which will encourage celebrations to mark the coronation of the first monarch in 70 years.
The council is waiving the £300 standard street closure fee on residential streets from Saturday, May 6, to Monday, May 8.
Charles III’s coronation will take place on Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey in London, where he will be crowned alongside Camilla, the Queen Consort.
Cllr Keane Duncan, executive councillor of highways at the council, said:
“The coronation of King Charles III will be a momentous event in history, and we recognise that communities across North Yorkshire will want to plan their own celebrations.
“Street parties are always a popular way for people to get together, whether that’s for games or a royal lunch. By waiving the fees, we hope many residents will apply to ensure they have a safe open space to use.”
Anybody wishing to host a street party must apply before March 10. For more information on how to apply, visit the county council website here.
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Harrogate council spends £45,000 on outside help for failed Levelling Up bidHarrogate Borough Council has revealed it spent £45,000 on outside help when it put together its failed bid for government Levelling Up money.
Last year the council bid for £20 million that would have gone towards a proposed £49 million redevelopment of Harrogate Convention Centre.
But the bid was refused by the government last month, throwing into doubt the future of the venue it has owned and run since opening in 1982.
Following a freedom of information request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the authority said it spent £45,000 on “legal, design and financial input and guidance” related to the bid proposal.
A council spokesperson said this was to “ensure the best possible chance” of it being successful.
Despite Harrogate being in the lowest priority area for Levelling Up funding, convention centre director Paula Lorimer told councillors at a meeting last week it would likely bid again when a third round of funding worth £1 billion opens.
Ms Lorimer warned Harrogate would “wither on the vine” if the facility closed because of its importance to the town’s business and leisure sectors.
The ownership of the venue will be handed over to the new North Yorkshire Council on April 1.
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Andrew Williams, North Yorkshire independent councillor for Ripon Minster and Moorside on North Yorkshire County Council, said he didn’t begrudge Harrogate Borough Council bidding for Levelling Up money but the refusal should show the council “that the government doesn’t think the redevelopment is worthwhile.”
Cllr Williams said:
“The conference centre is going to be a millstone around anybody’s neck.
“There needs to be serious thought put into what commercial uses it can become so that it will not be a drain on the public purse. I don’t support spending £50 million on a business that’s still losing money. Enough is enough when resources is tight.”
A Harrogate Borough Council spokesperson said:
“The costs associated with our bid for the government’s Levelling Up Fund included significant legal, design and financial input and guidance.
“This was required to ensure the best possible chance of the Harrogate Convention Centre’s £20m submission being considered.
“We were disappointed not to be award a grant in this round of funding. But we remain hopeful and have everything we need to submit a bid for any future rounds or other opportunities for government funding.
“We have not yet received any feedback from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as to why we were unsuccessful.”