Tributes have been paid to the former chair of governors at St Aidan’s School in Harrogate, who has died from cancer.

Claire Kelley, 64, held the position for 21 years, as well as working for Lord Willis of Knaresborough during his time as MP for the area.

Daughter Emily Murphy said, in all her work, she was motivated by a desire to put things right. Her involvement in local politics began soon after the family moved to Harrogate, where son Alex was born.

“She was always interested in politics, ever since university in Sussex. I think in a way, having children, she started thinking ‘I want to do something that makes a difference’.

“There were quite a lot of problems in the community in Harrogate and there was a lot that needed to be addressed. Having young children and seeing that made her want to do something about it and do some good.”

Claire met Harrogate councillor Reg Marsh through his work as a financial advisor. He persuaded her to get involved in supporting the Lib Dems, first through leafleting and later by standing as a candidate herself.

She won election to Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council and, in 2010, stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate to replace Phil Willis when he retired as MP, eventually losing out to Andrew Jones by just over 1,000 votes.

During the campaign, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After successful radiotherapy treatment, Claire returned to work, taking up a post in the office of Leeds North MP Greg Mulholland.

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As well as politics, Claire became involved in the schools her children attended. She was a governor of Oatlands Infant School before becoming chair of governors at St Aidan’s in 1998. Five years ago, she chaired the trust board when the Yorkshire Causeway Schools Trust was established, uniting St Aidan’s with seven local primaries.

In 2018, after falling ill with suspected gallstones, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent a complex operation which led to a long recovery.

A gruelling programme of chemotherapy treatment followed, which forced her to step down from her role at St Aidan’s in 2019.

Soon after, Claire was told the disease had come back and spread to her lungs. Last year, she decided not to undergo any further chemotherapy.

Her remaining months were spent with her family, enjoying playing with her two-year-old grandson and anticipating the arrival of a second grandchild. Emily said:

“She said to her friends she wanted to meet her second grandchild, which she did.

“We’re very lucky. My brother and I are really close and he has been incredible. Mum had such a huge support network – her neighbours, her colleagues, there are so many people she’s had close to her who helped enormously.”

Former St Aidan’s chair of governors and local politician Claire Kelley, who has died aged 64

After her condition deteriorated in January, Claire moved to St Michael’s Hospice, where she died a short time later, with Emily and Alex by her side.

She also leaves two grandsons, her brother and sister, and former husband Paul Kelley with whom she remained good friends and who was an invaluable support to her and their children through her illness.

Paying tribute to her, St Aidan’s headteacher Chris Burt said:

“Claire was an exceptional chair of governors who had a deep understanding of the school, the community it serves and the national context within which we operate. Her ability to see the most appropriate direction for the school to take, often in relation to the most difficult decisions, was extraordinary.

“Despite the challenges of the roles that she performed, Claire always had an incredibly joyful and positive outlook. Even during the period of her illness, Claire has maintained her active involvement in the work of the governing body and her dignity and resolve has been an inspiration to all who have had the privilege of working alongside her.”

Claire’s funeral will take place at Christ Church in Harrogate next week, led by Rev Matthew Evans and the Ven Paul Hooper, a family friend. The congregation is limited to 30 people because of covid restrictions, but friends and family will also be able to watch it online.

A memorial will be planned by the St Aidan’s community when restrictions allow.

Sir Ed Davey’s victory in the Liberal Democrat leadership contest could help the party take back control of Harrogate & Knaresborough, according to the party’s local parliamentary spokesperson Judith Rogerson.

Mr Davey, the MP for Kingston and Surbiton, won the leadership election yesterday ahead of Layla Moran, receiving 63.5% of the vote. In his acceptance speech, he said the party would now launch a “national listening project” to try and win back voters.

Ms Rogerson said Mr Davey has been “very supportive” of what the party has been doing in Harrogate and Knaresborough.

She said:

“He is absolutely the right person to be leading the party and helping us win back seats from the Conservatives at the next election, especially here in Harrogate & Knaresborough.”

Under Phil Willis – now Lord Willis of Knaresborough – the Lib Dems held the Harrogate & Knaresborough constituency from 1997 until 2010. Last month, Lord Willis spoke to the Stray Ferret about a range of topics, including what he think makes a good constituency MP.

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Since Lord Willis retired, current Conservative MP Andrew Jones has won four consecutive general elections in the constituency.

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

In his first interview since he left office ten years ago, we spoke to former Harrogate & Knaresborough Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis about Harrogate’s retail woes, whether the House of Lords should move to York and what he thinks makes an effective constituency MP.

Read part one of the interview here, where Lord Willis of Knaresborough, as he is now known, discussed why he thinks Harrogate’s convention centre has lost its way.

What makes an effective constituency MP?

You did not need to be a great sociologist to see that Harrogate was a Tory-leaning town so I saw no future trying to spend my time outdoing the opposition.

I saw my job as an MP to really represent those who required representation. It didn’t matter to me what their politics were.

More than that, I actually enjoyed people. I enjoyed being at the summer fair, the Christmas bazaar or going to church on a Sunday. I enjoyed visiting elderly people’s homes and having a laugh with residents.

If you don’t enjoy these things then actually being the MP is a pretty miserable job, quite frankly.

Can Harrogate’s high street be saved?

Anyone who thinks the high street can go back to what it was, even 10 years ago, is living with false hope. High streets throughout Britain are undergoing a revolution.

There’s a limit to how many coffee shops you can have because in order to enjoy that there has to be other things going on.

I was delighted to see the Everyman cinema come in. It’s a good experience in a part of the town that was slightly off-centre. I do feel the answer for Harrogate is, how do you get people to come in and stay? It means you have to have some attractions.

Simply having more of the same is really not the answer. Harrogate starts from a very good place. It hasn’t got huge 1960s and 70s shopping centres that are tired. Our centre is very attractive but I don’t see research into the future of the town going on.

It’s not something that politicians should do, it’s something for business people and local people — and you have to inspire them to work at it.

Do you have any regrets from your time as an MP?

I never live with regrets. I’ve always had that philosophy. You do your best and sometimes you get things wrong or right. As a constituency MP I genuinely believed my team and I did make people feel they were represented.

If they had an issue then we would deal with it. I’ve never claimed to create miracles — but there were literally thousands of people who were better off during our time there.

Should the House of Lords move to York?

If we think as a nation the one thing we need to do is provide a retirement home for elderly politicians then I do think we’ve hit rock bottom! I don’t think it’s going to happen.

The House of Lords is becoming more irrelevant with every day. This government has adopted a US-style where Parliament is a nuisance rather than being what it should be — which is holding up the flames of democracy to the government’s feet.

Would local government devolution benefit Harrogate?

During my time, the relationship between HBC and North Yorkshire County Council was always fraught. There was no doubt NYCC saw itself as being of far greater importance than HBC and sometimes decisions were taken that were not always to Harrogate’s benefit.

The whole two-tier system was flawed right from the outset in 1974. As we move forward to the devolution era, will we make the same mistake again? Instead of making democracy closer to people will we take it further and further away?

Once people feel they do not have ownership of decisions, then you get mass cynicism and people say, what is the point of all this?

I’m a great lover of local government. It wasn’t always totally successful but I don’t think the models being drawn up will bring us closer to the people. Unless local people are involved in the services which they pay then you will not get the quality they need.

Is Harrogate’s Local Plan good for the town?

When you design a Local Plan and you base it on what is best for us politically then you lose out. Local Plans have got to be designed with a number of broad concepts in mind.

Harrogate has a lot of incredibly wealthy people but it’s serviced by a lot of people on modest salaries who want to live in homes they can afford — they’ve not had that.

As council leader, I did deals with the late George Crowther to put in affordable housing on the old general hospital site. I just think unless you provide good housing for local people then your town dies a bit really.

It’s a truism that development is never popular with those who don’t want it, but it has got to be evenly distributed. Unless you have a plan that is long-term that you can sell to the people as their plan, not our plan, then you won’t get a buy-in. You look at the 3,000 homes in Green Hammerton and think to yourself — what’s all that about? Does that serve Harrogate?

One reason I won the election to be council leader in 1990 was because we refused to sell land to a supermarket at where is now Stonefall Cemetery.

We turned down £15m, but when you look at how many people have the ashes of their loved ones spread there over the last 30 years, you realise that was a price worth paying.

We still got a supermarket but we didn’t get the money for it — but that’s not what councils are in business for. They’re in business for weighing things up and making sure they’re creating an environment for people to live in. That’s my philosophy.

Do you miss being an MP?

I miss enormously being the MP in Harrogate. I enjoyed those 13 years very much indeed. They were exciting times and I felt an enormous connection to the people of Harrogate.

I owe them an enormous debt for the way they supported me in what I was trying to do. I remember it with huge fondness. I had a love affair with Harrogate.

Former Harrogate & Knaresborough Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis has called on “amateur councillors” at Harrogate Borough Council to step back from their involvement with the convention centre.

In his first interview since he left office ten years ago, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, as he is now known, told The Stray Ferret that local businesses need to have a greater say in how the “highly specialised and highly competitive” business is run — or else Harrogate’s unique vibrancy could fail.

He said:

“I’m at a loss to what the council’s about anymore. You need to have some clear direction as to what it is they want to achieve and what are the time scales, then work back from there.”

Lord Willis, who was Harrogate & Knaresborough’s MP from 1997 to 2010, still lives near York and said he has kept an eye on local politics.

He said it made “good sense” for HBC to allow the NHS use the site as a Nightingale hospital – but said there “was no long term planning to see what happens when they move out”.

He added:

“It’s that lack of looking forward that as an outsider very much worries me.

“It’s too easy to just collect the rent. In the short term it was good for the town and the NHS. But it was quite obvious, literally within a month of it opening, that it wouldn’t do any business.”

Before becoming MP, Lord Willis was the leader of HBC running a Liberal Democrat council. In 1990 when he took up the role, the conference centre was haemorrhaging money.

He estimates that two out of every three pounds of council tax that was collected at that time went to financing its debts.

During this period, Lord Willis was chair of the convention centre board and said they placed more decision making in the hands of local businessmen, including John Hardy and Richard Hanwell.

Lord Willis said they brought the dynamism required to make the convention centre a success in the 1990s.

He said:

“They were right wing in a political sense but very successful businessmen. They really influenced the way in which we had to use the conference centre. I was in awe of the way business people made it work.”

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Regarding the convention centre’s future, Lord Willis said HBC has failed to come up with a modern vision for the site.

He suggested they could be trying to target more American-style comic book, movie or videogame events.

He said:

“We’ve moved into a digital age but I don’t get the sense we’ve gone after that market.

“They are hugely popular everything from Star Wars to more niche conventions. You need people to think outside the box as to where is our next people coming from. I just don’t see that.”

Last week HBC announced it planned to spend £1.1 million on detailed design and project work for the facility, potentially leading to a major £47 million investment.

However, Lord Willis said this is only worthwhile if HBC has a sound plan, which he doubts.

He said:

“It’s not about bringing in a set of consultants, it’s about bringing key individuals who have an interest in looking at the business’s strengths and weakness.

“It’s not just money. It’s how you invest that money and recognising it might be three years before you get a return on it. That takes a lot of political selling.

“The council has already made the faux pas of getting rid of the council offices and building a new palace. That’s done nothing for the town and all it has is a semi-derelict building.

“It’s that lack of thinking ahead.

The Stray Ferret has asked current Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones for his thoughts on the future of the convention centre but he has so far declined to comment.

Tomorrow The Stray Ferret will publish part two of our interview with Lord Willis, where he talks about how Harrogate town centre could be reinvigorated and whether the House of Lords should move to Yorkshire.