Letter: Better fit with north and west

When I read County Council leader Coun Carl Les call for “mutual respect” in the heated debate between the North Yorkshire County Council and the seven district councils over contrasting devolution plans, aimed to meet the government’s objectives, hypocrisy was to my mind the order of the day.

I recall a county councillor remarking that Harrogate might be given powers to operate and clean public toilets, and have say in the management of the Stray, nothing more, if the county council’s preference for a unitary authority covering the whole county, excluding the city of York, went ahead. Where is the “respect” in that?

I am delighted that Harrogate Borough Council (HBC) has identified two alternative, and counter options.

HBC leader Coun Richard Cooper has declared that both avoid Harrogate suffering the indignity of seeing “our award-winning parks and gardens become the property of a remote bureaucracy”, this being the case if there was a “Northallerton-based mega-council” with over 600,000 inhabitants (York and its surrounding district has around 200,000).

I venture to suggest that few in Harrogate would disagree with that: Coun Cooper is to be congratulated in saying what he has said - and his warning that the job of the Mayor of the proposed mega-council would be “a nightmare” when deciding funding allocations equitably across such a large area with diverse interests.

I also suggest that this should not be a politically partisan issue: we are all in it together.

The two options both divide North Yorkshire into two parts. One, the North-South unitary authority would include the city of York and incorporate Harrogate, Selby and Scarborough (possibly also Skipton) whereas the other, East-West, focuses on Harrogate linking with Ripon, Richmond and Skipton as the other unitary authority.

In that scenario the distribution of population in both halves is far more equitable than the Northallerton proposal.

Not surprisingly, the East-West option is HBC’s vision. I fully expect, however, that the City of York will support the county council’s proposal as it would remain self-governing.

In my considered opinion, Harrogate has much more in common with those centres to our north and west than with Selby and far away Scarborough, and would not be dominated by City of York; and Harrogate has particularly close ties with Ripon.

I sincerely hope that this will also be favoured by the other district councils. Go for it, HBC!