North Yorkshire Council leader reveals his thinking on Harrogate's future in tight financial times

Admitting it had been a “monumental task” to take over all of the county’s services after becoming a new unitary authority in April 2023, Tory councillor Carl Les OBE told the Harrogate Advertiser he was pleased by how the transition had gone but that major plans for the future, including savings to meet a £40 million budget shortfall, were just around the corner.

“We are the third largest county council in England in terms of population and the biggest in geographical size,” said Coun Les who has been NYC leader since 2015.

"It’s been a monumental task but I think the transition has gone remarkably well.

"Nothing has stopped. We’ve just been getting on with delivering all the services we have to deliver.

"We are now in the process of preparing a new council plan with priorities set out for every part of North Yorkshire.

“Accompanying that will be a new budget, council tax calculations and a new cultural strategy.

"We are also in the middle of addressing a £40m funding gap.

"These are savings, not cuts, and the situation has been helped by local council reorganisation, something I have supported since I was first a councillor.

"Without the efficiencies achieved by becoming a unitary authority last year; the local government reorganisation dividend, it would be almost double that.”

The process for this important group of intertwined series of strategies that will determine local life from Scarborough to Skipton, Pickering to Knaresborough for the next five years is now in its final stages.

Consultation is ongoing across the board and a series of important meetings is expected to reach a conclusion early next year after councillors have their say at County Hall in Northallerton.

To many businesses, arts organisations and civic groups in Harrogate, it has felt like a long time since North Yorkshire Council was launched one years, seven months ago.

Fear can grow in a vacuum but North Yorkshire Council’s leader says that what is, perhaps, the biggest fear of all will simply not happen.

"There will be no accidental neglect of Harrogate or anywhere else,” said Coun Les, who has represented the Catterick area for more than 20 years.

"I don’t buy the idea that we could ever overlook a place like Harrogate.

"It’s an important part of North Yorkshire and has significant cultural and leisure assets.

"We would want to see them prosper.

"But we are a county of 3,000 square miles and a community festival in a small village is as important to people in, say, Hawes, as a bigger event is to people in Harrogate.

"We always have to try to be fair.”

The next few months will reveal how the tough financial landscape facing North Yorkshire Council; one influenced mainly by national factors rather than local, impacts on Harrogate role in the county’s future.

As part of North Yorkshire Council’s often-publicised commitment to the idea of ‘localism’, there will be a Harrogate Town Council for the first time next year.

What shape that will take after the elections are held in May 2025 is in the process of being decided now, in accordance with procedure and protocol.

Some in Harrogate fear the newly-elected parish council may not get enough power, other fear what would happen if it were to become too powerful.

In theory, the leader of North Yorkshire Council is open to persuasion.

But he expects there to be a “gentle progression” in the role that Harrogate Town Council acquires rather than any “big bang”.

And how far that progression goes will depend, Coun Les adds, on the calibre and qualities of Harrogate Town Council itself.

"We are getting on with ensuring the town council happens.

"The important thing is to get it right, rather than doing it quickly.

"Town councillors will have as much responsibility as they are prepared to take on.

"But we will need to know they are competent and they are the right people to take on any services.

"We will still have responsibilities.”

Whatever conclusions North Yorkshire Council comes to on the scope of Harrogate Town Council, its leader seems unlikely to transfer power and money back to the town in a wholesale fashion.

When it comes to the sort of role he would prefer the new town council to have, though the decision is very far from his on his own, the council leader is clear.

"The new Harrogate Town Council will probably be involved with the environment and the area’s cultural assets.

"I can’t believe any parish council would even want to be involved with, say, education.

"The decision will come after May’s town council elections.

"The town council will be held to account by us.

"This is about delegation by North Yorkshire Council, not abdication."

In an era when local devolution looks here to stay, Coun Les expects the new Government to transform England into a land of unitary authorities.

He welcomed the boost for local authority funding announced in last week’s Budget.

He is also finding the experience of working with a Labour Mayor of York and North Yorkshire untraumatic.

"We are getting on fine with David Skaith; he is a decent person.

"But he is only one leg of a three-legged local government system.”