County council leader faces call to drop Harrogate’s Station Gateway scheme if public oppose it

Cllr Les and NYCC chief executive Richard Flinton spoke to business leaders at a Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce meeting at Rudding Park last night.

After a presentation from Mr Flinton about the new North Yorkshire Council, the two answered questions from members when the topic of the Station Gateway came up.

The £10.9m project has been in development for three years after funding was won from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund.

It aims to make the town centre more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians.

While the scheme has been welcomed by those who want more active travel in the town, measures such as reducing Station Parade to one-lane traffic and a part-pedestrianisation of James Street have proved to be unpopular with some business owners.

The results of a third round of consultation were expected to be published before Christmas but were delayed after the council received over 5,000 individual comments.

Mr Flinton told the meeting the results of the consultation will finally be published in a report on Friday.

Drawing some gasps from the audience, the chamber’s chief executive, David Simister, asked Cllr Les if the council would drop the project should a majority of those who took part in the consultation oppose it.

In response, Cllr Les said: “There’s a possibility of a huge amount of investment coming to in the town, we don’t want to lose sight of it”.

If the report is approved by the NYCC executive, it will be discussed at a Harrogate & Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee meeting in spring before the council’s Conservative executive make a final decision in June.

Cllr Les suggested the opinions of councillors sitting on the area committee, which has a majority of Liberal Democrats, could be influential in deciding whether the project goes ahead.

He said: “I think whatever decisions the executive wants to make about the Transforming Cities Fund, leaving aside the fact that it’s a huge amount of money that could benefit the town, I would want to be guided by them [on the area committee] as well.

"I would not want to be doing something that is not in step with my colleagues”.