Green light for Scarborough and Harrogate’s new town council budgets

Scarborough Town Council will have a precept of £384,000 for its first year, resulting in a Band D charge of £28.88 for 2025/26.

For Harrogate Town Council, a precept of £362,000 was approved, resulting in a Band D charge of £12.73 for 2025/26.

Coun Heather Phillips, executive member for North Yorkshire Council’s corporate services, said all the relevant parties including charter trustees in both towns had been consulted and recommended that the plan be approved.

Coun Rich Maw, one of Scarborough’s charter trustees, said the additional charge would “leave taxpayers surprised” because responses to public consultations “seemed to be quite low but everyone will be asked to pay”.

However, fellow charter trustee, Coun Liz Colling, highlighted that they had decided to put an extra £50,000 into the budget so that newly-elected town councillors could “hit the ground running” after elections on May 1.

At a public meeting last week, Scarborough’s charter trustees held further discussions about the extent and scale of the proposed precept.

The budget will include hiring a town clerk and administrative support as well as an interim clerk, equipment and setting up a website as well as funding civic costs, minimum running costs, risk mitigation costs and service development.

After staffing, which has been budgeted at £115,000 for the full-time town clerk and admin support, the second largest single expense will be contingency funds at £100,000.

These can go towards mitigating the “unknown specific costs” that the town council could face and towards ensuring that it has “some reasonable headroom” to mitigate those costs.

Coun Janet Jefferson, also a charter trustee, conceded that there had been concern among members about the financial impact on residents, but had concluded that the approved plan was the best course of action.

Any unspent balance will be carried forward to 2026-27 to “provide funds to mitigate future risk and capacity for service investment”.

The precepts were approved with all except one North Yorkshire councillor voting in favour.

Next May, residents in the Castle, Falsgrave and Stepney, Northstead, Weaponness and Ramshill, and Woodlands wards will be asked to elect a total of 15 unpaid town councillors.