Top councillor says Harrogate Town Council delay until 2025 is 'wrong for town, its assets and its people'

Coun Pat Marsh, Liberal Democrat councillor for Stray, Woodlands & Hookstone, said to leave Harrogate as the only area of the district without its own parish council until, potentially, 2025 was "undemocratic"."For 77,000 residents to be denied that opportunity would be so wrong when you think of all the other towns and villages around us who have a parish or town councils such as, Knaresborough, Ripon, Pateley Bridge, to name just a few.

"Who does that benefit? Certainly not the people of Harrogate who need and deserve their democratic rights now."

The comments by the veteran councillor, who is chair of Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee, follow a decision at a North Yorkshire Council this week to launch a third public consultation on the issue after Conservative councillors raised concerns about two councillors representing one ward and instead backed a proposal to use single councillor wards based around the 19 former Harrogate Borough Council boundaries.

As a result, rather than a Harrogate Town Council being formed, as planned in April 2024, the new consultation is likely to push that date back to 2025.

That will mean Harrogate, which lost its district council when North Yorkshire Council was formed in April this year as part of the biggest reorganisation of local government for 50 years, as the only town in the county without its own council for two more years.

Although local political opinion remains quietly divided on the practical merits – and cost to council tax payers – of creating a Harrogate Town Council, Coun Pat Marsh believes it is essential under the new unitary authority running the whole of North Yorkshire that Harrogate’s interests are represented by the town itself to a degree, rather than Northallerton.

"Town councils are there to protect town assets, which in our case means the Royal Hall, Valley Gardens etc.

"It’s important to make sure we have a stronger voice that is heard at North Yorkshire.

"The council would reflect a vision for the town with local people having that vision not North Yorkshire councillors from Catterick or Northallerton.”

Officers at North Yorkshire had previously recommended that each of the proposed 10 town council wards in Harrogate be represented by two councillors each, with the exception of a single-councillor Saltergate ward.

It’s on that basis that two public consultations were previously held in Harrogate.

In the viewpoint of Coun March, the change of heart will lead only to a pointless delay.

"Local residents have been asked twice on whether they want a town council and twice they have said yes,” she said.

"We need to get on with the process for residents now.

"A delay to this happening for another two years is so wrong for the people of Harrogate.”

But Michael Harrison, Conservative councillor for Killinghall, Hampsthwaite & Saltergate who was selected as the first Charter Mayor of Harrogate in more than a century, said he "didn't understand what the rush was".

Speaking at the North Yorkshire Council meeting, Coun Harrison said: "It's got to be absolutely right.

"Let's pause and think about this a bit longer, although I am mindful of continual consultation and cost.”