How the coastal economy is just as important to Yorkshire - Carl Les
I have always enjoyed reading, and in my limited free time today I continue with it. Even subjects I found uninteresting at school, have now become part of a varied diet. Some subjects, those I know something about, are the most attractive and I find myself making time to catch another 10 minutes, or complete another chapter.
Presently I am enjoying Rob Cowen’s ‘The North Road’, written about the Great North Road, a subject I know a lot about. Although not actually born beside it, as my mother went to Ilkley to be near to her mother for my birth, as many people know I have lived and worked, with limited excursions, all my life beside the A1.
The book is even more immediate to me, as our family business at Leeming Bar is mentioned, always pleasing to see in print the identity you have spent a lifetime building and by happenstance the author has relocated and come to live in the next village to us. I do hope I meet him sometime.
In his ambition to walk the length of the Great North Road, from south to north, so far in the book Mr Cowen is still in the Home Counties having left London some weeks ago. I still drive to London on occasions, and recognise the villages and towns he is passing through, all by-passed now.
When we did the same journey as a child it was a full day’s trip. My brother and I were lifted out of our beds, in pyjamas and dressing-gowns and put on the back seat of the car. We would wake about an hour later, in the traffic of Doncaster town centre, and we would change into proper clothes standing on the flat floor behind the front bench seat of our Humber Hawk saloon, perfect as a changing room for two little boys.
Wide awake now we would watch the miles roll by, passing the very fringe of Sherwood Forest, always looking for, but never seeing, Robin Hood at the Ollerton roundabout, passing Grantham, the Bloodhound air defence missiles near the famous Ram Jam Inn, crawling through Stamford.
Lunch was nearly always a picnic parked fifty yards down Honey Pot Lane near Colsterworth, afterwards soon to be looking for American jets based at RAF Alconbury. Then passing through the places that the author is hiking through at this point in the book, Biggleswade, Baldock, Hatfield before working through the northern suburbs of London, down the Edgware Road to arrive triumphantly at tea-time at The Hyde Park Hotel, a grand hotel at a time when London prices were still reasonable.
I stayed near the Hyde Park recently at a hotel formerly run by a former student of the Scottish Hotel School. Retired now like myself, he was a few years ahead of me but we would likely have shared lecturers, Fuller, Beavis, Walker Graham, Jolly, Gee, McKee and Curry. His hotel clearly followed their maxim “today`s excellence is tomorrow’s acceptable”.
Leaving the Home Counties, Rob Cowen came across a largely hidden plaque with an engraving of a poem by local writer, Ed Burnett. Two lines leap out for me. “For those who search all their lives / Are blessed with a welcoming road”.
I have spent some time in recent articles commenting on the rural economy, not exclusively farming although it is the most recognisable sector in context. I have made the point before that the UK economy is made up of small businesses and there are more rural small businesses than there are urban ones.
However, the rural economy is not the only one in North Yorkshire. This week our attention was focused on developments in the coastal economy. Ahead of a soon to be released strategy document focusing entirely on the coast, the Executive Committee I chair took two decisions in support, spending taxpayers’ monies from all the county.
The first could be seen as protective, but a commitment by the new Council nevertheless. Having taken over responsibility of the harbour from Scarborough Borough Council two years ago, it became clear that the sheet piling on the inner face of West Pier needs serious repair. Following an open tender process, the contract has been awarded to Neom Engineering Limited and a capital budget has been established. It is a design and build contract and the contractor must obtain all necessary consents including planning permission and Marine Management Organisation licences. The Scarborough Harbour User Group has been regularly informed as the project has progressed.
The second is more speculative, but a commitment to the future of the coast nonetheless and Whitby in particular. The Whitby Maritime Training Hub is one of six priority projects chosen for delivery through the Whitby Town Deal.
Allocated £10m, approval to proceed was given in January and construction started in April. There has been encouraging interest from prospective tenants and now one interested party has progressed to the point of signing a five year lease with options to extend.
I will return to the coastal strategy in due course.
Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.