Welcome to Yorkshire at turning point after Gary Verity scandals – The Yorkshire Post says

They’re not indicative of the current leadership team’s financial acumen. They are, however, a shameful reflection of WTY’s turmoil when former chief executive Sir Gary Verity resigned.

And the fact that his departure in March 2019 saw the organisation incur a further £430,000 of costs is a sorry indictment of WTY’s governance in the past and Sir Gary still owes the public an explanation.

After all, the tourism body owes its existence to a £500,000 loan from North Yorkshire County Council and a £1.1m emergency taxpayer-funded bailout by town halls last year.

But the fact that the accounts have been published – they report a loss of £200,000 in the two years until March 2020 – do also represent a turning point because WTY’s public and private sector backers can see for themselves how the marketing organisation’s viability was compromised by past mismanagement.

They will recognise the efforts being taken to begin to rebuild the organisation’s reputation and, despite having to make many talented staff redundant, shift the focus from big events to their energetic ‘Walkshire’ campaign.

And they will see how these unfortunate events are, in fact, a chance to remodel the agency’s future funding so it is less dependent on the public purse – Visit Cornwall offers a template for this.

The need for Yorkshire to have a world-class marketing organisation has never been more important because of tourism’s wider value to the region’s economy as the country recovers from Covid.

As such, today’s disclosures do pave the way for WTY to shape its future destiny, begin to rebuild lost trust and consign its recent troubled history to where it now belongs – the past.

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