Council facing questions after member of the House of Lords was granted private meeting with senior staff about road repairs near her Richmond home

North Yorkshire County Council’s opposition leader Coun Stuart Parsons has lodged a formal complaint with the authority after the leader Coun Carl Les organised a site meeting for Baroness Angela Harris of Richmond, who had raised concerns about potholes on the Darlington Road section of the A6108, in Richmond.

Coun Parsons said when he questioned in the interests of fairness and equality whether other residents could expect to have similar meetings with officers, he was emailed by a senior officer saying the meeting had been cancelled, while a council officer deleted the meeting from his online calendar.

The Independent member said: “Being the trusting soul that I am I went anyway and despite having been told that the meeting was cancelled they all turned up.”

The Richmond councillor said the meeting was about “pulling rank” and said Coun Les, who also attended, had gone into “overkill by inviting a director, assistant director and the area manager” to be present to answer any questions the baroness had.

He said the meeting saw the officers able to give little fresh information, particularly as Coun Parsons had previously given updates on the road repairs at meetings of the town council, of which Baroness Harris’s husband is a member.

Coun Parsons said: “She may be in the national legislature, but there was nothing national about her concerns and her position would not enable her to do anything nationally about the road surface of Darlington Road. North Yorkshire County Council by allowing this is confirming that there are differing access levels for different residents. Can you imagine the public reaction?”

In response to Coun Parsons' claims, the council’s chief executive Richard Flinton acknowledged that the issues concerning Baroness Harris “could have been dealt with differently”, but added he did “not find any fault with the way that they were approached in this instance”.

Mr Flinton said: “I accept there were a number of senior officers involved. In terms of whether this was disproportionate, you do have to take into consideration that Baroness Harris is a member of the House of Lords and part of the country’s legislature. She does have a particular role in society which can promote the interests of North Yorkshire and the locality and it is therefore not unreasonable that the meeting was given some stature and senior officers were involved.”

Coun Les said he had been happy to arrange a meeting with Baroness Harris and the senior highways team about proposed roadworks in the Richmond area and there had been nothing improper about the meeting with a “senior parliamentarian and alderman of the council”.

He said the meeting had not just been about a road that Baroness Harris uses frequently as it also highlighted other planned roadworks in the Richmond area.

Coun Les said: “I get approached by a number of people about things that are going on. Only the week before I was in Colburn, discussing with the local member there improvements that were needed to the A6136.”