YP Letters: Money must be found to repair piers

From: Colin Pyrah, Beckhole, Whitby.
Is enough being done to protect Whitby from flooding?Is enough being done to protect Whitby from flooding?
Is enough being done to protect Whitby from flooding?

A COUNCIL ignores the concerns of worried residents. It ignores safety advice from experts. It puts lives and hundreds of homes at risk. You most probably think immediately of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council and the absolute horror of the Grenfell Tower fire.

But much closer to home, Scarborough Borough Council has been doing exactly that for years. It has ignored the worries of Whitby residents and the Fight4Whitby campaigners. It has ignored safety advice and warnings from its own engineers and marine consultants about the urgent need to repair Whitby’s crumbling piers.

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World-renowned consulting engineers Royal Haskoning warned in 2009 and again in 2012 that lives were at risk because of the lack of maintenance. They warned that major structural repairs to the piers should be carried out as soon as possible and that a breach or failure of the piers would put some 500 properties at greater risk of flooding.

SBC has taken no action beyond commissioning the preliminary survey now being carried out by Balfour Beatty. That survey is totally funded by the Environment Agency – from a grant which SBC accepted in 2013. SBC first said that repair work to the piers would start in 2011, then 2015, then 2017 and the latest delay has now pushed it back to 2019/2020 – but only if SBC can find the money!

Meanwhile SBC has found millions to fund the Scarborough Water Park, Open Air Theatre, Sports Village and the £4m demolition of the Futurist. Despite finding the money for those projects, SBC still says it cannot afford the £3.8m that it promised to find in 2012, to match the £4.8m grant from the Environment Agency for the urgent repairs to Whitby piers.

In the stinging and bitter words of one of the Grenfell Fire campaigners: “It was not that we stayed silent, it was that they never responded. It was not that they ignored us, but that they viewed us with contempt.”

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So let us all hope that SBC now stops its contemptuous attitude towards us, listens to us, responds to us, and acts now, before it is too late.

Asphalt plant too dangerous

From: Julian Sturdy, Conservative MP, York Outer.

IF the proposed asphalt plant at Hessay goes ahead it would have a terrible impact on the local transport network which would be very detrimental to Hessay residents but also everyone using the A59.

The exit to the industrial estate is also a great concern as HGVs already regularly cross the road’s central line into oncoming traffic.

The safety risk at the A59 junction, which council officers say “clearly increases the potential risk of direct vehicular conflict”, along with narrowness of New Road, where large vehicles already have to mount the footway to pass each other, is very concerning to me.

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I will be scrutinising any further information submitted by the applicant, although I feel the sheer volume of vehicles won’t be able to be successfully mitigated against.

Diesel worse than smoking

From: Aled Jones, Southcliffe Road, Bridlington.

SO our “representatives” in parliament now plan to ban smoking in outdoor public places too. How outrageous. Surely smoking outdoors is nowhere near as harmful as emissions from vehicle engines?

Strange this receives little attention, isn’t it? I wish the lawgivers would stop this witch-hunt against smokers and concentrate on the true cause of air pollution today i.e. dirty diesel.

Time to chip away at gulls

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Bridlington.

VISITING Bridlington recently with my young grandson, we were appalled and he was terrified when a seagull swooped down and stole one of his chips.

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These flying rats were everywhere, soiling bags and clothes and even people’s heads.

We wrote to complain to the council in Beverley who replied that, if we go to the seaside, we must expect to see wildlife.

In neighbouring Scarborough, complaints have not been dealt with so dismissively. I know which town we will be having our fish and chips in on our next day at the seaside.

Student debt is a scandal

From: Ian Richardson, Beverley.

REGARDLESS of party affiliation, I must applaud the new policy aim of Labour to wipe out student debt.

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The disgraceful system of tuition fees and maintenance loans that has developed in the past two decades is a product of decisions made by all three of the main national parties.

It is a national scandal that we have allowed our most talented young people to start their working lives with a crippling millstone of debt.

From: Andrew Mercer, Guiseley.

LABOUR’S education spokesman Angela Rayner admits it will cost £100bn to wipe out student debts. Where is the money coming from?