Rural county has £30m share of funds for transport connections

A YORKSHIRE council overseeing one of the country’s most rural areas has accepted responsibility for more than £30m of Government funding to improve travel connections to its towns and cities.

Despite having a working population of more than 200,000 people, North Yorkshire County Council had been unable to submit a standalone bid for the Department for Transport’s Transforming

Cities Fund as its largest urban centres had too few workers each.

However, a meeting of the authority’s executive heard it had participated in a successful Leeds City Region bid granted £317m.

North Yorkshire’s share of the funding, to which the county council will add a further £300,000, will allow progress to be made on long-held ambitions to transform key transport gateways and, in particular, the areas around railway stations.

The funding will also be poured into improving facilities and routes for walking and cycling, access to education and employment sites, and bus routes to make it easier for residents to commute to cities such as Leeds and Bradford.

Coun Don Mackenzie, the authority’s executive member for access, said: “All this is very good news for our local residents, but also for visitors and the whole of the local economy for which better travel options and facilities are so vital.”

A total of £5.8m to be spent in Skipton will include improved bus access to the railway station, while the £7.8m being invested in Harrogate will see a number of changes to public areas in the town centre.

Some £17.5m will be ploughed into improving walking and cycling links to two major development sites, including a new cycle

Coun Don Mackenzie, North Yorkshire’s executive member for access. and footbridge over the River Ouse to Olympia Park, a mixeduse urban quarter close to Selby town centre.

The cash must be spent before April 2023 as a condition of the grant, the meeting was told.

Craven and Selby councils have agreed to contribute £100,000 and £1.8m to the scheme respectively, but the meeting heard Harrogate Council’s contribution remained unclear.

An officers’ report to councillors warned it was generally accepted that funds awarded by the Department for Transport were finite, and that no additional funding would be awarded in the event that a project overspends.

It stated: “Should schemes overspend, or slip, resulting in overspend, it will therefore be incumbent on the delivering authority, to manage this appropriately. As a consequence of this, it should be recognised that any risk in overspend is likely to be borne by either the county council, or through the funding agreements with the county council the district and borough councils, dependant on who is the lead authority for the scheme.”

All this is very good news for our local residents, but also for visitors.