Tourism body and public trust

Welcome to Yorkshire’s future

IT IS ironic that Welcome to Yorkshire’s financial future is back in the balance when the county’s need for a strong – and cost effective – tourism agency has never been greater.

Forty eight hours after Boris Johnson paved the way for the leisure and hospitality sectors to begin to reopen and now WTY is appealing for £1.4m of taxpayers’ money to stay in business.

And while this is a legacy of the largesse pursued by the Sir Gary Verity regime, and then the impact of Covid-19 on its finances, councils are right to ask questions about how their money, taxpayers’ money, is to be spent.

As WTY chair Peter Box, the former leader of Wakefield Council, has conceded, trust and transparency are vital if the tourism body is still to be in any position to rebuild its tarnished reputation.

This is clearly taking time. Though board meetings were being held in public before the Covid-19 lockdown, minutes of the

April 25 meeting have still to be published.

And the threatening tone of WTY’s latest letter to every council misses the point. The onus is on the tourism body to get its house fully in order, and respond to the concerns of democratically-elected local councillors, rather than appearing to blame local authorities for its current predicament.

The only mistake councils appear to have made is not scrutinising WTY’s actions sufficiently in the past. Yet this, for now, must not detract from a need to determine WTY’s future if tourism businesses are to receive the support that they need and expect in their hour of need.

As such, it is to be hoped that WTY takes no decisions in haste and, instead, convenes a meeting of all councils to see if sufficient common ground does still exist. After all, the primary objective – helping the tourism industry – continues to be shared by all and becomes more urgent by the day.