Creation of Scarborough Town Council could be delayed by a year as new public consultation set to take place

Scarborough Town Council may not be created until 2025, a year later than previously planned.

On Wednesday, July 19, councillors on North Yorkshire Council pushed through a motion that aims to revise the wards and the number of councillors that would be elected in a future town council.

In January, the authority’s executive committee approved plans for a Scarborough Town Council which would be divided into five wards covering currently unparished areas: Castle, Falsgrave and Stepney, Northstead, Weaponness and Ramshill, and Woodlands.

Currently, the only parts of North Yorkshire which do not have a parish or town council are Scarborough and Harrogate.

A consultation found that a majority of respondents were in favour of having three representatives for each ward – 15 in total – but North Yorkshire councillors have now voted in favour of a proposal that could lead to 15 wards with one councillor representing each area.

The council has said that a further consultation exercise should be undertaken to reflect this desire to change the warding, which would likely delay the implementation date to April 2025.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Clive Pearson said: “The standards and governance committee discussed at some lengths whether the warding proposed in the report would provide the most efficient representation […] and felt that single-member wards would mean residents would be able to clearly identify with the wards and councillors would be easily able to represent smaller areas.”

Cllr Pearson, who represents the Esk Valley and Coast division, proposed the motion for approval, adding that single-member wards would “avoid the dangers of all the work falling on a single councillor as sometimes happens in multi-member wards”.

However, the plan received some criticism from Scarborough councillors, including Liz Colling, who said: “Please, will the council note that wards within Scarborough town have not historically been single-member wards and an attempt to do so is simply nonsense.

“[This is] using a model in Harrogate for a completely different location and we should treat the formation of a town council in these two locations as two distinct and separate processes, rather than trying to do a one-size-fits-two.”

The former Scarborough Council cabinet member added: “I can see no possible justification for arbitrarily splitting those existing five wards into 15 single-member wards”.

Whilst the creation of 19 single-member wards in Harrogate would be based on the pattern used for the former Harrogate Borough Council, the creation of 15 single-member wards in Scarborough would require each of the existing five divisions to be divided into three new equal size wards.

Despite objections, the new recommendations were passed with 49 votes in favour and 32 against and the council resolved to undertake a further consultation exercise which will be considered by a future council meeting.