Mayor of Scarborough: 'Town council delivering for residents'
The mayor of Scarborough has said his council is delivering for residents despite not having ‘any responsibilities yet’.
A year after councillors on the Reform-led Scarborough Town Council took up their roles, the authority’s town mayor has set out what the council has achieved so far and is planning for the year ahead.
Reform’s Town Mayor, Thomas Murray, said that a lot of work had gone into “meticulously setting up a council from scratch” and addressing a “democratic deficit” following the amalgamation of the previous borough council into North Yorkshire Council.
The local Reform party had no published manifesto, but after the election in May 2025 – which saw 11 Reform councillors, two Independents, and two Labour councillors elected – Cllr Thomas Murray said that STC would focus on harbours, keeping precepts low, bringing “life back into Scarborough”, trying to regenerate its underutilised areas, as well as bringing “pride back into the community”.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) last week, Mayor Murray said projects were in early stages and “we don’t have any responsibilities, as people say: we don’t have public toilets, we don’t have allotments, we didn’t have Christmas lights last year, or anything like that”.
However, he described the setting up of a community grants scheme for local organisations and charities as a “massive success for the town council in its inaugural year”.
Cllr Murray said other achievements included raising awareness of the state of disused allotments in the town, opposing North Yorkshire Council’s purchase of a new office outside the town centre, and working with local harbour users.
In the past year, the town council’s harbour committee has had four scheduled meetings and a public forum meeting.
A 1 per cent reduction in the precept was also passed by Reform councillors, reducing the precept from £384,000 to £380,000.
“We’re really looking into what the town council does, and we want to do it right: it’s respect for taxpayers, it’s lean government, and it’s doing things the way they’re supposed to be done,” he told the LDRS ahead of an annual meeting of the electors of Scarborough on Friday May 29.
When asked what “respect for taxpayers” meant in the context of not taking on responsibilities, while charging a precept, he said: “Why should residents pay their council tax for something that is currently North Yorkshire Council’s statutory responsibility?
“We want to take them on, we really do want to run the allotments, but we want to do it in a way that doesn’t burden the taxpayers with that cost, and we have the Christmas lights factored into the budget, and then we also have a budget line for other responsibilities as well.”
On the topic of whether taking on additional responsibilities would lead to an increase in the precept paid by residents in the town, Cllr Murray said he wanted to keep it “fair” and that currently there was “not a good enough reason” to raise it.
A year ago, the mayor said his “main goal” was to “bring life back into Scarborough and, if we can, regenerate the underutilised areas and make people feel like the council’s working for them”.
Speaking to the LDRS on Friday, Cllr Murray described the Town Hall as “one of the underutilised aspects of Scarborough” and said he was “really trying to push North Yorkshire Council to make sure that’s not so”.
He added: “We’ve been a local voice for the community and I do believe we are fulfilling that.”