Editor's Pick of the Week: Disputed land in Ripon and covert activism in Harrogate

Dear Reader, this article, which is free to read, gives a flavour of the 100 or so stories we publish each week, all exclusively focused on local issues. To access the links, and other content, please subscribe here and support independent local journalism. It costs as little as 14p a day.

You know somewhere is contentious when people can’t even agree what it’s called.

Just as Irish nationalists and unionists argue about whether it’s Derry or Londonderry, Ripon residents are divided over whether the small green space opposite the cathedral should be called Minster Gardens or Kirkgate Park.

The pro-cathedral faction prefers the former, while those who opposed the cathedral’s plans to build on the land pointedly use the latter.

Some of them even set up the Friends of Kirkgate Park during the heated battle, and this week an event was held to celebrate the community group’s considerable efforts to enhance the area.

A spat broke out this week between Tom Gordon, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, about whether she was discourteous to him.

As political stories go, it wasn’t quite up there with the end-of-pier summer show in Clacton starring Nigel Farage and Count Binface, Andy Burnham becoming the next Prime Minister, or Ann Widdecombe’s demise, but more courtesy is never a bad thing.

Schools may be winding down for summer but it’s been a big week for education news. Teachers at a school in Harrogate agreed to go on strike, Harrogate Grammar School’s first Ofsted report for four years was published, and we investigated what is happening with an 80-pupil autism school for the district that was first expected to open in 2024.

We also reported concerns by campaigner Hazel Peacock that a pioneering road safety scheme outside Oatlands Junior School is on the verge of collapse due to lack of support by the authorities, who deny it.

Hazel has been chipping away for years, using the public speaking sessions at every council and combined authority meeting going to keep the subject on councillors’ minds. It’s a sound and underutilised tactic but as she’s discovering, the bureaucratic wheels turn slower than a 4x4 on roads outside schools.

The hamlet of Knox appears to have acquired its own Banksy — not a guerilla artist, but a covert activist who is connecting people on either side of the banks of Oak Beck by removing a council blockade of the old packhorse bridge.

Knox is on the unfavoured north side of Harrogate, according to estate agent-speak. Columnist Andrew Gray railed against the town’s north-south divide in an opinion piece this week that generated lots of comments by subscribers.

Despite everything, it has been a gorgeous week, and Harrogate has rarely looked better, not least because the Yorkshire in Bloom judges were in town. Ripon’s Big Family Weekend is upon us and the Great Yorkshire Show starts on Tuesday. Extra tickets went on sale this week. There are few better places to be in July.