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29
Sept
‘Silent majority support us,’ says Harrogate Spring Water boss
The man leading Harrogate Spring Water’s expansion plans robustly defended the scheme today (September 29) as the company launched a legal battle to proceed.
Richard Hall spoke to the Stray Ferret after announcing the company will appeal North Yorkshire Council’s decision to refuse its application to expand its factory — which would involve felling 500 trees.
Now the government’s Planning Inspectorate will decide whether the scheme goes ahead.
Harrogate Spring Water’s legal challenge could land local council taxpayers with a hefty bill and risks more bad publicity for the company after a bruising decade trying to get the scheme over the line.
How the proposed extension would look.
When the application was rejected in April, campaigners, Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrat MP Tom Gordon and Dame Judi Dench lined up to criticise the company, which became part of French multinational Danone in 2020.
Councillors on the Lib Dem-controlled Harrogate and Knaresborough planning committee went against a council officer’s recommendation to approve the scheme in April. They claimed the landscaping plans for the extension were inadequate to make up for the loss of existing trees and that the extension appearance lacked “local distinctiveness”.
Mr Hall said Harrogate Spring Water had “strong grounds” to challenge these decisions:
In terms of landscaping, we talked to the council in advance. We talked to the council ecologist in detail, and through those discussions we'd reached a point where we'd made a proposal the ecologist was comfortable with, and that was confirmed prior to the planning committee.
On the building extension, we'd also talked to the council in advance. We talked about views, elevations, and we talked about the material that must be used, the size of the plot, and again, the council had recommended that for approval.
So he believes the councillors’ decision was flawed? “Well, those are your words, not mine. But we believe there's grounds for appeal against those outcomes.”
Mr Hall (second from left) speaking at a consultation event.
Jobs boost
Harrogate Spring Water says the scheme will create 50 jobs and provide a local annual £2.3 million economic boost. “We think that the proposal we made is sustainable. It's good for the town,” says Mr Hall.
Many disagreed. The council consultation generated 1,079 objections and 12 expression of support. But Mr Hall says “three independent surveys” by market research company Censuswide “showed that 80% of the community supports the proposal, which is what we might call a silent majority”.
He adds:
There are some very loud voices who object to what's proposed. They object to us on ideological reasons. That is, of course, their right. They generate a lot of coverage and noise. But we need to work within the democratic system, and that's what we're doing. So it's our right to appeal.
Protestors at a planning meeting in October 2025.
He said the company, which recorded a £10 million profit last year, wanted to capitalise on a buoyant bottled water market: “We’d really like to take the name of Harrogate and expand it across the UK, and that is an opportunity that's in front of us.”
Mr Hall says the expansion “became more difficult” in 2019 when company, which was still owned by the Cain family, attempted to amend the outline planning permission it received in 2017. He says the scheme was hampered by a “lack of consultation” and plans to compensate for the tree loss by creating a new woodland inaccessible to the public “were not good enough”.
He says he adopted a change of approach when he became managing director in 2021 by listening and amending the plans, which now include planting 3,000 trees and a publicly accessible wood.
RIchard Hall, managing director of Harrogate Spring Water, pictured leaving the April 2026 planning meeting after the scheme was rejected.
Another hurdle?
The council will be notified of the appeal today. Even if Harrogate Spring Water wins, it doesn’t own the land earmarked for expansion in the Pinewoods. That land has been designated an asset of community value, meaning local people could bid to buy it, providing another hurdle.
Mr Hall refuses to be drawn. “We will take it step-by-step as part of the process. Step one is planning.”
Regarding the timeline, he says “we would expect a public hearing would probably be in the first quarter of next year” and “we might be talking about starting in two years’ time” but says the most honest answer is “it's almost impossible to predict”.
His caution is understandable given that this has been rumbling for nine years. Is the planning process too onerous?
As a business, we find the planning process difficult. We've got to find the right balance between having democracy and an efficient planning process to help business grow. But when the process gets slowed down, and you have, let's say, a voice that is loud but not so representing the whole community, there we find challenges, and we find that that's slowing down progress. So, yes, we do feel some frustration with planning, and we are not alone.
How does he feel about being cast as the villain by campaigners?
That's fine. I respect people's right to protest, people's right to object. What I would like is balanced debate. I would like the voice of the whole community to be taken into account, not only the minority.
We really believe that our proposal is best in class in terms of sustainability, economic value, growth opportunities. We're working with local schools and colleges trying to bring in young engineers, train them for the future. That is an authentic proposal for the community, and we believe in that. So, we'd like people just to look at Harrogate Spring Water in total, not just as a single planning application.
It is now up to the government to decide if it accepts the company's case — or whether councillors were right to refuse it.
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