The Getaway group led by Steven Baines that launched a legal challenge to North Yorkshire Council’s Harrogate Station Gateway scheme has lost its case.
The case was heard in April 2025 by Recorder Mark Ockelton at the High Court in Leeds. He decided against the applicant on all grounds.
Mr Baines told the Stray Ferret that his group intends to appeal the judgment. That would require permission from the High Court or from the Court of Appeal.
The money for Harrogate Station Gateway comes from the Transforming Cities Fund (TCF), which was intended to improve sustainable transport connections to town centres and rail and bus stations.
Mr Baines wants the money to be spent on free parking instead – which is the opposite of the purpose of TCF and would not be permitted.
Mr Baines’ specific complaint concerned four Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs). He said that the council’s decision to make them was irrational or procedurally flawed.
The Court Case
The court case was not technically a judicial review, but an application under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and the Local Authorities’ Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996.
That means that the applicant does not have the protection against a costs order that he would have were it a judicial review.
The Recorder rejected all the applicant’s grounds of challenge.
He noted that the applicant was only challenging the TROs made by the council, but the arguments made were in effect a challenge against the council’s decision to proceed with the whole scheme. A challenge to the council’s November 2023 decision to proceed with the scheme as a whole would have had to be made within 3 months of that date.
The Recorder also rejected the idea that the TRO consultation document was misleading, and that the decision made by the council was based on insufficient evidence, or evidence that contradicted the council’s position.
The contested matters of evidence included assessments of highway safety, bus journey times, congestion, air quality and carbon impact.