This platform has seen a surge of voting on its anonymous platform in the run-up to the election on 5 May. Since its inception, the platform has received in excess of 60,000 votes from the people of Harrogate.

 

Our platform is hosting 17 anonymous online conversations about all the big issues affecting Harrogate, from house-building, schooling and what to do with The Stray, to more localised conversations regarding The Saints, High Harrogate and Coldbath Road.

 

Founder of Harrogate District Consensus, Andrew Gray, said:

 

“In Harrogate there is an acute hunger to solve our problems in an intelligent, sensible way, on a platform far removed from the often horrible and hostile conversations held on social media. Through the platform’s anonymity, the conversations are depersonalised. Nobody fears expressing different views. The cancel culture does not exist on the platform. Reason and reasonableness is allowed to thrive.

 

Some election candidates have engaged with the platform, others have not. Transparently, we have released all our granular data for everyone to see, sending the results to all the political parties and to the independents.

 

The profile of every candidate is hosted on the platform, allowing voters to see who the candidates are per ward and per party.

 

Once elected, it is our hope that whoever the new councillors are that they engage with the people of Harrogate through this platform, to the advantage of everyone who lives in this fantastic area.”

 

All the data can be found here:

 

Conversation No. of Voters No. of Votes Statements Link to data
Station Gateway 466 23,712 223 Data Set 1
Default 20mph 439 13,384 114 Data Set 2
The Stray 193 3,980 46 Data Set 3
Schooling 158 3,258 45 Data Set 4
Pinewoods 147 2,813 48 Data Set 5
Another UCI? 105 2,007 30 Data Set 6
Bins & Recycling 99 1,878 33 Data Set 7
Traffic 80 1,709 31 Data Set 8
Housing 71 1,595 35 Data Set 9
Hospital 68 1,271 27 Data Set 10
Political Temp 67 581 11 Data Set 11
Local Democracy 46 1,196 35 Data Seta 12
Ukraine 41 756 26 Data Set 13
The Saints 73 1549 35 Data Set 14
Starbeck 30 475 20 Data Set 15
Policing 27 487 22 Data Set 16
High Harrogate 4 24 6 Data Set 17
17 2,072 59,859 783