North Yorkshire Council (NYC) recently announced that, to facilitate the construction of the Maritime Hub for Whitby Town Deal, “As a result the Endeavour Wharf car park will be closed from 31 March. Operational harbour access will be retained for permit holders. Alternative parking is available in Langborne Road“.
This prompts more questions than it answers. Endeavour Wharf car park has 250 spaces. This closure is for 13 months. The “alternative car parking” mentioned are simply the Marina Front/Back/Users Car Parks. These car parks are often full, so how the 250 spaces from Endeavour Wharf are being provided for with this “alternative” parking we are not sure.
In the NYC Executive meeting for this project it was claimed that the loss of parking spaces “would be alleviated through the increased use of park and ride“. Given that Park-and-Ride is pretty much at capacity, how there is “increased use” is not defined.
With this in mind we asked the NYC Head of Parking Services (Steve Brown), as follows
- Do you have a mitigation plan for this closure, in terms of where people will be directed and where any extra space is located?
- Do you have timescales when we get this (long awaited) review?
Regards
Whitby Community Network CIC
It has to be said that the impact here is not just the 250 spaces, but also the fact that the Harbourmaster “stores” as well as crab pots have been moved (from Endeavour Wharf) to the Harbour Back/Users car parks so there are also lost spaces on those car parks.
It has to be noted at this point that Whitby Town Council (WTC) voted to support the planning of the Maritime Hub on the condition that extra car parking was provided elsewhere to compensate. Has it been? Or has NYC simply ignored the condition?
With Endeavour Wharf closed from 31st March 2025, we sent a further email.
- Whitby Town Council gave their support to the construction of the Maritime Hub on Endeavour Wharf on the express condition that “due to the loss of car parking spaces, Park and Ride provision should be extended and/or alternative parking should be developed elsewhere within the town to mitigate the loss”.
- The report for the planning approval for the Maritime Hub stated “10.3 the whole of Endeavour Wharf car park will be closed to the public for the duration of the construction. This will reduce the number of off-street car parking spaces in Whitby by 250 (from a total of approximately 850). This will result in an income loss at the site of approximately £650k over the course of construction. Not all of this income will be lost to the council – some will be displaced to other car parks within Whitby, subject to capacity. It may be possible to put on a shuttle bus from the Abbey Headland car park, for example – it is estimated that this could cost in the region of £150-175k for the duration of the construction.“
- During the NYC Executive meeting for approval of this facility the exec member for Harbours said that NYC “intend to make good on the loss of parking by making greater use of the park and ride service“.
- Without an additional amount of car parking, the concerns of Whitby Town Council will have been ignored.
- Existing (off street) car parks in Whitby are (already) full for many months of the year.
- Park-and-Ride is likewise fully utilised during many months of the year.
- cars that cannot get in to off street car parks will end up parking on residential streets, causing further disruption to residents. We really do not want to go back to the photos reported to Karl Battersby et al some time back when emergency vehicles would have been unable to get to several parts of the town due to such on street parking (and that was with Endeavour Wharf car park offering nearly 250 spaces).
And shortly after we had a reply
- Parking Capacity – Whitby has 1936 parking spaces currently plus some greenfield ‘overspill’ sites that are weather dependant. It is accepted that 250 spaces at Endeavour wharf will be lost during the Maritime Hub phase and to mitigate this an additional Park and Ride site will be established at Abbey Headland from the Spring Bank Holiday until the end of summer. This bus service is provisionally set to run approximately every 30 minutes during the running periods. Customers will be expected to pay to park, and the bus will be free. This service will remain under constant review during the operating times and can potentially be adjusted to suit dependent upon demand. About 100 spaces at Endeavour Wharf will be lost to the Maritime Hub when handed back as a public car park thereby reducing overall parking capacity in Whitby to 1886 spaces. Part of the consultation that will be carried out with the stakeholders will be suggestions regarding additional capacity amongst a raft of other parking related items.
- Residents Parking – At our meeting last September and subsequent correspondence from various sources a concern in the Whitby community is that residents are competing with Tourists for space. This is not uncommon in North Yorkshire, particularly in the coastal areas. As part of the parking review in Whitby, Residents only parking in some areas may be a possibility along with other residents parking schemes that are currently being considered and will be brought to the table for debate when the time comes. There are many components to the residents parking issue that include air B&B’s, guest houses, HMO’s all who are competing for kerb space and have to be considered as well.
- Camper Van Parking – This thorny issue is of course well known and again there is a contrast of opinions as to what can or should be done about it. The council is currently running a trial with an emergency TRO (ETRO) which has been put in at specific sites and after a set period of time the Council will evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme and what comes next.
We thanked Steve for his reply, and raised the question of viability of access to the Abbey plain area, with Green Lane already being at capacity, and the only other route in being via Hawsker Lane – this to be taken in the context of 80+% of the net influx in to Whitby being from the Teesside / Pickering side.
