As we saw with our post back in September, monitoring the Town Deal “Maritime Hub”, it’s available space wasn’t being snapped up back then. 

A meeting in North Yorkshire Council on 26th May 2026 wants to approve the spending of £823k of Whitby Harbour funds “the fitting out of floors one and two of the Whitby Maritime Hub” and a further £126k “to meet additional construction costs“. So nearly a £MILLION. 

This is Harbour Funds that would not exist without the Fight4Whitby court case where NYC were adjudged to have wrongly accounted for harbour monies over many years, so that the pier extensions could be repaired. There is no sign of the pier extensions being repaired any time soon (the draft “Harbour Strategy” had it as not starting before 2032, despite reports by internationally respected engineering experts saying that it should be complete by then). 

The item on the NYC agenda goes on to add “Whitby Maritime Hub: Largely complete with tenancies secured. The cost of now fitting out the first floor is £378k with an estimate of £445k for the second floor (subject to value for money assessment), having been omitted from the original approval. The additional costs of £823k are to be met from the Whitby Harbour Reserve with the expectation that revenues generated by the Hub will be credited to the reserve to pay back the investment. A further £126k (total £354k) is required from the Whitby Harbour Reserve to meet additional construction costs in relation to supervision/management and weather-related compensation events.“

Whether there will be any revenues generated by the Maritime Hub to “credit” is the first point coming from that. The second is that any revenue generated by the Maritime Hub, which is on harbour land, would have to go in to the Whitby Harbour Reserve anyway – given that there is seemingly no available lease of the Hub from the Whitby Harbour Authority.