Christopher Gelber is standing as the Reform UK Candidate in the Coppice Valley Ward for the Harrogate Town Council Elections on 1 May 2025.
Questions to Christopher.
What’s your connection to Harrogate ?
I moved with my family to Harrogate in 2009. Our 3 children were fast outgrowing our small London house and we wanted them to grow up in a more peaceful, welcoming and friendly environment than London was fast becoming. I have never regretted the move. Harrogate has been my home now for 16 years and will remain so until I die. Through my children, girlfriend and my own work and life here – people, events, groups and activities I care deeply about – my roots in the area run ever deeper. I want to be part of giving something back to the town I love.
The role of the Harrogate Town Council isn’t fully defined, what would you like to see a town council do ?
Since the creation of the North Yorkshire super-council, the role for Harrogate, and the interest in and ability to protect its unique worth, has become less clear and frankly weaker than it was. The Town Council’s role is now one largely of lobbying with as strong a voice as can be mustered for Harrogate’s interests, informed by what has occurred and may be planned in terms of money flows and other assets, inflows and outflows of residents, planning activities, and other issues. All these need to be issues where Harrogate is empowered to speak and lobby with a powerful and vigorous voice. In immediate concrete terms, that involves seeking to reclaim historic assets for Harrogate and ensuring protection for Harrogate’s Stray, open parkland and other green spaces.
What do you see as the main challenges for the town council ?
Three primary and immediate challenges in no particular order – One, to ensure that our town’s voice is heard loudly and clearly as it should be. Two, combatting the inevitable bureaucracy and red tape involved in all public funding concerns and reclamations. Third, aiming for a balance between governmentally-mandated developments of available land vs stopping overdevelopment, which will require constant tracking, oversight and challenge.
What do you see as the main gains for the people of Harrogate ?
There are real gains possible for the people of Harrogate, for our children and grandchildren: we can do much to save our green and open spaces, to ensure Harrogate’s unique and friendly character is maintained and even enhanced through controlled rather than unplanned, random development. And reclaiming Harrogate’s historic assets will make our town more fiscally independent and able to respond more directly and speedily to the requests and needs of its people.
What else do you believe people should know about you and what you believe ?
I am a lawyer – I have been a commercial and constitutional lawyer for 30 years. That means I know how to be meticulous and deal in detail with complex challenges, even where they compete with one another. But I also have strong passions and loves quite outside the law: I love music, and play guitar – sometimes even live in bars around town when I have time to; I love the arts and would love to be part of a movement to protect local art and bring more artistic activities and events to Harrogate. I genuinely like being around people and want to listen to and learn from them in terms of what they want, what would make their lives even a little better. And I am active and energetic – I go regularly to a local gym, walk my dog three times a day and always try to make time for friends and events – which I think is important in seeking your vote to become a local councillor. There is much to do.
Should a town councillor be voted for based on party or personality ?
I think both. Personality is very important: voters want someone they can relate to, someone who will listen to them and have the energy and commitment actually to try to achieve things. But party matters too, because principles matter and party membership says something about your principles. No party can capture all a candidate’s principles; if I wanted a party with which I agree all the time, I’d create a party of one, have meetings in my living room, agree with myself and have a drink to celebrate. But I believe deeply in free speech, in maximal individual freedom, in having meaningful borders, in repealing the net zero madness, in there being two sexes, in people behaving decently and courteously in public, and in many other things which I don’t think any of Reform’s competitors believe in. That matters. So, while as a town councillor I can do little directly about these major issues, its matters that I believe in them and will bring them to bear wherever relevant to issues I can as a councillor work on.
