We’re very grateful to Cllr Rich Maw for raising the Oliver’s Mount access situation at Full Council last week, and to This Is The Coast for covering it. You can read the full article here https://www.thisisthecoast.co.uk/news/local-news/calls-for-progress-on-scarboroughs-olivers-mount-access-road/
We welcome the council’s public commitments as planning for the two-way stone road is being finalised and the Jackson’s Lane solution design tender is imminent. After seven years, this is progress and we’re encouraged.
However, we need to be transparent about something important that the article doesn’t fully capture
The proposed stone road still has a problem. The lower section where it meets the tarmac road is single-track, creating a bottleneck that means:
• Musham Bank Road still needs to be closed for the full event weekend
• Traffic management is still required at significant cost
• Local residents will still face the same disruption with the closure of Musham Bank Road for years to come
This is not the interim solution we were looking for. We expected a fully two-way, unmanaged road that allows visitors to come and go freely, eliminates the need for the Musham Bank road closure, and ends the disruption to local residents once and for all. Anything less than that is an expensive way of achieving little improvement over the current plastic track arrangement.
We care deeply about the impact on local residents, our neighbours. The disruption to Eastfield and the loss of Musham Bank Road on our event weekends is not what we want for the next few years until Jackson’s Lane is properly fixed, and resolving it is as important to us as securing access for our events. We want our neighbours to be proud of and welcome our race weekends, not dread them.
What are we doing about it?
This week, we took the formal step of serving a Section 56 notice under the Highways Act 1980 on North Yorkshire Council. This is a legal notice that requires the council to admit their liability to repair Jackson’s Lane as an adopted highway for which they have a legal obligation to do.
This is not adversarial – we have good relationships with North Yorkshire Council officers and councillors and we appreciate everything they are doing to support us. But after seven years of closure and previous commitments that have continually slipped, we need a legal framework in place that gives us recourse if timelines slip again. After 7 years, it seems likely that a court order is the only way to ensure the expensive and difficult repair of Jackson’s Lane actually happens.
As custodians of Oliver’s Mount, we have a duty to push to get this right. When we took over in 2019, we inherited a venue on its knees – a closed access road, crumbling infrastructure, and real questions about whether racing here had a future. Since then, we’ve invested significant personal time, effort and finances to bring it back to life – massively improving safety standards, bringing back national ITV4 coverage and international broadcasting, putting Scarborough back on the world stage for road racing.
We have a responsibility to the 80-year legacy of this circuit, to our competitors, to our supporters, and to Scarborough’s tourism economy to ensure Oliver’s Mount is fit to operate not just this season, but for generations to come. That means we cannot accept any more delays to properly resolving the Jackson’s Lane issue once and for all. After all the struggles Oliver’s Mount has endured since 2017, this is the last major hurdle to overcome to assure its future.
We remain hopeful and positive. The council has made public commitments this week. We will hold them to those commitments, support them wherever we can, and do everything in our power to ensure this iconic venue continues to thrive. After all, Oliver’s Mount belongs to North Yorkshire Council, so it is firmly in their interest to ensure it survives as the special place that it is.
Thank you to Cllr Rich Maw, Cllr Tom Seston, Cllr Malcolm Taylor, Cllr Derek Bastiman, Cllr David Jeffels and all our supporters for your patience, loyalty and continued passion for racing at Oliver’s Mount. It means everything to us.
Oliver’s Mount – England’s only pure road racing circuit. Racing since 1946.
