York Shire

Floral tributes have been left at the scene of a crash involving a minibus and a car in which a 16-year-old girl died.

Eleanor Hague, known as Ellie, died when the minibus she was travelling in was involved in a collision with a Hyundai i10 in Toulston Lane, Tadcaster, at about 12:30 GMT on Monday.

The crash happened a short distance from Tadcaster Grammar School, where Ellie was a sixth form student.

Placing flowers at the scene on Wednesday, Pasquale Pranzo, who said Ellie used to work at his restaurant in Tadcaster, described the teenager as “a wonderful human being with a beautiful, humble personality – she was the life and soul of the party, she lit up the room”.

Mr Pranzo said he and his daughter, 14, who also knew Ellie, were both “crying last night” over her death.

A hotel owner has said if a water leak that is being investigated by the council is not fixed before festive bookings begin, the business may not survive.

The Black Swan in Pickering has suspended its food service because of flooding in the cellar, which Phil Hall said began after North Yorkshire Council’s highways team finished nearby roadworks in October.

Mr Hall said he had struggled to get a response with “any urgency” from the council and the delay meant the venue was missing out on the “opportunity that Christmas trade brings”.

The council said it was carrying out an investigation at the site and was “committed to finding the source of the problem as soon as possible.”

Mr Hall said while he welcomed the road resurfacing, the morning after the work was finished he discovered a “spring flowing through our cellar”.

The basement is used for storing food and drink, so the leak posed a risk to food hygiene and safety standards and did not create “safe or reasonable” working conditions for staff, he said.

Mr Hall said he believed there was “a direct correlation” between the roadworks and the leak.

“The building is 400 years old, and we’ve owned it for 11 years and have never seen water coming in that location,” he said.

“The volume of water is equivalent to someone turning a tap on fully in our cellar, it’s a small river that runs through it, this is not just damp that’s coming through the wall.”

He contacted the council and Yorkshire Water upon discovering the leak, but said it took 16 days to get the first response from the local authority.

Yorkshire Water confirmed it had visited the site in October to assess whether the leak was from a pipe it owned, but found no evidence to suggest it was.

Seven weeks later, after Mr Hall contacted his MP Kevin Hollinrake to ask for help to hasten a solution, the council have now begun exploratory work at the site to determine the problem.

Students at a Russell Group university have claimed applicants from less affluent backgrounds may be “pushed out” of studying there because of high accommodation costs.

The University of York Students’ Union said some of its members were now paying their landlords double the rent that was being advertised for rooms back in 2019.

Union officer Lewis Parrey said the university, accommodation providers and the city council needed to take action on cost, quality and availability.

He said: “York could become a place where only students who can afford it will be able to study. All the work that has happened to try to equal out the playing field for university education, I fear we could be losing that.”

The city – which also has a second university, York St John – offers a mix of accommodation.

The University of York owns and operates a number of student halls, most of which are located on its Heslington West and East campuses. The majority of first-year undergraduates live in these blocks.

Other students and postgraduates rent in the private sector, with rooms available in houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) owned by individual landlords and in purpose-built student flats developments run by management companies.

The university said that it offered a range of accommodation types to suit different budgets, but that most applications received were for en-suite rooms at the higher end of the price range.

A spokesperson said: “For all on-campus room applications for September 2025, 5% applied for our lowest priced rooms and 83% of applications wanted en-suite facilities, which are in our higher priced rooms.”

They said they would remain committed to providing a selection of rents on campus designed to meet budgets and preferences.

“We’ll also continue to support students with any housing issues and work with city partners to lobby for planning that takes their needs into account,” they added.