Council officials have now produced a report on the future of the historic Guildhall – the traditional home, for most of the last 800 years, of democracy and debate in the City.

The report pointedly fails to recognise the concerns expressed by residents who petitioned the Council earlier in the year about the future of the Listed building (right).

What seems increasingly clear is that leading Councillors have no idea what to do with the Guildhall buildings and even less idea how they would pay for any remodelling.

The report talks only of use as ”a centre for creative / digital businesses”.

However, we appear to be getting one of those at the Bonding Warehouse site anyway.

Although the site, taken as a whole, does offer development opportunities, anyone who has Google Earth will readily be able to see that access is a major problem with the only obvious “solution” being to demolish Lendal Cellars & the Post Office building (a well used facility!).

Having architectural competition smacks of desperation and a staggering insensitivity to cost issues. The £35,000 they will be giving to Royal Institute of British Architects, and as prizes, is equal to the cost of keeping facilities like the Beckfield Lane recycling centre open.

And at the end of the day all the Council will have will be a design plan. Still needing several millions in investment to bring it to a reality.

“Blue sky” thinking often produces “red ink” expenditure levels. Unless there is a comprehensive planning brief written then a competition could produce an impractical solution dogged by raised expectation levels.

The last architectural competition of this sort, organised by the Council, resulted in the Parliament Street remodelling 25 years ago – fountain, cycle racks, (recently demolished) public toilets and all.

The Council should retain the Guildhall as its democratic base and let out spare space there – and at its new Toft Green HQ – on a commercial basis to help pay for maintenance costs.

Apparently the York Council’s “Cabinet” are refusing to discuss in public a report on how £200,000 – of the £28 million “Reinvigorate York” slush fund – may be spent.

Originally scheduled for a 15th May meeting discussion, it now appears that the plan to “maintain and improve public spaces including the refurbishment of street lights, floodlights, bollards, bins and street seating together with widening and repaving the footpath on Station Rise” has been withdrawn from the agenda.

Hopes that the money might instead be invested in replacing public services cut by Labour in the Acomb area are probably doomed to be dashed.