‎Christmas at the Mansion House

A selection of short lectures, offered by the Centre for Lifelong Learning in collaboration with York Mansion House. “Join us in December 2012 as we explore the Christmas story and learn more about the roots of traditional music, decorations and food – all lectures cost £6 per person”.

• Saturday 15 December – 3.30-4.30pm ‘Deck the Halls with …?’ The changing face of Victorian Christmas decorations: Louise Hampson

• Saturday 15 December – 6-7pm The Annunciation to Mary and the Birth of Christ in the Qur’an: Roderic Vassie

• Sunday 16 December – 11am-12noon Guaudete! Music for a Medieval Yuletide’: Rachel Davies (harp and voice)

• Sunday 16 December – 2-3pm Sprouts and Stuffing – an edible history of Christmas: Alice Bennett

Full details can be found at http://www.york.ac.uk/lifelonglearning/xmas/

Coastliner plans to change the route of the number 20 in early January.

They say that “the revised route will involve the removal of the following sections of route:

– in Poppleton, buses will no longer serve Main Street and instead revert to running along Long Ridge Lane, as they did previously;

– at the Heslington end of the route, buses will turn short at Heslington Hall, therefore no longer serving Heslington Lane and Broadway;

In addition to the above, we would use this route change as the opportunity to alter the approach the buses take into Acomb.

Instead of approaching via Carr Lane, the route would run in via Beckfield Lane, Ostman Road and Danebury Drive in order to cover Ostman Road following First’s withdrawal of route 5 from the area”

We understand that they are making the changes because of reliability problems on what is a relatively long route.

2013 highways repair list in Ward order, click to enlarge

The provisional carriageway and footpath resurfacing programme for the next financial year has been agreed by the Council.

It continues the 60% cut in maintenance expenditure introduced by Labour when they took over the running of the Council.

The draft programme is agreed at this time of year to allow officials to plan a work programme. It follows inspections undertaken in the summer which tabulate the condition of each road. Ward Councillors have the opportunity to put forward roads for consideration for repair.

The list reveals that some wards like Derwent (Dunnington) and Heslington will not get ANY repairs next year while the largest ward (Westfield) will see only a small part of the Foxwood Lane footpath resurfaced. It means that roads that are breaking up (such as Vesper Drive) will continue to deteriorate.

Residents will hope that more money will be found for road maintenance when the Council meets in February to agree its final budget. If it doesn’t then the backlog of works will grow to the point where it becomes impossible to maintain safe surfaces catering for the needs of all road users.

Cyclists in particular are vulnerable to potholes and this may be a factor contributing to accident numbers which are beginning to creep up again in York.

Local people are being invited to pull on their boots, pick up a spade and help plant a new copse of 2,000 trees as part of the Treemendous York project, celebrating its first anniversary this week and of which City of York Council is a founder member.

The Conservation Volunteers (formerly BTCV) on behalf of Treemendous York has secured a £25,000 grant for tree planting in York and one of the sites is a council-owned riverside plot south east of the Millennium Bridge sometimes referred to as Fulford Ings.

The community tree planting event which is open to all will happen on Saturday 24 November from 10.30am – 3pm, to which everyone is welcome.

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