Hot on the heels of agreeing in December a 4% increase in rent payments, which will bring the annual charge for a full sized allotment in York up to £99, it now looks like the Labour Council could abandon the management of local allotments altogether.

Papers being presented to the budget Council on Thursday, would see further above inflation increases agreed followed by “handing the management of the allotments over to secretaries in 2014”

In line with national trends, York’s allotments have been increasingly popular with residents over the last few years.

York has 17 allotment sites with 1,500 plots (including half and quarter plots). There are 260 people on the waiting list for plots.

Separately, the Council is seeking an additional £100,000 a year income from the Energise sports centre. Part of this will come from the increased use that the expanded gym is expected to bring, but another ominous warning has been sounded by Labour Councillors who are hoping to outsource the management of swimming pools, sports and community centres “with the aim of eliminating all subsidies”

NB. The are no public swimming pools in the country being run without some sort of subsidy.

The number of “affordable” homes built in York during the current financial year is expected to be around 102. It has fallen from a figure of 282 which were completed in 2010/11, the final year of Liberal Democrat Council control.

Now the Council seem to have realised that they bear a large measure of responsibility for the increase in the numbers on the waiting list for homes.

That list now has 4674 names on it!

In a pretentiously entitled report “Get York Building” the Labour Council blames everyone and everything for their failures.

Although making a claim that many developments are “underway”, the report fails to tabulate the position on the individual sites. In reality over 1600 potential homes are on sites with a current planning permission but are currently “stalled” . (Larger strategic developments that are ‘stalled’ – e.g. Nestle, Terry’s, Germany Beck, York Central & British Sugar are not included in this total.)

Contributory factors to the impasse include a continuing difficulty in getting mortgages while developers also have reported problems getting capital for small speculative house building projects.

The Council are proposing to ease the proportion of “affordable” homes required to 20% on planning permissions issued on brownfield sites. It remains to be seen whether this has any practical effect.

Labour are also reversing their objection to “off site” financial contributions in lieu of affordable homes being built on the development site itself. These will still be a hefty £23,133 per unit (a figure that is passed on to new home buyers of course).

The Council has now said that it will provide 1000 new homes each year on average over the next 5 years. That is a ludicrously improbable figure given past performance.

With a 20% affordable element, that would mean that only 200 affordable homes would be provided each year compared to Labours election promise of 790.

The Neighbourhood Watch organisation have launched a web site where you can see the latest Police alerts about crime in our area. Click here.