Liberal Democrat Minister Norman Baker has announced a further round of financial allocations aimed at providing improved bus services.

The “Better Bus Area” guidance for local authorities can be found by clicking here

Essentially local Councils may, in future, be responsible for managing the Bus Service Operators Grant (a fuel cost related subsidy)

Over the last couple of years, the York Council has largely ignored sub-urban areas when submitting their bids for improved bus services.

Unforgivably, they have also failed to include a requirement for participating bus companies to publish service reliability information in return for subsidies.

Hopefully that short sighted policy will change when the new bids are agreed in June.

If it doesn’t then we will be writing to the government asking them to reject any bid for funding being submitted by the York Council.

NB. The Council are also now seeking tenders for the provision of Park and Ride services from the new Poppleton Bar site. Originally the Council had hoped to use state of the art low emission buses on this route which also might have been integrated with stage carriage services to provide a comprehensive network serving north west York.

It was to be the trial area for a “Quality Contract” franchising system

This is the system favoured by Labour who have pledged to introduce it across the whole City; although recently – despite spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on set up costs – they have gone very quiet on their implementation timetable.

There has been no consultation with bus users and drivers about the bus plans for Poppleton Bar, so it’s anyone’s guess at this stage what will emerge when the decision is taken on 16th May.

Reports of dog fouling on footpaths in areas like Foxwood are increasing as the Council announces that it will be merging the dog warden (animal welfare) staff with other street patrols.

These include the innovative Street Environment Officers who were established 6 years ago.

They take much of the credit for the improvement in the appearance of streets in York having had a small budget to deal with issues like verge damage.

The budget was cut when Labour took control of the Council in 2011 and now the service is to be merged with other patrolling posts, including the dog wardens.

The lack of trained specialist staff, with adequate budgets, is bound to make a difference to the appearance of our streets.

Our advice is to continue to report problems click here for access to a web site that allows you to submit photos of problems) and complain – if necessary to the Local Government Ombudsman – if you do not get a satisfactory response.