The Council has decided to consult users of the service about its plan to change the charging arrangements for the service.

The Council now says that a final decision on the charges for the service will be made in June.

As we reported last week, the Council plans to establish a “social enterprise” organisation which will run the Warden Call service in future.

A report on this proposal has now been put back to a meeting scheduled to be held on 7th May

A York Council report has rather gloriously described Labours approach to the provision of public services.

It says, “The Council is shifting to a commercial generating entrepreneurial business model”.

So now we know!

The comment comes after another “secret” meeting which looked at the options for re-letting the street lighting maintenance contract in the City.

The current contractor is AMEY but their contract expires on 31st March. Why the Council have left consideration of a replacement contactor until 10 days before the existing contract is due to end is anyone’s guess.

But on Thursday the Council decided to take the lighting maintenance contract back “in house”.

One of the reasons quoted was that privatisation had led to the contractor making a “profit”.

Apparently – without a trace of irony and against a backdrop of huge amounts of public service work in the City being outsourced by the Council over the last 2 years -the Cabinet member responsible agreed to de-privatise the lighting maintenance arrangements. He expects the Council to make a £5 “profit” on each £100,000 of turnover!

Worryingly as part of the process the Council will stop routine checking (scouting) for faulty street lighting.

Instead they will rely on members of the public to report faulty lights.

This was tried in the City about 15 years ago but the Council rapidly found that, while some neighbourhoods were very good at reporting faults, in other areas lights were often not working for weeks or months.

Sadly, these days, in some wards, local Councillors fail to undertake routine inspections of public service standards so that safety net is also not available to several communities.

Residents are likely to be less concerned about who manages the lighting maintenance contract, than the delays in repairing cable faults of the type which recently left large parts of the Foxwood estate in darkness.

The other options rejected by the Council were to let a joint maintenance contract with the North Yorkshire Council or simply re-tender on the open market.

New arrangements are expected to be in place in early autumn