The planned Lowfields retirement village announced in 2011 and due to have opened later this year, will not now be completed before 2016.

The news is the latest in a catalogue of failures that have dogged a project which would also have seen modern facilities for the elderly provided at Fulford and Haxby.

Both the latter 2 schemes have now been abandoned although extra facilities are planned at the former Burnholme school site.

90 places are to be provided at Lowfields and 72 at Burnholme.

The latest Council report, due to be considered on 4th June, says, “that the two new care homes should provide a ‘household model’ of residential care whereby residents will live in self-contained households that are home to a maximum of 12 residents – ‘a home within a home’. Such households will provide a more domestic and homely environment than a traditional large care home. Each household will have a domestic kitchen and open plan communal spaces that will help promote a sense of community, whilst also supporting the staffs’ care and observation of residents. The residents’ own bedrooms, with en-suites, will be close by thus ensuring that privacy and dignity can be achieved for all residents”.
The Council is now saying that 72 dwellings could be developed at the Lowfields site. This is a big increase on the 21 two bedroomed bungalows agreed in summer 2011 or even the subsequent hike to 50 agreed in the autumn of the same year.

This raises the prospect that some, at least, of the green space (former school playing fields) will be built on.

The care homes will be designed, built, operated and maintained by the private sector although the Council will fund and retain ownership of the buildings.

The Council will have to find at least £20 million to pay for the building work.

The Council has belatedly published its strategy for managing the needs of the Traveller community in the City.

The report will be discussed at a meeting being held on 4th June.

The Council is now deeply mired in controversy over the way that it allocated land for new caravan pitches at 3 sites around the City and for the “Showman’s” layover site near Knapton.

Two of the sites are on land confirmed as Green Belt in 2011. The expectation is that landowners will take the opportunity, of the land being removed from the Green Belt, to propose more potentially lucrative uses for it (retail or residential).

This will mean that the Council will have failed in its quest to find traveller pitches which meet its own estimates of demand (last updated in 2008).

Like the secret ARUP report, which Labour Councillors claim justifies the need for an additional 22,000 homes in the City, the supporting papers for the Local Plan do not include up to date assessments of demand for either gypsy or showman’s sites.

The Council report says that Gypsies and Travellers are one of the largest distinct ethnic groups in York and their traditions and history can be traced across hundreds of years in the City. There are approximately 350 families in York, living on traveller sites, in housing and in caravans on the roadside.

The report suggest a range of actions that need to be taken

It notably fails to suggest ways in which mutual respect and tolerance between this minority and the general community can be improved.

There is a lot to be commended in the Councils list of proposed actions.

Had the strategy been published 6 months ago, it might have helped to set the scene for the difficult planning decisions which lie ahead.

Instead the Council’s immature political blundering means that it has been launched into a potentially hostile atmosphere.

The proposals have been published under the names of four Cabinet Councillors (Cllrs Laing, Crisp, Looker and Cross)

York police are appealing for witnesses after a pedestrian was hit by a car at Monks Cross.

The pedestrian, a 67-year-old local man, sustained a knee injury when he was struck by a light blue car in the pick up area outside Asda at around 10am on Saturday 18 May 2013.
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