York Council waste collection changes. If your refuse bin isn’t emptied next week….. check this list!

The York Council is introducing new waste and green recycling collection timetables from next Monday (9th September).

Some households will receive recycling for the first time and others may have changes to what day of the week their rubbish, recycling or green waste is collected

About 10% of properties will see a change to their collections days.

The Council says that it has written to every affected household explaining the new collection days.

Given the past record of the York Council with communications, we are sceptical about whether everyone will have had, and understood, their communication.

A complete list of addresses (10639 of them) were sent out to ward Councillors as late as 2:00pm today Friday 6th September.

That is less than 1 working day before the new arrangements are due to be introduced.

The complete list of affected properties can be viewed by clicking here.

It is in alphabetical street order.

Alternatively, you should also be able to check out the day that your next collection is due by entering your postcode at this web location http://tinyurl.com/York-bin

Roads in the Westfield area that are affected include:

• Beagle Ridge Drive (change of week)
• Beechwood Glade (change of week)
• Cedarwood Close (change of week)
• Huntsman’s Walk (change of week)
• Maplewood Paddock (change of week)
• Thornwood Covert (change of week)

The Council says, “It is important to continue to ensure that your rubbish, recycling and garden waste are presented before 7am on the day of collection”.

Did the Council answer the key Lendal Bridge questions? – UPDATE “answers will go onto Council web site!”

Not even close.

They just ignored the controversial ones.

They were right in principle to try a “twitter” Q & A but the results will be inaccessible, and largely incomprehensible, to many.

Not surprisingly Councils Labour Leaders seem to have taken to the hills.

LATEST – Council say they WILL add twitter Q & As to their web site.

Will the Council answer the key Lendal Bridge questions. Why are no Labour Councillors being held to account?

Potentially the biggest test this teatime for the Lendal Bridge closure.

The schools are back and we have heavy rain.

Poor weather usually adds around 10% to traffic levels in the City.

click to update

click to update

All York bus ticket sales figures finally released

12 months after a Freedom of Information request was lodged with the York Council, officials have finally revealed the number of “All York” bus tickets that have been sold.

This was the product launched in July 2012 which allowed passengers to purchase one £5 day ticket which could be used on any bus operating in the York area.

When launched, the Council said that it would spend £20,000 of taxpayer’s money advertising the availability of the ticket.

They would also use administrative staff to allocate, the fare revenue collected, to individual bus operators.

all york ticket

It was this taxpayer’s subsidy which prompted a request that the number of tickets sold be publicised. The Council declined to do so saying that it was “commercially confidential”.

It took an appeal to the Information Commissioner to force the release of the information.

In March the minutes of a Council bus consultative meeting had suggested that “All York” ticket sales were around “10,000 a quarter”.

In reality it turns out that sales are only about ¼ of that figure.

The total number of tickets sold stands at 10,425 which represents a tiny proportion of the 16 million local bus journeys made each year.

It looks like taxpayers have subsidised each ticket to the tune of £2.

Many people thought that the Council should have prioritised the introduction of a smartcard which would allow cross operator ticketing at negligible cost.

Steve Galloway – who first raised the issue – says, “There is nothing contained in the figures that threatens the commercial interests of bus companies. The very low sales do suggest though that the Council miscalculated very badly the number or passengers who would take advantage of a scheme which has proved to be an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.

I hope in future that the Council will be more open with bus users about service information.

They have been withholding facts about bus service reliability for over a year.

I would like to think that they would adopt a more positive approach to information sharing in the future”

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