York shopper numbers down 12% in September

There were 12% fewer shoppers in central York in September according to new figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats.

click to download full data

The results come from the one remaining “footfall” camera which is located in Parliament Street.

It confirms the downward trend from August when 4% fewer people accessed the City centre in the wake of the introduction of new traffic restrictions on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate.

So far in October numbers are down by 7% compared to the same period last year.

It has also emerged that the footfall camera located in Coney Street was a victim of the cuts earlier in the year.

The figures will cause serious concern to the retail community in the City.

Although seemingly more resilient than some other shopping areas –as evidenced by the relatively low number of empty premises – few businesses could sustain a reduction in the number of customers that has been seen over the last couple of months.

As revealed on this web site earlier in the week, over 8000 penalty notices were sent to separate addresses during September. Of these 5481 (67%) were to sent to addresses outside the YO postcode area, raising fears that the reputation of the City is being irreparably damaged.

Click here to download the full data.

Labour Councillor refuses to apologise for bins blunders

Asked, at the last Council meeting, to apologise to those residents whose bins were not emptied on time, Cllr Levene refused to do so.

Instead he claimed that only 0.12% of collections had been missed.

He conveniently forgot that 90% of residents did not have changes to their collection days.

Last Christmas some bins weren’t emptied for nearly 3 weeks and, although there have been fewer missed collections this week, the holiday season could being more problems.

Green waste collection stops at the end of the month.

Bins in Foxwood

The Council has incurred additional overtime expenditure on Saturdays “catching up” with missed deliveries.

Cllr Levene protestations were undermined by a fellow Cabinet member who, in response to a separate question about delays in answering at the Councils call centre, said,

“the significant increase in calls week beginning 9th September were due in the main to the waste collection changes affecting a large proportion of residents in York.

Clearly original estimates of resources needed to meet demand had to be re-evaluated once the real impacts were known, and then adjusted”.

The Cabinet member went on to say that

“We aim to answer 80% of our calls within 20 seconds with 95% of calls being answered”.

This compared to the actual performance, in early September, when average waiting times were 2.5 minutes with 40% of calls being abandoned.

Concern over Illuminating York 20% price hike

Liberal Democrats have raised concerns that ticket prices for this year’s Illuminating York Festival have significantly increased despite the 2012 event being branded a “disappointment”.

Illuminating York 2013

The Labour run City of York Council introduced charging for the – previously free – event last year. There were complaints about the £5 admission charge while Vic Reeves’ ‘Wonderland’ production received a backlash of negative comments and poor reviews.

However, the admission charges and £26,000 contribution from council funds meant the event made a £16,000 ‘profit’ which Labour promised would be “invested in next year’s event”.

Many hoped that this promise would see a return to the previous free admissions policy.

However, this year’s event, which will runs from October 30th – November 2nd, sees admission charges for the overall festival for adults increase from £5 to £6 and for under 16s from £1 to £5, with under 5’s still going free.

This means that a family of four, with two school-age children, would see their ticket costs rise by a whopping 83%.

The increase has been described as contrary to the Labour Leaders statements about the need to control the cost of living

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