Council to increase charges by £154,000 with car parking rates still to be announced

The York Council has published a list of proposed increases in the charges that it makes for some services.

Bulky household waste collections will now cost £36.75 for a maximum of 10 items.

Removal of fridges will cost £21.

Wealthy to dominate tennis again?

Wealthy to dominate tennis again?

The increases could further worsen the problems with dumping that have been multiplying since the Beckfield Lane recycling centre closed last year.

Room hire at the central Library will cost a whopping £69 an hour while a 30 person capacity room at Acomb Library will cost £52.50 per hour (£34.60 for non profit making organisations).

Tennis will cost £7-40 per hour and bowls £4.20.

A full sized allotment (200 – 450 sq yards) will cost £104 a year with effect from January

There are massive increases in charges for the Guildhall. A Saturday morning hire will cost £225 (currently £170).

Council budget meetings poorly attended

Council budget meetings poorly attended

Hire charges for a small committee room are up by 25% to £25 an hour.

Other charges – including the significant car parking rates which bring in £7.4million a year for the Council – will be decided in January.

There has been no consultation with residents on charges and they are pointedly omitted from the budget discussions taking place around the City.

Not surprisingly, these meetings have been very poorly attended.

A full list of proposed charges can be found here.

York Council loses dozens of complaints

My Council

At least 50 reports about failing public service standards in York have not been actioned by the Council over the last couple of months.

The Council has claimed that reports submitted via the popular “My Council” Mobile app were not processed because they were indecipherable when uploaded to the Council.

Rather than get to the bottom of the problem, the reports were ignored.

Now an administrator for the “My Council” web provider (abavus.co.uk) has stepped in and offered to sort out the difficulties.

More and more people are using web sites like “My Council”, Fix my Street  , and Fill that hole”  to report issues.

This is to the advantage of Councils because the costs of processing issues electronically are much less than hard copy mail, personal callers or telephone communications.

However this case is likely to damage the credibility of the system in some residents eyes.

The Councils own mobile app (Smarter York) allows only a very small number of issues to be reported and user numbers have been disappointing.

The “Report it” section of the Council web site is cumbersome and has similar limitations.

The Council has been asked to sort out its data interface problems, ensure that reports blocked over the last couple of months are now entered onto its systems and to make efforts to contact those residents who may be unaware that issues that they have reported have not been actioned.

The industry generally needs to do more work on interface issues.

Councils in other parts of the country may be affected by incompatibility issues