£3.2 million bid for Oliver House site

A bid by McCarthy & Stone for a 30 apartment retirement home scheme is the clear tender winner  at £3.324m for the Oliver House site according to Council papers published this evening.

 Oliver House

Oliver House

The bid is much higher than the initial £400,000 valuation put on the site by Council officials who had obviously under-estimated the buoyancy of the recovering property market in York.

The next highest bid was a 29 bed retirement scheme from Churchill Retirement at £2.850m.

The lowest value bid came from Yorspace at £750,000. This bid had received a lot of publicity in The Press but is so far below the market value that the Council could not legally accept it (without Secretary of State authority).

Officials are recommending that negotiations with the highest bidder proceed.

Oliver House has been empty for 2 years. Slow progress on its sale has been heavily criticised by Council taxpayers

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£3 million green bus funding to help clean up town and city air

Nearly 150 buses across the country to be fitted with pollution-reducing technology. York awarded £475k to make cleaner buses for the city

Sightseeing bus converted to battery power

 

More cleaner buses will be on the streets of towns and cities across England following the announcement of over £3 million funding today (11 March 2015).

York first pioneered the development of battery powered buses in 2010

Seven towns and cities have been awarded government grants to fit green technology to existing buses to help improve air quality and create a better environment for residents and visitors.

Electric buses pioneered by York in 2010

 

Baroness Kramer said:

The £3 million funding announced today will help improve town centre air across England, benefitting residents and businesses. These grants continue this government’s commitment to lowering emissions from public transport and support the growth of green transport in the UK.

The funding is the latest tranche of support from the Clean Vehicle Technology Fund, which has retrofitted more than 1650 vehicles with green technology.

This round of awards will see technology suitable for the stop-start nature of bus travel fitted, including exhaust gas treatment and flywheel hybrid technology, developed originally for Formula 1.

The successful projects will monitor the effectiveness of the technologies to provide vital information on the working life of green vehicle upgrades.

York saw the launch of the world’s first double decker conversion of a City Sightseeing tour bus in York to fully electric drive last year. 

The DfT’s Clean Vehicle Technology fund will now enable the conversation of an additional five buses into ‘zero emission motion’ – meaning electric motors.

The electric retrofitted vehicles will eliminate the emission of 2000kg of poisonous Nitrogen Dioxide (NOx) per year and reduce the carbon footprint by 95 tons CO2. Operating costs of the electric buses will save over £75k per year. 

The converted buses are quieter and emit no pollution from the tailpipe as they run entirely on electric motors and battery packs.

The electric range is more than enough to complete a full day of touring and the buses will trickle charge overnight at their depot, using low carbon off peak electricity.

Nick Love commented

 “I’m delighted that York has benefitted from the proactive approach to low carbon transport initiatives from the Lib Dems in government via The Clean Vehicle Technology Fund.

Last year there were an estimated 4.7 billion bus passenger journeys in England.

More people up and down the country get to work by bus than by all other forms of public transport combined.

York has a positive history of getting people out of their cars and onto public transport when coming into the city.

But being a party that is environmentally aware, while people are reducing their carbon emissions by hopping on the bus rather than using their cars, we want to make buses themselves greener, more efficient and easier to use”.

Community Stadium not on agenda for next planning committee meeting

Confirmation that the Community Stadium project is slipping further behind schedule has come with the publication of the agenda for the Planning Committee scheduled to take place on 19th March.

Community Stadium Nov 2014

Community Stadium planned for Huntington

This was to have been the meeting at which that the proposals would have been considered.

The timescale for a July 2016 opening for the stadium always looked very tight given the controversial nature of the “enabling” retail development. The project subsequently was thrown into disarray when first the Highways Agency suspended the scheme and then a “war of words” broke out between Council officials and the Knights rugby club, who were to have been one of the major users of the Stadium.

 A date has been reserved in the Councils calendar for a meeting on 27th March but It now seems unlikely that the planning application will be determined before the new Council’s Planning Committee has its first meeting in June.

It looks increasingly likely that the new Councillors, who will be elected on 7th May, will have a can of worms to sort out.

The March Planning Committee will, however, consider some important issues

George Hudson Street student flats

The committee will consider a change of use from offices to student accommodation comprising of 58 self contained units with associated facilities including shop, cycle store, managers office, communal lounge, gym and laundry. A new shop front to the proposed entrance on the George Hudson Street elevation will be provided. The building is Listed.

Del Monte Site, Skelton

The committee will have a second go at approving a new 60 home development at this former factory site.

Naburn Lock caravan park

The committee are being asked to agree that this 100 pitch caravan park be allowed to open throughout the whole year

New teaching block at the University of York

Proposal to build a 13 metre high, 4240 sq metres floor area, teaching block on a site on Spring Lane previously occupied by staff housing

Housing development on Grain Store site, Water Lane

An application for approval of appearance, landscaping, layout and scale of 215 new dwellings, following the grant of outline permission in 2012

Liberal Democrats announce details of 47 candidates for York Council elections on May 7th

A full list of candidates for the York Council elections on May 7th is now available from the LibDem web site.

Local residents Sue Hunter, Sheena Jackson and Cllr Andrew Waller will contest the Westfield ward for the LibDems

Local residents Sue Hunter, Sheena Jackson and Cllr Andrew Waller will contest the Westfield ward for the LibDems

Wherever possible, local ward branches have selected candidates who live in or near the neighbourhoods that they seek to represent.

The other parties have also announced most of their candidates and it looks like around 200 – a record number – will be contesting the elections which take place on the same day as the parliamentary poll.

Click here for details of the LibDem candidates.

Policy manifestos are expected to be published in early April

The current make up of the Council is

Lab – 21

LibDem – 9

Tory – 9

Green – 2

Ind Lab – 2

Ind – 4