Grants for new boilers and insulation available in York

With autumn here, winter heating bills will be next and, to help residents manage them better, grants for efficient boilers and insulation are being issued by City of York Council.

A scheme to help residents install loft and cavity wall insulation will be running throughout the winter and the council is encouraging people to get improvements done now, before the weather turns really cold.

Help is focused on Micklegate, Guildhall, Fishergate, Clifton and Holgate wards where a British Research Establishment study at the end of 2015 shows that many households in these areas may struggle to keep their homes warm and healthy during the winter months.

Homeowners with annual incomes below £20,000 per year in these five wards could be eligible for completely free loft and cavity wall insulation. While those with annual incomes between £20,000 and £35,000 could receive 75 percent towards the cost of the improvements. There’s help available to landlords too if residents qualify.

In other parts of the city, residents with low incomes and high heating costs may also be able to receive help, so it’s worth calling to find out. The council is also offering interest-free loans for replacement gas boilers for homeowners with incomes below £20,000 per year. The scheme is part of a programme funded by the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, administered by City of York Council.

Please call 01904 552300 to see if you’re eligible or to find out more detail, or email housing.standards@york.gov.uk .

For help with energy debts or other advice contact Citizens Advice on 03444 111 444 or visit https://www.citizensadvicehrs.org.uk/ .

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What’s on in York – Christmas Carol concerts at York Minster

The perfect start to the festive season.

  • 14th and 15th Dec 2017
7.00pm – 8.30pm
From £12.00

BOOK TICKETS

Tickets now on sale

York Minster’s popular Christmas Carol Concerts take place on Thursday 14 and Friday 15 December and offer the perfect start to the festive season.

The concerts feature the York Minster Choir performing a mixture of classical and popular Christmas music, with the Yorkshire Volunteers Band leading the audience in Christmas carols.

The concerts will take place in the Minster’s awe-inspiring Nave and include special seasonal readings by celebrity guests.

Tickets are priced at £25, £18 and £12 and will be available from Tuesday 26 September from the York Theatre Royal Box Office online, by telephoning 01904 623568 or in person at the theatre in St Leonard’s Place, YO1 7HD.

The box office is open Mondays 10am-5pm, Tuesday-Saturday 10am-8pm* (on non-show days or until 6pm on show days). Please note that a booking fee of £1.50 is payable for all transactions apart from cash payments at the Box Office in person.

Westfield School promotes private swimming lessons

The Westfield primary school is writing to parents urging them to take up an offer of swimming lessons at the Energise pool.

The letter reveals that some organised trips to the pool have been poorly supported in the past.

Now the school is offering to subsidise the costs of personal lessons if parents choose to participate.

We hope that the scheme is successful. We have had too many tragedies in a City where there are two rivers, both of which pose an accident risk!

Westfield school letter to parents

What’s on in York: These Dudes Abide! The Cinema of Joel and Ethan Coen. CANCELLED

EVENT CANCELLED

City Screen Picturehouse :

Mon 2 – Mon 23 Oct :

7.00pm – 10.00pm :

£37 (adult) £35 (student) £35 (retired)

Oct _2CoenbrothersSince their stunning 1984 debut Blood Simple, the Coen Brothers have gone on to become one of the most acclaimed film making partnerships of all-time, with a career spanning 17 features and a hit TV show (Fargo). In this four week course we take an in-depth look at the work of this unique writer-director-producer team, from the noir crime-dramas (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Man who Wasn’t There) to the zany caper-comedies (Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, The Lady Killers, Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou), the Hollywood parodies (Barton Fink, Hail Caesar!), the bitter-sweet character studies (Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski) and the revisionist westerns (True Grit, No Country for Old Men). Topics for discussion will include the Coen’s dazzling cinematics, their brilliant genre-bending, and their astute character writing.

Each session includes a presentation/lecture followed by a tutorial where discussion is encouraged. Advance viewing is optional; select scenes and montages will be shown during weekly sessions.

Course tutor Jon Towlson is a film critic for Starburst Magazine and the author of Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland, 2014); Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Constellations) (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016).

Tickets available from box office on 0871 9025726, or website.