City of York Trading Ltd is a trading company owned by the City of York Council. It was established in 2011 to provide “a vehicle for the trading of a range of services to both the public and the private sector”
In effect it used surplus labour at the council to fill temporary vacancies.
The company has a Conservative Councillor as its Chair. There is also a Labour Councillor on its board.
The accounts filed at Company House reveal that the Company made a profit of £269,918 in the year ending March 2017. A dividend of £75,000 was paid.
Following criticism about lack of transparency, the company published its board meeting minutes – without providing much financial information – regularly until March 2017. No meeting minutes have been published since then
In 2016 the Council’s Executive approved new governance arrangements for Council owned companies.
A “Shareholders Committee” would meet to look after taxpayer’s interests.
In March 2017 the Shareholders committee agreed to adopt “a pattern of meetings allowing a presentation from each company to be considered twice a year”.
According to the Councils web site it has held no further meetings since then.
So how well is City of York Trading doing?
In September 2017, York Trading received £166,816 from the York Council. They had supplied admin workers, care workers, child support workers, community workers & life guards.
By far the largest sum though was paid to them for the supply of social workers and senior social workers.
According to the Councils open data web site York Trading services haven’t been paid by the Council since then.
