Council launches new travel support service for local businesses

Funded by the council’s iTravel programme, in partnership with Get Cycling and Love to Ride, experts will be on-hand to visit businesses across the city to provide tailored travel planning advice and activities as part of the Travel2work scheme.

With a range of incentives, the service will help organisations to work with their staff to make commuting and work travel more sustainable – reducing car use and increasing the uptake of more sustainable travel options.

For more information and to book your free visit, go to www.itravelyork.info/travel2work or email alice.thatcher@york.gov.uk/ 07917791489

Future of York Libraries

The York Council is taking the next steps in a review of the role, function and management of its Library service. The Libraries have been run by an independent social interest company since 2012. The company’s contract is coming up for renewal.

The Council report looks at what more residents might expect to get from the Library service over the next decade.

The comprehensive report makes it clear that the York Library service is one of the most successful – judged against a range of criteria – in the country.

A “needs assessment” seeks to establish what changes need to be made. It ranks highly the need to further establish libraries as the “hub” of resilient communities. They would be a focal point for the coordination of local public services and could address issues with inclusion. Learning and skills would be a key objective as would access to health and other advice. They have a role to play in promoting culture.

The 16 existing libraries are generally viewed highly by users. York has more libraries per head of population than most comparable local authorities.

Despite the national trend of library visits declining slightly over time, Explore Libraries footfall has been holding up well, thanks in large part to the reading cafés which have been opened. Compared to other English unitary authorities, Explores performance is upper quartile.

Explore’s footfall in 17/18 across all branches was 1,014,173.

A public consultation exercise revealed that user’s top priorities for the different types of library, the top answers were the same for all libraries: Borrowing books, reading and studying space, local information, events, computers. There was just one exception which was that archives and local history was also a priority for York Explore.

Non-users indicated that the top three things that would encourage them to come to a library in the future was: a reading café on site, better information about services, and more events and activities.

The report talks obliquely about shared buildings. It stops short of proposing he closure of any libraries although some Councillors privately say this is inevitable (and has happened elsewhere). Unless and until a properly costed and resourced business plan ins produced then the “vision” will not have a future. The devil will be in the detail of any tender document that may be issued.

But the plan could deliver the much needed, and long outstanding, expansion of the Acomb Library. In turn, that could deliver a “one stop shop” public service office – incorporating Housing, Police and health teams.

A useful benefit for the Acomb side of the City.

Pen pictures of each library can be accessed via these links

Dean of York Minster to become Bishop of Bristol

Work on East end of Minster completed

The Very Reverend Viv Faull the Dean of York Minster is to take up an appointment as the Bishop of Bristol.

Viv Faull has made a major contribution to the regeneration of the Minster during the last 6 years. Financially the Cathedral is more secure, major projects like the restoration of the Great East Window have been completed and congregation numbers have increased.

She was the first woman Dean in York’s history and will become one of only a few female Bishops in the country.

We wish her well in her new role.

The Press release from 10 Downing Street is reproduced below.

BISHOP OF BRISTOL

The Queen has approved the nomination of the Very Reverend Vivienne Frances Faull, MA, Dean of York, in the diocese of York, for election as Bishop of Bristol in succession to the Right Reverend Michael Arthur Hill, on his resignation on the 30th September 2017.

Background

Vivienne Faull

The Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, (aged 62) studied at the Queen’s School, Chester and Saint Hilda’s College, Oxford. After teaching with the Church Mission Society in North India and youth work at Shrewsbury House, Everton, she trained for ministry in Nottingham. She then moved to the Liverpool diocese serving as a Deaconess from 1982 to 1985. She was Chaplain, Fellow and honorary Fellow at Clare College Cambridge and was made Deacon in the Diocese of Ely in 1987. She began cathedral ministry in 1990 as Chaplain at Gloucester Cathedral where she was ordained in 1994. She became Canon Pastor, and later Vice Provost at Coventry Cathedral in 1994. In 2000, she became the first woman to lead a Church of England cathedral when she was appointed Provost of Leicester becoming Dean of Leicester later that year.

She was appointed to her current post as Dean of York in 2012, overseeing the completion of a complex £20 million Heritage Lottery Fund project to restore York Minster’s Great East Window. Her interest in the sustainable regeneration of communities led to her nomination as chair of the City of York Council’s community forum for the York Central project – the largest brown field mixed development site in the north of England.

She was chair of the Association of English Cathedrals (the cathedrals’ representative body) from 2009 to 2015 and is currently chair of the Deans’ conference. She is Vice Chair of the Archbishops’ Council Cathedrals Working Group which has reviewed the governance and finance of English Anglican cathedrals. She is a governor of York St John University and holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Chester, Gloucester and York.

Vivienne is married to Michael, a consultant physician. Together they have walked a third of the ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome and travelled to Canada to canoe the Turner Lakes and explore the Haida Gwaii islands by sailing boat.