Latest on waste collection backlog in York

Important service update from city of York Council

Today crews have collected all scheduled household, recycling and gardenwaste and also collected the remaining garden waste bins in Acaster Malbis.

Crews will be out on Saturday and Sunday to collect garden waste in Copmanthorpe and Tang Hall. If your bin has not been collected please leave it in place and we will collect it as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience.

We have not been able to collect all recycling from the Grain Store housing development on Water End because of road re-surfacing. If you are affected please put recycling out by 7am on Monday 16 July when the crew will return to finish collections.

We apologise to residents in terraced streets of the Groves and Clifton areas, that we were not able to re collect your waste before your next scheduled collection

York Council agonises over targets for “Make it York”

Coney Street decline

The Make it York organisation – which is owned by the York Council – will once again have only soft targets set for it this year.

A meeting will take place on 23rd July at which a Service Level Agreement will be agreed between the organisation and the Council. Once again though few numerical targets are included in the documentation.

There is still no mention of customer satisfaction measures.

Volume information is largely missing as are speed stats.

Narrative reports are promised but without objective measures these are largely opinion based.

The Council currently contributes £299,000 a year to the organisation. It is responsible for economic strategy, business support, tourism and the Shambles market. It is the lead agency for cultural promotion. It claims credit for the success of the recent “Bloom” festival.

It has been criticised in the past for being very City centre orientated despite which it has failed to arrest the decline in shopping areas like Coney Street.

Its management processes remain largely opaque.

What’s on in York: A Poetry Reading and Writing Workshop with writer Maria Stephenson

May _22 Maria Stephenson Poetry

York Explore Library

Sun 15 Jul

1.15pm – 3.15pm

£5

Join author, poet and creative writing teacher Maria Stephenson for a poetry workshop where you can explore the benefits of cathartic writing. Our poetry is often written for ourselves and will never see the light of day but sometimes, we realise that as well as helping ourselves, our words can move and inspire others. This is the essence of Maria’s collection ‘Poetry for the Newly Single 40 Something’ (Stairwell Books) which chronicles the escape from an abusive marriage towards living again, also shining a light onto on-line dating experiences. She will read from her collection and talk about the path to publication during the creative writing workshop included in the event. (more…)