We were unable to collect household waste from Railway View and Moor Grove in Dringhouses due to blocked access.
We were unable to collect recycling waste from areas of Fulford and Hull Road due to vehicle breakdowns.
We’ll attempt to collect all this waste on Tuesday 9 June. Please present your containers for collection by 7.00am.
We’ve been unable to collect garden waste from areas of Fulford, Naburn, Hull Road and Bishopthorpe.
We’ll attempt to collect missed garden waste from Bishopthorpe on Tuesday 9 June, and the rest on the evening of Monday 8 June, but may not be able to revisit until later in the week. Please leave your green bin out and we’ll get to you as soon as we can.
City of York Council has been indicatively allocated £173,000 to support and maintain the growth in walking and cycling seen across the city during lockdown.
The Government’s Emergency Active Travel Fund is designed to support walking and cycling as a long-term method for commuting, as the country emerges from the pandemic. To receive any allocation from the fund, the Council has to demonstrate ‘swift and meaningful plans’ to support cyclists and pedestrians in York.
This funding is the first of two phases, with the second being conditional on demonstrating how we are able to adapt the city’s infrastructure to support more active travel, and how quickly these additional measures can be delivered. City of York Council has submitted a programme of actions to support walking and cycling at key locations as alternatives to travel by bus or car.
The Council says that it is allocating the funding to the following measures:
Extensions to existing Park and Pedal facilities at the Park & Ride sites, alongside a new cycle route from Rawcliffe Park & Ride site along Shipton Road
Enhanced cycle lanes on Bootham
Improved cycle parking in the city centre
Extensions to the footstreets area
Temporary footway widening at pinch points near shops
Alterations to signal timings to reduce pedestrian queuing at city centre traffic lights.
There is no mention of any action to remove the overgrowth obstructions on foot and cycle paths which have made social distancing all but impossible particularly in sub-urban areas
Many paths in west York are now obstructed
The Council says that the funding will also allow The Groves’s neighbourhood traffic reduction 18-month trial to move ahead more quickly. Details of the location of the closures to prevent through-traffic are subject to a council Decision Session on 22 June, when local residents can comment on proposals and all consultation feedback will be reviewed.
This scheme has nothing to do with the COVID crisis. Some Councillors were advocating the scheme over a year ago. It looks like the Council are trying to slip it through with minimal consultation although the congestion impact figures still haven’t been published.
This work will be co-ordinated with the council’s Economic Recovery Strategy, which will be delivered over the next few months. The strategy focuses on prioritising active travel, working with bus and rail operators to ensure people can continue to use public transport with confidence and creating a more people-focussed city centre. These measures will be delivered at pace to best accelerate the recovery of the economy, allowing businesses to open safely through June, whilst protecting residents’ safety.
A York Council manager has responded promptly to reports of Epicormic (lower trunk) growth on some trees in the Cornlands Road/Tudor Road area.
Such growth can cause sight line problems for drivers.
The manager says the branches will be trimmed.
Dumping is a problem at some empty properties.
We’ve reported a similar issue with a tree at the junction of Cornlands Road and Askham Lane.
We also received a prompt response from Cllr Demise Craghill who has executive responsibility for housing in the City.
She was sympathetic to our complaints about delays in bringing empty Council houses back into use and promised to pursue two long standing issues in the Foxwood Lane area.
Morrell Court
Lack of action to level potholes on the Morrell Court access road has now been registered as a formal complaint with the Council. The defects were first reported 6 months ago.
Elsewhere black bags have been left next to the recycling bins at the Acomb Wood Drive shopping area.
Council, staff were working over the weekend to reduce the accumulated waste collection backlog. An update report has not yet been published but it seems that there is still some waste on the streets of villages like Dunnington.
There one resident reported yesterday that recycling has been on the street since last Tuesday.
All in all, there seems to be something wrong with this, the most basic of public services, which cannot entirely be explained by social distancing and the COVID crisis. The Council’s web site https://www.york.gov.uk/WasteCollectionUpdates often quotes “capacity” issues and “vehicle breakdowns” as the major reasons for unreliability.
So what has senior management been doing to address the problem? Apart from ordering 12 new refuse collection vehicles, there seems to have been little by way of reaction.
The Council’s “Head of Waste” is an official called Shaun Morley. He was appointed last November but has had a very low profile since then. He describes himself as “Interim Transformation Director/Head of Waste at City of York Council”. He is also a Director of a company, SRM Waste Management, which is based in the Shetland Isles. At Company’s House his occupation is listed as “a consultant”.
Senior appointments at the Council – whether permanent or temporary – have to be recorded. We can find nothing on any Council report which explains what the current waste management structure is much less who is supposed to be responsible for what (and at what cost).
Councillors need to satisfy themselves that there is a clear line of responsibility, that key performance indicators are being monitored and that there is a transparent exception reporting process.
It seems to us that workers in the Councils waste collection activity area have generally performed well particularly over the COVID lockdown period.
It increasingly appears that this may be despite, rather than because of, senior management decisions.
