The Leader of the York Council’s Liberal Democrat Group (Keith Aspden) has issued a statement asking the government to delegate funding for the Coronavirus Track and Trace (T & T) activities to the authority.

He says that;

“York has seen the highest percentage of contacts traced and completed (68 per cent) across the Yorkshire and Humber region, this highlights the extent of the amount of people failing to be contacted”.

That will come as news to most residents. The Council publishes no volume or success measures on T & T on its open data web site.

Currently we are seeing only 3 or 4 positive pillar 1 and 2 test results in the City each week. Following up contacts from such a small group should not be too demanding. As with many other issues, the fundamental flaw in York is a lack of openness.

Cllr Keith Aspden has been asked to add his voice to demands for more local information to be published.

He has not replied to a request for at least the following local information to be published

1. The number of beds at York hospital occupied by Coronavirus patients
2. The number of ICU beds at York hospital occupied by Coronavirus patients
3. The number of tests (pillar 1 and 2) carried out (the positive result figure is published)
4. The number and results of any anti body tests carried out in the City.

To this can now be added the number and proportion of successful traces completed following a positive test result.

Transparency

We raised the issue a few weeks ago of missing public service quality statistics. Many were available through the “open data” web site but recently updates there have been slow to appear (even for pre Pandemic information).

One performance area that was out of date was the number of fines (FPNs) issued for littering offences. The outturn figure for last (financial) year is now available, Three penalty notices were issue, half the number issued the previous year.

There is some good news with the number of street lighting issues reported having fallen for the third successive year (the Council has invested heavily in new street lighting columns)

But figures for transportation matters are mainly still at least a year out of date. The are no figures published for the number of journeys completed by different transport modes. Only bus service use (stable) and, separately, Park and Ride passenger numbers (down), have been added.

These are mainly figures for the period before lock-down and are important if the economic recovery is to be monitored.

The Council has failed to produce KPIs on air quality or carbon emission levels.