The Council has admitted that modernisation work at the crematorium on Bishopthorpe Road is 3 months behind schedule.

The contract is also likely to be overspent by £50,000.

The lamentable standard of debate in the Labour Cabinet is perhaps best demonstrated by this exchange at the last Council meeting.

Question to the Cabinet Member for Crime and Stronger Communities from Cllr Reid: “How many residents have attended Ward Committee meetings so far during this municipal year and how does this compare to the same period in 2010?”

Answer: Ward Committee attendance is significantly down on previous years. This is likely to be due to the fact that ward committee funding is much reduced, owing to cuts from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government.

In reality, despite cuts in funding, there are unspent funds in several ward budgets as voluntary organisations are throwing in the towel in protest over the onerous conditions being imposed by Labour for grant support.

The Cabinet member was unable to coherently explain why the annual ballot of resident’s opinions had been abandoned other than to hint that he preferred a system of patronage by Ward Councillors! Despite participation by residents hitting an all time low, it appears that’s some Labour Councillors are going to manufacture projects to use up the “surplus” ward committee funding .

Ward Committee ballot turn out. click to enlarge

One well known voluntary sector organisation in the City has apparently refused to participate in a grant management system being implemented by a Council contracting body known as “Your Consortium”. More about this next week.

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The numbers, wanting to rent homes from the Council or Housing Associations in York, has risen by over 2000 applicants (78%) since Labour took control of the York Council.

In addition over 17,000 are registered for homes with partner Councils in the Yorkshire area.

Despite this demand, the Council has seen a significant drop in the number of new homes completed.

Discounting specialist student accommodation, only 151 new homes have been completed in York so far during this financial year.

Only 29 of these are classed as “affordable”.

2012/13 could prove to be the worst year, for new family home building, in the City’s modern history.

The Council has rejected the idea of approving more homes to be let at “intermediate” rents (80% of full market rents) but has failed to identify a way of constructing any additional council houses.

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Age UK York, Older Citizens Advocacy York (OCAY) and City of York Council are sharing information and resources with the aim of ensuring older people in York keep safe and well.

Over the next few weeks, work to prevent older residents becoming the victims of ever more sophisticated scams will be undertaken.

City of York Council has recently been alerted to a new ruse used by bogus traders preying on older people. The council’s Trading Standards team has heard that a friendly looking man calls at the door offering to clean gutters – for £5. When the householder agrees the work begins, a few minutes later he returns saying there’s a problem with the roof, which looks quite serious – he has seen some birds flying through a gap in the tiles and produces a piece of wet insulation to confirm the leak is bad.

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We don’t believe that bus service quality standards in York are as poor as some would like to make out.

However an insight into the secretive world of York politics came at the last Council meeting which might raise concerns.

A reasonable question had been tabled to Dave Merrett a Labour Councillor who is responsible for public transport policy in the City. The interchange went like this:

“At the October Council meeting the Cabinet Member agreed to “look into” publishing reliability information provided by those bus operators providing services under Council contracts, as well as asking the bus operators to authorise the Council to publish the number of “All York” tickets sold each month. What progress has been made and where can bus passengers in York now access reliability information for the services that they use?” from Cllr Reid

Answer
This is a commercial product of the operators. It is commercial data that belongs to the operators and the operators view is that this is commercially sensitive information. Its disclosure could have a negative impact on both the future development of all York products and on general operations. With regard to reliability data, the Council receives real time reliability data which it uses to inform highway improvements and bus service planning. Provision of the data to the Council by operators is on the basis of a data sharing agreement which restricts the Council from publishing the data on a route by route basis. The Council does, however, annually publish reliability data for the whole York bus network and this is available from the Department for Transport. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/quarterly-bus-statistics-quarter-2-2012

So is Cllr Merrett in favour of publishing bus reliability information in a way that is both useful and accessible?

Who knows from this answer?

The fact that he abandoned all independent quality checks, of bus service reliability, when he took office 19 months ago, suggests that either he didn’t want to know how efficient the local bus services were, or he didn’t want passengers to find out.

……..and does he know how many “All York” tickets have been sold? The Council taxpayer clearly has an interest here as £20,000 of York resident’s money was used to publicise the scheme (Basically we know that sales of the ticket have been very small).

The solution is simple. If the bus companies still refuse to publish quality of service information then no further taxpayers subsidies, or service contracts, should be authorised for companies that do not agree to release reliability data.

There are £800,000 worth of contracts coming up for renewal shortly.

Time to give some support to bus passengers in the City we think.

NB. Park and Ride bus fares are set to increase on 6th January 2013. The new charges are:
Single – £2 (unchanged)
Return now £2.60
Concessionary Single – 60p* (unchanged)

MinsterCard tickets:

Stored value return now £2.30
Weekly ticket now £10.40
Monthly ticket now £41.60
Annual ticket now £416.00

*available after 0900 Monday-Friday and all day weekends & bank holidays to holders of a valid concessionary pass

Consultants have been appointed by the York Council with a remit to bring some order into the chaos surrounding the plans for a care village on the old Lowfields school site in Dijon Avenue. In 2011 the project was ready to proceed but the new Labour administration had to suspend work as they tried to find a way of appeasing their UNISON paymasters (who wanted their members to be employed at the development).

A tender was sought in January 2012 (http://england.unitedkingdom-tenders.co.uk/14176_Lowfield_care_village_2012_York) but it was only after 18 months of indecision that it was confirmed that external partners would be required to design, develop, manage and fund the care “village”.

Artists impression of new “care village”

Now the Council has said that “Given the complexity of the type of tendering process that the Council needs to go through in order to achieve the type and quality of village that we aspire to, it is most likely going to take longer than we had anticipated to select the Partner we wish to work with on developing the Community Village”. That is Council speak for “we have bitten off more than we can chew!“

A further report is promised for April 2013 but there is now no chance of the new facility being opened in 2014.

Given the success of similar ventures like Hartrigg Oaks on the other side of the City, it is a desperate shame that the Council has stumbled so badly on this project.

The Labour Council “Cabinet” has confirmed that it is still considering introducing a charge for the emptying of green waste bins.

However the decision has slipped once again – this time to their February meeting.

In effect this means that they cannot introduce charges during the current financial year. In turn this could mean that a hole will appear in their budget and will raise concerns that even higher charges for some services will be implemented next year.

The Council are still promising to consult on their plans using the internet. When they intend to do so remains a mystery.

This what Labour have done in Sheffield where they have also privatised waste collection. https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/environment/waste/bincollections/greenbins.html

All York Council departments missed their target of dealing with residents complaints within 5 working days between September and November.

43 complainants were recorded as “not satisfied” and went on to record a “stage 2” complaint.

A further 3 complaints reached the highest “stage 3” level.

The Council have admitted that very little existing furniture will be moved to their offices at Toft Green.

Instead a contract has been let which will see some of the furniture refurbished and resold, some donated to charity and some dumped.

The value of the contract has not been disclosed.

Council officials who work from home will get first choice of redundant desks and seats.

The Council have also admitted that nearly £1 million will be spent on new furniture at the new HQ. Expenditure includes the purchase of 2507 new seats. These are described as:
• 1,160 task chairs (for sitting at desks)
• 793 for Customer Centre and Meeting Rooms
• 153 Cafe
• 401 soft seating including sofas (sofas counted as one seat regardless of size)

Although the building will be home to 1400 staff fewer than 1000 are expected to be in the building at any one time. “Hot desking” (using any free desk) will be standard practice for all staff.

No formal opening date for the HQ has been announced but taxpayers will be hoping that costs will be kept to a minimum. Rumours of a “Royal” opening have been discounted.

Saturday frequency bus services are operating in York and North Yorkshire today and tomorrow.

There are some exceptions; see http://getdown.org.uk/bus/xmas.shtml