York’s warden call and telecare customers will pay new charges for the services from September.
Warden Call provides a 24 hour monitoring and response service to customers in York. The telecare service provides a 24 monitoring and response service for customers who, in addition to the standard warden call service, have at least one piece of telecare equipment – such as fall detectors – installed.
York Guildhall
Labour are oppressing ahead with their plan to turn the Guildhall into a “Digital Arts and Media Centre”.
Essentially this will mean constructing small business units.
Initially around £400,000 is being spent appointing additional staff to manage the project and to undertake demolition works on parts of the site. In total £1.4 million has been allocated to the project plus an – as yet unspecified – amount of capital investment (likely to be several millions of pounds)
The Council has still not published even an outline business case indicating how such a development could be paid for and sustained.
There is still a large amount of empty commercial property in the City. There are at the moment, for example, 11 starter units unoccupied at the York Eco Business centre at Clifton
The original intention had been to maintain the Guildhall and adjacent heritage buildings as the political and cultural centre of the City. This would have left space at the new West Offices for commercial use.
This has already been eroded.
A commercial use is taking place in part of the building (John Lewis recruitment) while – ironically – another part of the site is being used by the theatre group which is behind the “Arts Barge” project.
The Council has not revealed how much rent it is receiving for these uses or what the ongoing maintenance and other liabilities are for the largely empty site. Earlier in the year the empty building was reported as costing around £13000 a month to sustain
Most seriously it looks like it will be at least a year before a permanent use is found for the buildings.
In the meantime, part of the site has been mothballed prior to demolition while it seems likely that the rest of this key building will be allowed to quietly rot away.
York Council officials expenses published on web. Click to access
The Council has now published the expenses claims made by senior officials. These apparently include those claimed by the Chief Executive and Directors.
The Council web site suggests that no claims were submitted by the Directors in the year to April 2013.
We find it difficult to believe that the Councils senior management team have not attended any meetings which involve travel outside the City, although failure to reclaim expenses in these difficult times is obviously commendable!
The government has announced that the freeze on Council Tax levels will continue for another two years.
The government is also continuing the additional funding grant made available to those Councils that have held Council Tax levels for the last 2 years.
The Labour controlled York Council has already increased Council Tax by 3.8% over the last 2 years and so local residents will not benefit from the announcement.
It remains to be seen whether the Council will now see the error of its ways and introduce the freeze in the run up to the 2015 local elections.
If the Council wants to increase Council Tax by more than 2% it will need to seek the support of taxpayers through a local referendum.
A complete list of business names, addresses and rateable values of commercial properties with rateable value of £1,000 up to £11,000 who are eligible for but not currently receiving small business rate relief.
There are several hundred properties listed by the Council Click here to see a full list
A Freedom of Information request has revealed a 400% increase in the number confidential payments being made to staff leaving the York Councils employment since Labour took control of the authority.
“Compromise agreements” are entered into when local authorities (and other employers) reach a financial compromise which facilitates an employee leaving its employment. Sometimes the agreements are reached to avoid the costs of an employment tribunal.
Because the details of the deal remain confidential, taxpayers are kept in the dark about the costs involved. They are therefore controversial and are used sparingly by most Councils.
2007 – 2010 Number of compromise agreements made with former or current staff 6
2010 – 2013 (so far).Number of compromise agreements made with former or current staff 28
All the compromise agreements made in York contain a confidentiality clause.
The Sunday Times is reporting today that a York Council credit card has been used to pay for a £180 pedicure.
Apparently the money was spent on the feet of “disadvantaged” youngsters to improve their “self esteem”
Meanwhile James Alexander has published more details of his travel expenses.
They include a £12 taxi ride to Terry’s to take part in a “photo shoot”.
Residents living in the Bishopthorpe Road area may feel that use of a bus would have been more appropriate.
Taxpayers living in the rest of the City might tell the Leader to follow the example of his predecessors and use some of his £30,000 a year salary to fund trips within the City.
Bonding Warehouse
Media reports suggest that the Bonding warehouse is no longer being considered as a possible “media and creative centre”.
Taxpayers will be relieved.
It had been sold by the Council at the height of the property boom 5 years ago but had failed to find a new use. Access during high water levels in the Ouse makes the building inaccessible in its present form.
In total around £3.6 million of taxpayers’ money was earmarked for the project. No convincing business plan has yet been published with earlier estimates suggesting that the private sector would contribute only around 20% of the investment costs.
In the autumn even Labour Councillors began to challenge the wisdom of the project.
It was revealed that taxpayers had already footed a £25,000 bill for the – now abandoned – Bonding Warehouse project.
It seems that the focus of attention for this project is now switching to the Guildhall which has been empty now for 3 months.
There is likely to be more widespread support for the use of the modern office next at the Guildhall as some sort of business centre. Whether the financial figures can be made to stack up remains to be seen.
If the Council is now beginning to jettison some of its more harebrained schemes then they could look again at their proposed £100,000 investment in an “Arts Barge”.
We remain sceptical about the need for any additional arts venue in the City, but it would be better to site any such facility on dry land. The Guildhall might just allow 2 birds to be killed with one stone …. But taxpayers will want to see more convincing evidence that the projects can be self funding.
NB. The owners of the Bonding Warehouse are understood to be pursuing its possible use as a restaurant, offices and flats.
The York Council has blocked residents from accessing what it considers to be unsavoury internet sites.
These are not the sites that you might expect.
The move is not aimed at hard core porn, gambling or terrorism sites.
The Council has taken the steps to block residents from accessing “payday” loan web sites.
In a media release it says, “In a bid to protect residents from payday loans websites and the risks of spiralling debt from high interest providers, City of York Council has blocked these companies from its staff and public wi-fi and computers and is encouraging use of more reputable financial solutions.
Computers for customer use at all City of York Council libraries and Explore centres and at West Offices now do not give access to payday lender sites, “some of which charge exorbitant interest rates”.
The Council has not published a list of the companies that it considers to be exploitive.
In addition, the council’s extensive free wi-fi provision is blocking these sites at its libraries and West Offices, at Energise and in the city centre around St Helen’s Square and along Coney Street.
Instead, York’s libraries are going to “support promoting of local credit unions which support savers and borrowers who have difficulty accessing high street banking options“.
The North Yorkshire Credit Union, however, went bust last year and its replacement is only just finding its feet in the City.
“In March, the council launched the free ‘Small Changes’ booklet on how to manage money and make it go further. Published in association with York Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and Aviva, it includes tips on budgeting, ways to cut costs, savings and insurance essentials and hints on how to avoid getting into debt. Also, there are lots of ideas on how to enjoy life in York without having to spend too much money, including low cost family days out, free events and courses”.
As usual there was no consultation with users before the Council took the decision (behind closed doors) to censor the internet access available to its citizens.
Many, while sharing the Council’s concern about unscrupulous lenders, may consider the step to be an unfortunate precedent; bordering on an infringement of civil liberties.
There is a fine line between a genuine wish to ensure that consumers are protected and a patronising, nanny Council, approach.
Residents can now download details of the amounts claimed by Councillors for attending conferences and meetings.
The conference fees themselves cost hundreds of pounds in the latest month for which figures are available. April click here to view.
The figures have been published following claims that some Labour Councillors were laundering their expense payments by charging them to Departmental accounts.
We called in January for a more open approach and that call has now been heeded.
Some expenses are entirely legitimate and are an inevitable consequence of a Councillors role.
However, at a time when the Deputy Leader of the Council has said that public services can’t stand any more cuts, one wonders how she justifies spending £495 in fees for attending a conference in Manchester?
