Pressure for inquiry into “Grand Departy” £187,000 flop grows

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Councillors are being pressured to hold a scrutiny inquiry into the Huntington Stadium concert – held on 4th July – which looks likely to cost York taxpayers £187,000.

The event was tagged onto the Tour De France but major questions remain unanswered about how –and why – the concert came to be added to a sports event programme.

Bills now available for scrutiny on the Council web site suggest that an event management company, based near Blackpool, was given the contract to organise the event.

Any inquiry is likely to look carefully at the tender arrangements and content of the event contracts.

Private meeting notes will be scrutinised with one key question being why no decision to cancel was taken, with tickets sales in the low hundreds, only a couple of weeks before the event was due to be staged?

When originally launched, the York Council had talked of “10,000“ attending the concert.

Some tickets were heavily discounted. Councillors are likely to ask for details of any free tickets given away by organisers and Council officials.

The review might also look at the arrangements for buying and selling merchandise, while the £33,000 loss on “camping” arrangements may also be probed.

Any involvement by York in the proposed “Tour de Yorkshire”” is likely to be dependant on satisfactory answers being provided at a “Grand Departy” inquiry.

The Tour de Yorkshire is due to take place just 4 days before Council elections are held in the City

Loss on Huntington Stadium concert confirmed as £187,000

Event only took £12,000 in ticket sales

The York Council has finally revealed that it lost an astonishing £187,000 on the concert that it staged at the Huntington Stadium on 4th July.

It spent £82,000 on artists fees and £94,000 on “infrastructure costs”

An “event management fee” of £18,000 was also spent

The Council went to extraordinary lengths to try to hide the scale of the failure with several Freedom of Information requests knocked back on largely spurious grounds and others still outstanding

With Labour now having lost their majority, officials have been ordered to reveal the full figures.

The mistakes will lead to renewed calls for the Cllr Crisp – who is responsible for Leisure activities – to resign.

She had been awarded a “medal” for her work on the event.

The costs given to leading Councillors were:

"Grand Departy" costs click to enlarge

“Grand Departy” costs click to enlarge

NB. The Labour Cabinet on 1st October 2013 set a budget for the Tour de France of £1,664k, to cover the cost of the event, funded from a variety of sources.

The outturn shows that the final cost of the event totalled £1,827k. In addition there was an up front payment of a “hosting fee”.

Links (click)

Cllr Keith Aspden, Lib Dem Group Leader commented:

 “There are serious questions to be asked as to how the council lost money on the Tour De France. The botched camping plans and the last-minute decision to hold a concert at Huntington Stadium have lost taxpayers £33,000 and £187,000 respectively.

“The Liberal Democrats argued all along that Labour needed to produce a proper public business case backed-up with detailed financial plans for these events. Instead Labour shrouded the plans in secrecy and took decisions behind-closed-doors without proper public involvement or opposition councillor scrutiny.

 “Given this, it is unsurprising that these council organised events have lost money and will now worryingly hit the communities and neighbourhoods budget by £60,000. 

 “Despite the mistakes made by the Labour run council, I am pleased that overall the Tour De France has had a positive impact on York businesses and the wider Yorkshire economy.”

New Cornlands play area a hit with children but….

…………litter still a major problem

Cornlands park children playing

The new play equipment, installed by the local residents association, in the Cornlands park is proving to be a success with local children.

Unfortunately the Council have not only removed the dog proof fence but have failed to provide either a “poop scoop” or litter bn.

The result is that the insecure area is a bit of a mess.

Poop scoop bins missing for months

Poop scoop bins missing for months

We’ve asked for a clean up of the whole park, but new bins need to be provided together with some sort of security to prevent access to the play area by dogs.

A similar initiative is needed at the Grange Lane play area

Detritus on playground

Detritus on playground

Litter piled up around perimeter of park

Litter piled up around perimeter of park

 

 

Good progress made on Foxwood Community Centre makeover

“York Cares” volunteers made good progress on their project to makeover the Foxwood Community centre yesterday.

With better weather forecast for today, it is hoped that everything will be completed in time for the Lord Mayor’s official opening at 4:30pm

The footpath through the Foxwood Park together with adjacent trees have also been tidied up.

Murals2 Volunteers with axe Woodowrkers

Restore Community Centre grants says LibDem candidate

Sanderson House community centre

Sanderson House community centre

With concern growing over threats to voluntary groups using the Burton Stone Community Centre, Westfield LibDem candidate Andrew Waller has called for the grants to local community centres to be reinstated.

In the Westfield area, both the Foxwood and Chapelfields community centres have seen their grants cut by the Labour Council.

Both centres are now relying entirely on the work of volunteers.

The committees at both centres are working very hard to keep them open but, in the long term, both would benefit if an annual grant of £15,000 was reinstated.

This would allow them to employ a part time caretaker and expand use of the facilities.

Former Labour Leader David Scott claimed on Thursday that “There is not one member of this (Labour) Cabinet I would offer a proper job to, not that many of them know what a proper job is”.

The £14,000 a year that these, apparently ineffective, Cabinet members draw in salary payments would be better spent on sustaining local community centres.

Labour refuse to give Yearsley Pool guarantee

Labour councillors refused to guarantee to keep Yearsley Pool open at last night’s meeting of York’s Full Council.

Yearsley Pool

Yearsley Pool

 The Liberal Democrat Group moved an amendment calling on all councillors to guarantee keeping the pool open as part of the council’s £37million leisure plans.

However, the move was defeated by 12 votes to 22 with the Conservative Group abstaining.

The vote followed proposals by Labour to end the annual council subsidy to Yearsley Pool from 2016 – a move which the Yearsley Pool Action Group has warned could lead to the closure of the historic baths.
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Fresh calls to save Yearsley Pool

Liberal Democrats will call for a cross-party commitment to guarantee keeping Yearsley Pool open at a meeting of York’s Full Council tomorrow.

The £250,000 a year funding for Yearsley Pool will be cut in 2016 as part of a leisure package agreed by Labour run York Council last month. Yearsley Pool Action Group has said the pool could close as a result of the cut.

Yearsley Pool

Yearsley Pool

Lib Dems are asking councillors to support a proposal which calls on York Council to examine ways to reduce the subsidy given to Yearsley Pool, but guarantee to keep it open.
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Grand Departy costs – York Council says it won’t release details until after the Westfield by election poll has taken place

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Three months after a party took place at the Huntington Stadium, the Council still claims that it does know how much income it received from ticket sales.

The budget costs of the 5 hour event were revealed as £228,000 in a response to a Freedom of Information request in August.

It beggars belief that the Council does not yet know how much the event cost and what bill Council Taxpayers will have to pick up.

In an internal review, of responses to an FOI request from former Council Leader Steve Galloway, the Council has admitted irregularities with officials apparently having incorrectly quoted national legislation to justify a cover up.

They have also apologized for delays in dealing with correspondence.

But they now say that a report will only be made to the Council’s Cabinet on the details of the flop in November; 2 months after it was originally scheduled.

A question on ticket sales has been put on the agenda for the Council meeting taking place on 9th October by Cllr Nigel Ayre.

This is the kind of obstructive secrecy that will be swept away if Labour lose their majority after the by election poll which takes place on 16th October.

The Council’s email to Steve Galloway says;
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