York Council easing out of budget crisis?

Good progress in improving some services

The York Council showed a small budget surplus during the last financial year. As a result, its reserves will increase from £6.8m to £7.3m. In addition, prudent use of its contingency fund will see its 2017/18 provision increase to £1,049k.

This represents a marked improvement on the performance of the Council when it was under Labour control between 2011 and 2015.

The Council has also published selective performance stats.

These claim to show good progress with only delayed discharges from hospital sounding a negative note.

But is everything as rosy as may seem?

The Council’s Executive does not receive exception reports. Such reports would highlight failing performance at street level (which the Council claims is its primary focus)

Selective performance stats published by Council

A survey being undertaken in the Westfield ward by local Councillors presents a slightly different picture.

Westfield Councillors survey results at June 2017

Although respondents say that they are satisfied with most local public services there are exceptions.

The biggest failings (in sub-urban areas) are;

  • Poor road and footpath maintenance
  • Parking provision and
  • Litter/poop scoop bin provision

The Council provides more detailed information on line (see www.yorkopendata.org under the “performance scorecards” section)

But several of the scorecards have still  not been updated for the 2016/17 year.

Other elements of performance are not publicly monitored.

These include the progress made with locally budgeted Ward Committee schemes some of which – although funded – have been in a lengthening waiting list for over 2 years.

Better progress on genuine local concerns would enhance the Councils claim that its priority is indeed the provision of good quality basic services.

On Line performance stats need updating

Better football facilities in Westfield

Following a request by the Foxwood Residents Association, a set of goal posts has been fitted on the Foxwood Park. It is hoped that they will attract children away from playing ball games on the street.

Improvements are also in hand at the Grange Lane Westfield Park where volunteers have made a start on repainting the existing goal posts on the site.

Local Councillors Andrew Waller & Sue Hunter are following up a requests from children living in the Chapelfields area for better play and sports facilities. It is hoped that a 5 a side pitch will be marked out on the playing field.

The York Knights Rugby Foundation have already agreed to run sessions in the park over the summer holidays

“Red Alert” as York Council confirms customer management system in trouble

Just a few days after we revealed that the Councils IT systems were at best “flaky”, there has been official confirmation of the scale of the problems

A report to the Council’s Audit Committee includes a “Red Warning” about the new digital system (CRM) on its risk register.

The project ran into serious trouble earlier in the year when a “contractual issue” ruled out “going live” on many customer management features.

Now the position has worsened with no progress on resolving the issue being reported. The Council is pinning its hopes on an “independent review” of the outstanding issues but no timescales have been agreed,

The IT change is hugely expensive for taxpayers. It is a project first mooted in 2011 but since then progress has been agonisingly slow. As a result the Council has been criticised for not buying proven “off the shelf” solutions; instead they preferred to “go it alone”.

The Executive member with responsibility for the project (Chris Steward) quit in January, leaving Council Leader David Carr to pick up the pieces.

It seems that he has had little more success in moving the project forward.

That was the week that was in west York in pictures

The results of a public opinion survey conducted by local Councillors in the Chapelfields estate were published. One issue raised by residents was lack of progress on repairing the local bus shelter.

…by Thursday, following work by Cllr Andrew Waller, the Bramham Road bus shelter had been repaired.

Andrew had also reported full recycling bins in the Acomb car park

…and a damaged street sign on Front Street

The recent poor weather has brought several problems. Earlier in the week we reported several problems with detritus and overgrown hedges with particular issues on snickets in The Reeves, Thoresby Road and Tennent Road

The surface of the snicket linking Thoresby Road and Cornlands Road is uneven. We have asked for it to be repaired

Broken glass on the Tithe Close footpath was reported for action

Sadly still no action by the Council to trim back the overgrown hedge on Askham Lane

Some surprises as Chapelfields residents give their views on public services

Younger residents want better play, sports and youth club facilities

Failure to repair the bus shelter – damaged 3 months ago – was criticised by many

A door to door survey of residents views, undertaken by the Westfield Ward Councillors and helpers, has revealed the top priorities of Chapelfields residents. 170 households completed questionnaires with the top priorities for local improvements being:

  • Better parking facilities
  • The reinstatement of a regular skip service (halted by the council in April) and
  • Better maintenance of trees/bushes & verges.

:There were a lot of concerns about security. 38% of residents described policing in the area as “poor”.

For the first time the survey included a separate section aimed at finding out the priorities of younger people.

The responses revealed that listening to music and watching TV were the most popular current pastimes.

Many respondents wanted to see better sports facilities with a usable football pitch a high priority.

The Grange Lane Park and Playground “needed an uplift” being described as “dirty and insecure”.

Some wanted to see more events at Sanderson House – the local community centre.

One child – with a more down to earth priority – said that she wanted to see the “ice cream man visit the estate earlier in the day”

All respondents gave a high priority to providing funding from the Ward Committee budget for younger persons activities.

71% of respondents rated the Acomb Explore Library as good or satisfactory with 57% giving similar support to the Energise leisure centre.

For the first time in the annual survey the bus service was the top rated public service 97% rated it as good or satisfactory.

A full analysis of the Chapelfields Residents survey can be downloaded by clicking here

The residents survey now being extended to cover the Kingsway West area

 

So how good is the York Councils customer management system?

Hopefully Councillors will raise the veil of secrecy on 12th June when they receive another report on “Digital Services”. It is the latest episode in a drama which has offered much but has, so far, delivered very little to customers.

Put simply, the Council fails to manage its electronic interface with customers to an acceptable standard. Much faith was placed in the IT project which is now running 18 months behind schedule. So far, the only “on line” reports, using the “My Account” system, that can be made, concern litter.

These are usually dealt with quickly but are not without hiccups. An automatically generated “issue closed” Email message recently proved to be incorrect. The reported broken bottle was still there several hours after the issue had been closed (it was reopened).

But the main concern is that the vast majority of issues simply can’t be reported via the Councils web site with any confidence that action will be taken. They simply disappear into the ether with apparently random reference numbers generated which citizens find impossible to match to individual reports.

As we have said before, the system still lacks the flexibility of proprietary solutions like “fix my street”.  The Council could have bought a system off the shelf – as most other authorities have done – and by now would have been off and running.

All the Council can promise is that 7 more street service issues will be added to the system by the end of the summer.

It does claim that around 1000 digital transactions are completed each week but this includes high volume financial transactions.

The Council has seen a significant drop in the number of telephone calls that it receives. Fewer people visited the Customer Centre last year.

Significantly though, the Council still does not provide speed stats on key interfaces like Email. It is three years since the Council promised to improve its performance on this access channel.

It does look to customers like Emails still take 48 hours to be passed from the customer centre to the responsible department.

Some departments do later respond to reports lodged in this way.

Many do not.  

Performance “open data” on web site not updated. No figures provided for volumes. Email numbers completely missing

6 months since responsible Executive member publicly reviewed performance of customer contact centre

York Council takes action to ease debt risk for poorer families

The York Council has agreed to pay some of the fees involved in setting up and running a budget bank account at the Credit Union shop at 8 Acomb Court off York Road (tel.03030 300010) .

Details of budget and other accounts available at the branch can be found on the SYCC web site

The Council is taking the action to encourage those reliant on the Universal Credits benefit package to budget to avoid debts. Univeral Credit is paid in arrears and can be difficult to manage.

A report to a recent meeting says,

“A recent article on the Association of Retained Council Housing site indicated that:

  • 86% of universal credit (UC) claimants living in council owned homes are in rent arrears (compared to 79% at March 2016).
  • 59% of universal credit claimants living in council owned homes have arrears that equate to more than one month’s rent.
  • Although 63% of UC tenants in arrears had pre-existing arrears before their UC claim only 44% of them are on APAs (alternative payment arrangements with direct payment from DWP)
  • The average value of arrears tenants owed across UC households has almost doubled to £615 since 31 March 2016 when average amount was £321.

A research article expressed concern about rent arrears.

“Not only are numbers of households increasing as UC is rolled out, but the percentage of households falling into rent arrears and experiencing financial difficulty is critically high.

If this trend is not reversed it will have significant impact on local authorities’ rental income streams and the long term ability for housing departments to provide essential services to their communities.

Use of the SYCU budget account and related services by customers could be one way of helping them manage their money effectively, prevent debt and help manage debt where this is accrued”.

Council officials will now help to promote the budget account to qualifying residents.