Ward Committee grant application form published

The Council has recently published a grant application form for use by local voluntary Groups seeking help from a Ward Committee.

In some wards, decisions on allocations have apparently already been made but with little evidence that proper consultation was undertaken or that there was transparency in the decision process.

Click to download

September decisions
October decisions

In LibDem represented areas like Westfield, the funding available to the Ward Committees is expected to be spent on tangible improvements to the local environment.

Suggestions already received from residents include:

improving vehicle parking ,
enhancing public spaces,
providing (and servicing)
additional litter, poop scoop & salt bins, plus
more public seating,
street lights,
hard landscaping/paving &
better play equipment

We are still awaiting details of how the funds, announced in July (see below), will be allocated at a local level.

In wards like Westfield around £52,000 is available to spend before 31st March 2015

click to enlarge

Does the York Council even know how good its public services are?

A response to a recent Freedom of information inquiry suggests that in many cases they don’t.

We asked for performance information on 20 key Council service areas (see left). They are the kind of services that every resident is likely to use – or see – each year.

Performance information had been gathered routinely, and reported publicly, up to 2011. However, over recent years, the York Council has seemed to be increasingly reluctant to provide information about basic service standards.

The Council said that it didn’t measure how many issues it received – or how it responded – for five public service areas. They were:

Dog fouling
Fly posting
Play equipment defects
Public open space/park maintenance issues &
Council estate communal and garage area defects.
Garage area maintenance standards not recorded

That shocked us – not least because some involve safety issues.

We asked for information on the:

A Number of issues reported

B Average time taken to resolve issue

C Target completion time

D % of issues resolved within the target time

E Longest outstanding issue at the month end

F % quality checks which were considered to be satisfactory

The Council was able to provide volume information, on the number of issues that had been reported, for most of the activity areas.

Areas where the number of problem reports were increasing included

Trees, bushes and weeds overgrowing paths
Graffiti &
Street lighting faults

The number of reports in other activity areas was fairly stable over an 18 month period.

Looking at how quickly issues were resolved, the only target times regularly achieved were for clearing full litter bins “within 3 working days” (a fairly generous target) and removing “obscene” graffiti within 1 working day.

If you telephoned the Council offices in August you had a 75% chance of your call being answered in 20 seconds.

A visitor would have waited, on average, 8 minutes to be seen.

However residents emailing the Council and expecting a response within one working day, would be disappointed. The Council has stopped recording the length of time taken to deal with electronic communications.

So what’s the longest wait that I can expect?

Well the Council doesn’t measure the longest outstanding issue. So no one knows.

But there must be some quality checks?

Some issues like weed growth never seem to eb resolved

Some issues like weed growth never seem to be resolved

Well actually no. The Council says that it doesn’t record the results of quality checks undertaken by inspectors nor does it undertake any customer satisfaction surveys with complainants.

So work undertaken isn’t routinely checked and recorded.

Maybe the issue hasn’t even been resolved? Just ticked off on the work management computer?

Who’s to blame?

Poor management practices, Councillors, Directors, computer systems? The Chairs of the Council’s Scrutiny Committees – who should guard the public interest – have generally failed to table performance information.

So perhaps everyone shares the responsibility?

Will they put things right?

Maybe. The, still relatively new, Council deserves some time to put things right. But they need some quick wins to restore public confidence.

They could start by putting these, and other, basic KPIs on their “open data” web site and updating them each month.

The sooner that a new Chief Executive is appointed by the Council – and its management vacancies filled – the sooner we can expect to see an improvement in service standards.

The full set of results, covering the last 18 months, can be downloaded by clicking here or here (Sendspace Excel spreadsheet)

Our thanks to the FOI team at the Council who clearly tried very hard to provide the information that we had requested.

York Council open day on ice clearance as residents kept in dark over salt bin plans

City of York Council’s winter maintenance team is inviting residents to find out more about how the council tackles winter weather during a special open event at the council’s depot on James Street.

On Saturday 31 October between 10am to 12pm, visitors will get the chance to have a close-up look of the fleet of gritters, snow ploughs and salt spreaders, as well as see the salt barn which is home to over 3,000 tonnes of salt

The open day will provide residents with the opportunity to prepare for the winter months ahead, where frontline teams will be on-hand to offer winter advice.

It also falls on the first ‘dry run’ weekend of the year, where crews will be carrying out gritting test runs in York ahead of the start of the winter season.

The announcement comes at a time when residents are still waiting to here about the future of their local salt bins.

The last Labour led Council chose to scrap many of these self help bins while others have been left out all year round.

Cllr Sue Hunter on a steep footpath on Front Street where acces to a salt bin is essential for safety

Many have been damaged while others are still full of rubbish.

The Liberal Democrats pledged at the recent election to improve the network of bins so an early announcement of changes was expected.

Throughout the gritting season, between November and March, crews are on-hand to work 24/7 to help keep York’s roads open. Last year, crews used 3,927 tonnes of salt over 72 separate ‘grit runs’ , travelling 43,054 km to treat 71,460km of highway.

Cllr Ian Gillies, Executive Member for Transport and Planning, said: “Our open day will enable residents to hear from the frontline team direct about how the council tackles winter weather to help to keep our roads open 24/7 over the gritting season. We encourage everyone to join us during the open event to help them prepare for the winter months ahead.”

. For more information about the winter services in York visit www.york.gov.uk/gritting .Or, follow @YorkGritter on Twitter for regular updates.

York Fire station – more information published

The empty fire station on Clifford Street is still costing taxpayers around £45,000 a year to maintain.

Former York Fire Station on Clifford Street

The costs cover buildings security and rates.

They do not include utility charges.such as electricity and water.

The North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service say that they hope to complete the sale of the building before April 2016 but this is dependent on the new owner getting planning permission for the new development announced this morning.

The sale price for the site has not yet been revealed.

The Fire Service moved into a new station near the Barbican in April 2014.

The figures were obtained using Freedom of Information legislation

More haste, less speed – New Council issue reporting system is flawed

The York Council has gone ahead and launched a replacement for the “report it” system which it abandoned 3 years ago. The older system had worked well for over 8 years but was, apparently, a victim of the move to West Offices.

click to access Council forms

A Smarter York “App” was introduced but it lacked the functionality and flexibility of the old system. It gradually fell into disuse.

About 2 years ago the Council promised a system based on individual “customer accounts” and this was to have been launched in the spring.

However nothing materialised.

Now the Council has rushed out a minimalist reporting system for neighbourhood reports. It is intended to cover issues like street light faults, cleansing issues, footpath fouling, road/pavement defects, overgrown trees and problems with street furniture.

Unfortunately the system has not been properly tested with users and already a list of “bugs” has emerged.

These include:

The system does not have an “App” which would allow it to run on smart phones.
The system doesn’t provide a complainant with an Emailed (or any other copy) of the issue that they raised
There is no way of associating the issue number with a specific complaint
There is no publicly accessible record of issues raised. This facility was available on the Smarter York system and is fundamental to the “Fix My Street” system. Consequently the likelihood of duplicate reports increases.
The type of issue that can be reported is limited. Problems with defects on play equipment aren’t covered, for example.

These issues need to be resolved before the system is promoted by the Council. In the meantime, “Fix My Street” offers users much greater functionality and reassurance.

Seems to be a case of good intentions but poor delivery by the York Council on this one

Acomb car park recycling point in better shape

After a few patchy weeks where full recycling bins, dumped rubbish and broken bottles were making the Acomb car park look very untidy, things were looking a lot better by Friday teatime.

All the bins had space in them.

Litter, footpaths, dog fouling, dumping & weeds top residents concerns

Thanks to those living in the Front Street and Hob Moor areas who have been returning the LibDem Focus “grumble” sheets.

So far the most complaints have been about:

Litter
Uneven footpaths
Dog fouling
Dumping
Weeds/bushes obstructing paths

So pretty much basic public service standard issues.

This weekend we’ve moving on to look at services in the Cornlands Road and Askham Lane areas.

We’ve already been out and about this week checking on public service standards in the west of the City. Around 255 issues have been reported via “Fix My Street” including

Dogs have badly fouled the Tithe Close snicket

Weeds are still a problem on some footpaths

Grange Lane park play equipment still needs strimming

Swings damaged on Grange Lane park

Full litter bin on Askham Lane reported by Cllr Sheena Jackson

York beating relative poverty? Latest figures are encouraging

The latest deprivation statistics which can be viewed on the North Yorkshire open data site reveal that no York neighbourhoods are now ranked among the 10% most deprived in the country.

The Kingsway West area – the subject of an innovative anti poverty initiative by the then LibDem led Council – is one of those that has now climbed up the league table.

Deprivation is measured on a number of indices where 10 is the best that can be achieved. These are: Income (Kingsway 2), Employment (2), Barriers to housing and services (2), Crime (2), Education, skills and training (2), Health and disability (1), Living environment (6), Income affecting children (2), Income affecting older people (2).

Elsewhere in North Yorkshire there are nine deprived areas (in the bottom 10% in the country) in Scarborough, one in Harrogate and one in Selby

Middlesbrough, Knowsley, Kingston upon Hull, Liverpool and Manchester are the five local authority districts with the largest proportions of highly deprived neighbourhoods in England. More details can be found by clicking here

Mixed response to litter clearance requests

The York Council has actioned some requests for litter to be cleared for amenity areas. Chesney’s Field now looks very tidy and workers were out on the A1237 by pass yesterday clearing litter from the hedgerows.

Chesneys Field on good day 1100 8th Oct 2015

Chesney’s field clear of litter

Meanwhile other amenity areas on the west of the City have not fared as well. Bachelor Hill is covered in empty cans while the Cornland’s park has its usual covering of detritus.

bottles, cans and litter Bachelor Hill 1200 8th Oct 2015

Bachelor Hill – still not recovered from authorised environmental dumping and now covered in detritus

Graffiti and worn path spoil entrance to Bachelor Hill

Askham Lane entrnace to Bachelor Hill overgrown gate broken 1200 8th Oct 2015

Overgrown and damaged entrance to Bachelor Hill from Askham Lane

Detritus and damaged gate at Tennent Road entrance to Bachelor Hill

Clumsy attempt to score political points by York Tory Council Leader

The agenda for the next City of York Council meeting has been published.

The issues being considered are largely anodyne but are remarkable for an inappropriate attack by Tory Leader Chris Steward on that well known local politician “Jeremy Corbyn”

We hold no respect from many for Corbyn’s views, but using York taxpayers resources to criticise the man and his policies is inappropriate. As is the way with the media, many of Corbyn’s claimed views may, in any event, have been exaggerated or taken out of context.

Either way they are not going to be changed in the York Council chamber.

There is a precedent. Until James Alexander took over as Council Leader in 2011, reports produced for, and published as part of Council agenda papers, were determinedly non (party) political in content. Alexander saw himself as an MP in waiting, so he often strayed into commentary rather than reporting facts. But never, to our recollection, in such a naked and partisan fashion.

Even more surprising, the Council Leader’s report makes no mention of the core public service standards now being provided for residents. A list of performance indicators results was presented to a recent Executive meeting.

Failure to review progress may suggest that some of the promised improvements are slow in coming through?

Lack of progress is marked in the customer contact handling services which are presided over by Cllr Steward himself.

Fewer than 80% of telephone calls to the Council were answered in less than 20 seconds during the summer, while those emailing issues through to the Council may wait for up to 7 days before they are forwarded for action.

Cllr Steward chose to appoint an assistant to help him with his work a few months ago. It is time for that arrangement to produce some more obvious value for taxpayers!

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