It looks like the road works at the junction of The Mount and Holgate Road will continue until Friday.
The worst delays seem to be on Holgate Road.
Hopefully the work – which involves repairing a sewer pipe – will be completed before eh school holidays finish
York’s licensing committee will again consider the vexed question of UBER private hire vehicles operating in York when they meet next week.
A decision on what, if any, action should be taken is due to be taken by the Councils Executive on 26th September.
The Council has now published a formal legal opinion on whether UBER vehicles, registered with other local authorities can legally accept bookings in York. The council’s position is that, provided the three licences required in relation to a private hire vehicle (operator, driver and vehicle) have all been issued by the same authority, then the private hire vehicle can undertake journeys anywhere in England and Wales. This opinion can be read by clicking here
An alternative opinion was provided via the local trade association
The meeting report reveals that national legislation is planned which will aim to clear up the confusion about what private hire vehicles can and can’t do and where.
In the meantime, officials are recommending that there is no change to the Councils existing policies.
We have sympathy for both sides in this argument. The local trade may be partly motivated by protectionism. But passenger safety is of paramount importance and standards do appear to vary across the region.
This seems to us like a suitable case on which the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (which includes York) could take a lead.
On the other hand, in a modern world, being able to summon a private hire vehicle using a smartphone app seems like a “no brainer”. If the App tells you what the vehicle will be, when it will arrive, who will be driving it and how much the journey will cost, then all to the good.
The York licencing department does need to crack down on unlawful pick-ups and prevent private hire vehicles (from all companies) from “lurking” near taxi ranks and in busy areas.
That would be the best use of resources and Council officials time.
Ageing and outdated traffic signals at the junction of Bishopthorpe Road and Scarcroft Road are set to be replaced next month by City of York Council, as part of a scheme to help improve pedestrian access and ease congestion in the area.
The works will include replacing all the ageing traffic signal equipment, creating a new pedestrian crossing on Bishopthorpe Road, removing the small central triangular island on Bishopthorpe Road and widening/resurfacing the footway.
Works will start on Monday 9 September and are estimated to take around four weeks to complete. The hours of working will be 9.30am – 4.30pm, Monday to Friday and 8am to 4pm Saturdays and Sundays.
In order to safely construct part of the work some evening works may be required. Notification of these will be provided in advance.
Works will be suspended between Friday 27 and Sunday 29 September due to the York Balloon Fiesta.
The new technology being installed will help to manage traffic in the area and enable the new systems to link direct to the council’s Traffic and Control Centre, so that Network Monitoring Officers can manage the flow of traffic better in busy periods.
The right turn from Scarcroft Road to Bishopthorpe Road will be closed during the works and diversion routes will be in place.
During the works it is anticipated that all bus services will operate as normal, however there will be delays when travelling through the junction.
The junction will be operating under temporary signals during the works and motorists are expected to experience delays while the works are underway.
More details of the York Council’s controversial decision to sell land to the Yorspace community housing group are emerging. In response to a Freedom of Information request the Council has provided a copy of the independent valuation that it obtained for the land at Lowfields.
The valuation states that the site may be sold to a community housing group for £300,000 which “represents a 20% discount on market value”. However, the valuation report is based on the construction of 10 semi-detached homes on the land.
The Yorspace proposal envisages a 19 unit, high density, development.
So the scale of the taxpayer subsidy remains obscure. The only way to test the financial assumptions would be to market the site, comparing offers for social housing with a commercial alternative.
While Section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972 does allow Local Authorities to sell, in certain circumstances, land at below market value and without seeking competitive bids, that discretion is not unfettered.
The Council constitution requires a reason for such a sale to be minuted. There is no such reason given in the record of the officer decision taken on 18th January 2019
The record of the meeting says, “The Mutual Home Ownership Society housing model they use is designed as such that they will be economically accessible to lower income families and the affordability of the homes is maintained in perpetuity”.
The council has not, so far, chosen to include, in the terms of the proposed sale, a requirement that occupiers MUST be lower income families and/or that they should currently be registered on the home choice/housing waiting list..
As the development has NOT been classified as “affordable housing” in the Local Plan, the Council must legally provide a specific reason for giving preferential treatment to a particular group.
The reason might be, for example, to create local jobs, to provide accessible leisure facilities, to provide homes for those on the waiting list or whatever.
However, an auditable rationale is a legal requirement.
The sale to Yorspace has not been completed yet but is expected next month. A further report to a council committee on the scheme is expected on 26th September.
Meanwhile it has emerged that no progress has been made in selling any “self-build“ plots at Lowfield
The Council says that marketing material for the plots is being prepared by the Community and Self-Build Officer, in conjunction with Custom Build Homes, who are the sale agent for the plots.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/GettyImages-656676733-5bb512b6cff47e0026d2007b.jpg)
“A promotional event was held last year, and it is planned that another event will be held at the start of the marketing launch”.
Plots will be promoted through the council, the Custom Build Homes website and Rightmove. Plots will go on sale this Autumn.
The buyers must have started construction work within 12 months of purchase and have completed all works within 2 years”.
York Council “doesn’t know” clean up costs
A York Councillor has been told, in a response to a Freedom of Information request, that it doesn’t know what the cost of clearing fly tipping in the City is.
The Councillor claims that new charges and access restrictions to the City’s recycling centres are resulting in more fly tipping.
There are certainly issues to be addressed in both east and west York.
A report to a meeting taking place this week reveals that in quarter 1 (April – June 2019) “within the Shared Ownership Scheme, the Council has acquired one property and sold equity shares in three properties”.
The target is to purchase 23 properties by the end of 2019/20 and sell the same amount.
“Capital receipts from the equity sales are to be reinvested into the shared ownership programme, as such the budget is to be increased by £289k at quarter 1 and the same amount is to be re-profiled to 2020/21 for future purchases”.
The report comes a few days after it was revealed that the Council has completed only 10 shared ownership deals in the 3 years leading up to April 2019
This week’s report fails to identify any open market purchase of properties which could be added to the Council Housing pool.
Three weeks after local residents sprayed weed killer onto an overgrown traffic island on Northfield Lane die back has been limited. Further investigation revealed that around 4 inches of silt had accumulated around the island. Moss is a major problem on this and other similar islands
The area in question is important because it is immediately adjacent to the Councils Poppleton Park and Ride site. It is one of the first (and last) neighbourhoods that tourists are likely to see. Neglect is not a good selling point for a City with an economy dependent on visitor income
The nearby A59 is worse with weeds around 1 metre high.
While we don’t advocate residents taking matters into their own hands unless it is safe to do so, there are some roads where relatively little local effort could produce a startling improvement.
In every problem location we do ask residents and visitors to report obstructions – including excessive weed growth, overhanging hedges and trees – to the York Council.
This can be done via their “on line” web site which is available 24/7. https://www.york.gov.uk/reportproblems
We understand that a Councillor plans to raise the issue of failures in this years weed control contract at an executive meeting which is taking place on Thursday. Despite there being 300 pages of reports to the meeting, they fail to review the Councils performance on key street level public services. The Councillors responsible for street public services are likely to come under increasing pressure to issue a public statement, and initiate a recovery plan, aimed at restoring acceptable standards.
They are:
The plans are broadly to be welcomed.
Over the last 8 years the number of locally determined improvement schemes has declined while those that have been approved have faced unacceptable delays in implementation.
One set of new parking laybys in the Westfield area took over 4 years to plan and construct.
A report to the Councils executive meeting this week, paints a confused picture of what is wrong with the current “ward committee” process and what might replace it.
Councillor dominated “Ward teams” will stand in for residents associations where the latter do not exist.
£250,000 has been allocated to wards for them to spend making local communities “safer”. Although joint working with the police is proposed, the major issue – an institutional reluctance to expand the use of technology solutions such as CCTV – remains. So, the most that residents will likely see will be “target hardening” style initiatives.
Two additional staff members are to be employed helping to administer ward committee improvements. Last year £157,000 of ward budget was not spent. This is put down to process delays.
£500,000 is being allocated for local highways improvements (road and footpaths). A further £500,000 is allocated for “walking and cycling” improvements. The irony, that better highways maintenance is the best way of encouraging safe walking and cycling, appears to be lost on the report authors.
The £1 million simply should be added to the road and footpath resurfacing budget.
The budget is classified as “capital” meaning that it must be spent on an asset with a long lifespan. That would seem to rule out a crash programme aimed at removing the trees, hedges and weeds which obstruct many existing foot and cycle paths.
The idea of recognising and responding to local concerns is the right one though.
Poor highway maintenance is invariably the most criticised local public service in residents satisfaction polls.
The Council plans to introduce a “6 stage” process in allocating the estate improvement budget. As the main criticisms of the existing process is that it is cumbersome and slow, the introduction of additional bureaucratic stages is unlikely to be welcomed.
The report talks of the provision of parking lay-by taking up to 24 months to complete. In the past, the use of contractors had cut this target time down to less than 4 months. Councils should return to the old procedure where Residents Associations/Parish Councils took responsibility for drawing up improvement lists.
Finally, the report talks of using a mechanistic formulae for assessing the “social value” of each project. As a way of spending scarce public resources this is a discredited approach. The value of projects can best be determined by door to door surveys thus giving residents a chance to directly influence their neighbourhood.
The report does not propose any PFIs to monitor progress on any of these programmes.
It does, however, require decisions to be made in public and with a public record. Regular “on line” updates are proposed (although these have been promised in the past but have never been produced in a timely or accessible way)
There are no proposals which would provide better support for Residents Associations. The Council recently refused to even publicise RA activities on its web site.
How much locally?
The Council has published a list indicating the amounts that will be available to spend in each ward. In Westfield (one of the largest wards) during the present financial year that totals £55,878
With highways (£63,830) and safer communities fund (£17,181). That figure increases to nearly £120,000 over 4 years.
To put that into context a 4 space parking bay costs around £10,000, while the resurfacing of Stonegate is costing £1/2 million this year.
Two eye-catching marble sculptures, currently on display at York Art Gallery, could be formally added to York’s museum collection
They are not quite at the Elgin Marbles level of interest but their fate is likely to be less controversial than the Councils 1978 decision to hand over the famous “Burmese Bell”.
The Burmese Bell was displayed in the Guildhall after it had been presented to the Lord Mayor in 1855 by officers of the 51st Regiment. They had taken the trophy in 1852 when the British Army stormed the Great Shwedagon Temple during the second Burmese war. The six hundredweight bell was relocated to the Castle Museum archive following the destruction of the Guildhall during WW2.
There was much agonising in the Council chamber about whether it should be given a spot in the newly restored Guildhall. By 1978 the Council had decided (narrowly) to offer the bell back to the regiment. The Council decision was not taken on ethical grounds – there was no “Elgin Marbles” style “Return the Bell to Burma” campaign – but rather the Council did not want to foot restoration and maintenance bills.
The Bell now resides in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry museum in Doncaster*.
There may be less handwringing about the pair of marble sculptures, Young Centaur (tempted by love) and Old Centaur (bound by love), both probably carved by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799) in Rome in around 1755. They are thought to have been copied from sculptures were found together at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli in 1736. The originals dated from about 1AD
They were bought by the city Council in the 1940s from Wentworth Woodhouse when the estate was split up, specifically to be displayed in the Assembly Rooms.
The centaurs were loaned to York Art Gallery in the 1970s and were later put into storage. Following York Conservation Trust’s purchase of the Assembly Rooms, uncertainty arose about the ownership of the centaurs.
Following discussions, York Conservation Trust’s board has agreed that it would be willing to transfer the sculptures to the city’s museum collection. These collections are owned by the council and managed by York Museums’ Trust under a long-term loan and management agreement.
Members of the council’s Executive will be asked next week whether they would agree to move the centaurs into the city’s museum collections. Doing so would ensure that the statues remain as part of the city’s cultural legacy, are accessible to York residents for perpetuity, and will confirm their ownership.
The statues currently form part of The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour 2019 at York Art Gallery from 13 July – 22 September 2019. They are among a number of works inspired by the classical ideals of ancient art and complement Nicolas Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan, one of the National Gallery’s most significant works, which is the exhibition’s centrepiece this summer
*More details of the Burma Bell can be found in a volume of the York Historian (vol 24) published in 2007 which is kept in the City Archives.
Part of the additional funding is coming from the NHS
The “current timeline for the centre is for the main build to be completed by January 2020 with opening scheduled for May 2020”.
A council report says that, during quarter 1 within the Lincoln Court Scheme, the work to relocate all Lincoln Court tenants into alternative accommodation was completed successfully, this has then allowed Sewell’s to take possession of the site, undertake site set up and begin enabling works.
This has included a full invasive asbestos survey and works to build an access road and car parking for sub-contractors accessed via the Hob Moor primary academy site.
All the remaining window replacement works have been completed in this quarter as has the demolition of the single storey extension in preparation for works to begin for the new build extension.
The Council says that “the Centre of Excellence and Lincoln Court project teams have worked together to communicate with residents neighbouring the site and also to keep Ward Councillors updated on project progress. £750k budget has been transferred from 2019/20 into 2020/21”
There is still no update provided on the promised replacement children’s games area will be provided
