Jewsons have been awarded a 3 year contract to supply building materials to the York Council.
Nick Clegg offers York businesses growth funding
A new round of the Government’s Regional Growth Fund has opened for businesses across the country, and City of York Council is encouraging firms in York to bid for a share of the £300 million cash pot.
Nick Clegg at launch of Regional Growth Fund
The fund, which has already supported almost 300 projects and programmes across the country, is open to bids of £1 million or more for high quality private sector projects and programmes that leverage private sector investment and create sustainable jobs.
Round five of the Regional Growth Fund will close to applications on Monday 9 December, with successful bidders announced in Spring 2014. Bids will need to demonstrate the potential for creating long-term, private-sector led economic growth and employment, and also evidence a significant private sector matched funding contribution.
For further information, or for help with the application process businesses can visit https://www.gov.uk/understanding-the-regional-growth-fund#round-5-now-open-for-bids or contact Andrew Sharp or Charles Storr in City of York Council’s Economic Development Unit on 01904 555834 or 01904 555901.
Holgate children’s centre finally gets new occupier.
A team that supports some of York’s most vulnerable children has moved to new dedicated premises in Nursey Drive in Holgate.
City of York Council’s “Looked After Children Support Team” was formed last year to help support the city’s Looked After Children, their families and carers. The team of 12 specialist support practitioners will move to the site of the old Holgate Family Centre on Nursery Drive at the end of the month.
This is a welcome move by the Council which should, in our view, undertake more devolution to help regenerate sub-urban areas.
The team liaises with partner agencies across the city to coordinate and facilitate contact between Looked After Children and their parents and other relatives, support parenting assessments and re-unification plans, as well as helping Looked After and Adopted Children understand and make sense of their own life histories.
Council refuses to test market on surplus land sales.
The worrying trend, where the York Council fails to put surplus assets (mainly land and property) on the open market, looks set to continue.
There were a lot of raised eyebrows last year when the Council chose to sell land at Hungate for a knock down price. They claimed that this was necessary in order to attract Hiscox insurers to the City.
The trend continued earlier this year when they decided to deal direct with a leaseholder in Redness Street while the adjacent landowner is being given first refusal of the vacated St Anthony’s House office site.
Now we understand that Oliver House may also be sold (or leased) in December without ever reaching the open market.
The Councillor responsible for these decisions was questioned at the Council meeting recently.
Oliver House
He accepted that professional valuations placed on Council assets in the past had substantially under-estimated their real value. This had become apparent on properties such as the Bonding Warehouse and the Edmund Wilson pool site when open market bids greatly exceeded expectations.
However he wouldn’t give an assurance that open market bids would be invited for all upcoming property sales.
The question asked was:
Question: In the light of the new buoyancy in the York development market place, will the Cabinet Member agree that all sales of Council property and land will be subject to a competitive process which maximises the receipt that is available for the taxpayer?”
Cllr Williams responded, “Of course the default position should be to go to the open market. However, there will always be some situations where it makes financial and economic sense not to stick to that default position and not to have a competitive process. This should be if it is felt that one organisation has a special interest in a site and would pay a premium above the going market rate to obtain the site. An example of this would be a sitting leaseholder who wishes to buy the freehold. To have a blanket policy would simply expose the council to potentially not maximising the use of assets.”
Councils have a legal duty to get the best value that they can in their financial dealings.
If they don’t then the District Auditor can be asked to investigate.
York shopper numbers down 12% in September
There were 12% fewer shoppers in central York in September according to new figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats.
click to download full data
The results come from the one remaining “footfall” camera which is located in Parliament Street.
It confirms the downward trend from August when 4% fewer people accessed the City centre in the wake of the introduction of new traffic restrictions on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate.
So far in October numbers are down by 7% compared to the same period last year.
It has also emerged that the footfall camera located in Coney Street was a victim of the cuts earlier in the year.
The figures will cause serious concern to the retail community in the City.
Although seemingly more resilient than some other shopping areas –as evidenced by the relatively low number of empty premises – few businesses could sustain a reduction in the number of customers that has been seen over the last couple of months.
As revealed on this web site earlier in the week, over 8000 penalty notices were sent to separate addresses during September. Of these 5481 (67%) were to sent to addresses outside the YO postcode area, raising fears that the reputation of the City is being irreparably damaged.
Labour Councillor refuses to apologise for bins blunders
Asked, at the last Council meeting, to apologise to those residents whose bins were not emptied on time, Cllr Levene refused to do so.
Instead he claimed that only 0.12% of collections had been missed.
He conveniently forgot that 90% of residents did not have changes to their collection days.
Last Christmas some bins weren’t emptied for nearly 3 weeks and, although there have been fewer missed collections this week, the holiday season could being more problems.
Green waste collection stops at the end of the month.
Bins in Foxwood
The Council has incurred additional overtime expenditure on Saturdays “catching up” with missed deliveries.
Cllr Levene protestations were undermined by a fellow Cabinet member who, in response to a separate question about delays in answering at the Councils call centre, said,
“the significant increase in calls week beginning 9th September were due in the main to the waste collection changes affecting a large proportion of residents in York.
Clearly original estimates of resources needed to meet demand had to be re-evaluated once the real impacts were known, and then adjusted”.
The Cabinet member went on to say that
“We aim to answer 80% of our calls within 20 seconds with 95% of calls being answered”.
This compared to the actual performance, in early September, when average waiting times were 2.5 minutes with 40% of calls being abandoned.
Concern over Illuminating York 20% price hike
Liberal Democrats have raised concerns that ticket prices for this year’s Illuminating York Festival have significantly increased despite the 2012 event being branded a “disappointment”.
Illuminating York 2013
The Labour run City of York Council introduced charging for the – previously free – event last year. There were complaints about the £5 admission charge while Vic Reeves’ ‘Wonderland’ production received a backlash of negative comments and poor reviews.
However, the admission charges and £26,000 contribution from council funds meant the event made a £16,000 ‘profit’ which Labour promised would be “invested in next year’s event”.
Many hoped that this promise would see a return to the previous free admissions policy.
However, this year’s event, which will runs from October 30th – November 2nd, sees admission charges for the overall festival for adults increase from £5 to £6 and for under 16s from £1 to £5, with under 5’s still going free.
This means that a family of four, with two school-age children, would see their ticket costs rise by a whopping 83%.
The increase has been described as contrary to the Labour Leaders statements about the need to control the cost of living
4% drop in shopper numbers in York City centre during August
Figures released today, under Freedom of Information rules, reveal that 4% fewer shoppers visited the York City centre in August compared to the same month last year.
“Footfall” numbers in Parliament Street. click to enlarge
The blame for the reduction is being attributed to the bungled introduction of new traffic regulations on Lendal Bridge and in Coppergate.
The news comes at a time when visitor attractions were reporting an increase in the numbers using their facilities earlier in the year
In the period up to August a 16% increase was recorded.
This was partly put down to special events like the Mallard 75 celebration as well as the opening of the new York Minster revealed axhibition.
The expectations had been that a recovering national economy – coupled with good weather – would lead to a bumper August; but those hopes seem to have been dashed.
Cameras, that measure the numbers of people on Parliament Street, recorded a drop in “footfall” from a monthly total of 780,646 in 2012 to 746,349 this year
Figures for September and early October are due to are published next week.
Many are forecasting a further decline.
Over 5000 visitors will have received penalty charge notices in September and word of mouth is likely to have resulted in further reputational damage for the City.
More may choose to shun the central area.
There are, however, some hopes that special events like the Food Festival might partly counter the decline.
Earlier in the week the Council was reported as having ordered additional footfall cameras.
Traffic signals faulty for 804 hours during last 6 months in York
The York Council has admitted that traffic signal faults have more than doubled in the period between April and October 2013.
299 faults were reported with a total “downtime” of 804 hours.
This compares to a total of 790 hours (573 faults) during the whole of the last financial year.
The Council blames serious cabling faults caused by damaged and flooded ducts.
The information was obtained by Cllr Ann Reid who took up the issue at last weeks York Council meeting
However, recent problems seem to have extended the capacity of the repair and maintenance contractors and motorists will be looking for a long term improvement.
Yesterday there was near grid lock conditions in the Foss Islands Road area following the failure of two sets of lights.
Visitors pay 67% of camera fines in York.
The Council has revealed the home location of the drivers caught by their ANPR “invisible policeman” cameras.
A total of 8197 separate addresses have received notifications of penalty charges. Of these 5481 (67%) are addresses outside the YO postcode area.
Coppergate bus lane enforcement plans Click to enlarge
As expected about 70% of the penalty notices issued for the new Coppergate restrictions were sent to local York drivers.
On Lendal Bridge, the reverse was the case with 22% sent to York drivers and 78% to visitors.
The question was asked at last weeks Council meeting and Cllr Merrett’s answer was:
To the Cabinet Member for Transport, Planning and Sustainability from Cllr Runciman: “Could the Cabinet Member provide a breakdown of the ANPR penalty notices issued since the Lendal Bridge closure and Coppergate restrictions by residents living inside York and residents living outside York?”
• “Coppergate;
1852 individual postcodes recorded.
1280 ‘YO’ postcodes & 572 non-‘YO’ postcodes. This equates to a 70%-30% split
• Lendal Bridge:
6340 individual postcodes recorded.
1436 ‘YO’ postcodes & 4904 non-‘YO’ postcodes. This equated to a 22.5%- 77.5% split.”