The York Council has announced that it will help to fund 3 projects which support the governments initiative to help “High Streets”.
Acomb Green
Two of the projects are located in the Westfield ward
The York BID will get an additional £27,300 for York City Centre Cleaning
The Friends of Acomb Green will get £4,500 for a Community Clean Up Day
Acomb Alive gets a £1,200 boost which is to be used for improving seat furniture.
The Council says that it is supporting the extension of existing grant beneficiaries as there “wasn’t time to seek fresh bids before the governments deadline”.
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It looks like there are more problems ahead, as the York Council tries to let contracts to establish a new “Centre of Excellence for Disabled Children” (CEDC) and a major expansion of the Lincoln Court independent living building.
A year ago, the Council said that it would need to invest £4.3 million in the CEDC. They later revised their budgets and agreed to borrow an additional £330,000 to fund the centre.
Centre of Excellence layout proposals
A £4.7 million contract was awardedin February to Sewell’s. It was said to cover work at both Windsor House and Lincoln Court.
Now papers released
yesterday suggest that there may be a significant increase in the costs for the
project. Officials are expected to make a case for extra investment at a meeting
taking place on 18th June. A note in the
Councils Forward Programme says, “A
value engineered exercise has been undertaken and further funds are required to
ensure there is an adequate contingency. This needs to be done within this
timeframe in order to meet the requirements of external health funding”.
The meeting will take place after the local elections in May
so it is anyone’s guess what will now happen to the project.
A cost drift has also occurred on the Lincoln Court side of the project. Earlier this month officials admittedthat the cost had soared from £1.9 million to £4.8 million.
The Lincoln Court project is still mired in controversy. The planning approval is being referred to the Secretary of State for consideration for calling in. The move stems from objections from local sports organisations and residents who want to see the existing all-weather play area moved to Thanet Road. The play area would be lost under the Council’s current proposals.
There are also concerns about access arrangements for the buildings both during building works and afterwards. A case has been made for a private (pedestrian) access to be made available to the adjacent school car park. So far, the Council has turned a blind eye to the suggestion, reinforcing concerns about traffic congestion and parking problems on Ascot Way
Both the CEDC and Lincoln
Court modernisation have attracted widespread local support. It is a change
that lack of attention to detail and poor consultation arrangements seem to be hindering
progress.
Below are the latest planning applications
received by the York Council for the Westfield ward.
Full details can be found by
clicking the application reference
——-
107
Askham Lane York
YO24 3HD
Erection of single storey extension extensing
5.08 metres beyond rear wall of the original house, with a height to the eaves
of 2.29 metres and a total height of 3.2 metres.
No response yet from
the site liaison officer following residents’ concerns about delivery arrangements
at the Lowfields development site.
Concerns about the impact that the large spoil mountains are having on the
local environment have also still to be addressed.
Spoil mountains growing at Lowfields
At a planning committee
meeting earlier in the week some progress was made on the plans to create 5 new
parking spaces on Tudor Road.
The Lowfields Action Group Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LowfieldsActionGroup/ reports that officials have confirmed that the contractor responsible for building the new access road will also construct the parking spaces as part of the same contract. Although they said that the work would be done “at the same time” no planning condition was included requiring the 3 new “on street” parking spaces to be constructed before the existing ones are lost.
The Council as both the owner and developer
of the site could have offered a unilateral agreement on this but failed to do
so.
Cllr Andrew Waller
was the only Westfield ward representative to speak up on behalf of residents.
He said that the parking spaces to the rear of 108 Tudor Road were too close to
the property. He also asked that improvements be made at the Tudor Road /Gale
Lane junction.
The discussion
about the Yorspace development was a disappointing. Councillors completely failed to challenge the
claim that the proposed homes will be “affordable”. The developer claims
they will be “affordable” The Councils own housing officer has confirmed that
they will not.
This contradiction remains unexplained.
A Freedom
of Information request on a related issue is still outstanding. A response
is due on Monday,
No convincing answers given on car parking arrangements. The 12 spaces will not be adequate to cater for the needs of all occupiers and visitors. Overflow parking will therefore further compromise space on Tudor Road, Green Lane and Kingsthorpe. The developers say that occupiers of the building “will not be allowed to own a car” and that all vehicles using the provided spaces will be “communally owned”.
We doubt very much whether they will be able
to enforce such a rule.
The only good thing
to come out of the debate was an offer from the developer to look again at boundary
treatments. They seem to be backing away for the idea of removing the railings.
The railings offer good security while permitting the movement of small mammals
like hedgehogs.
The York Councils maintenance
programme for the forthcoming year has been published. Expenditure of over £9
million has been identified although a lot of this will go on addressing surface
water drainage problems. The schedule includes £700,000 for gulley repairs
surface water
The programme also
includes investment of over £600,000 to maintain the City Walls, with the focus
being on the Bootham section.
One of the most
expensive single schemes will see Stonegate repaved at a cost of £500,000.
On the west of the
City the carriageways on both Gale Lane and Tadcaster Road will be resurfaced.
Cycle routes will get a £250,000 maintenance boost.
However, the funds allocated
for footpath repairs is disappointingly low. The identified major footpath resurfacing
schemes are all on the east of the City.
It must leave residents
living in streets like Walton Place wondering just how bad a footpath must be before
being repaired.
Walton Place
Predictably last
night the York Council woke up to the major backlog in highway repairs that has
developed in the city during the last decade. Cynics may say that Labour and
the LibDems vying to be the voice of the road user has something to do with the
imminent Council elections which take place in early May.
However, successive
residents’ surveys have confirmed that poor highway maintenance is now the biggest
concern that residents have.
It will take a major and sustained boost in funding if the roads and paths in the City are to be returned to a safe condition.
