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Summer events programme for young people shining in York

Shine is an exciting programme of events aimed at five to 18 year olds which runs thanks to a large number of organisers including the council, sports organisations, independent activity providers and local attractions. Many of the activities are free and booking in advance is not always necessary, offering a boredom-free summer throughout the city!

This year Shine includes over 190 different activities throughout the summer, offering all the favourite arts, sports, play sessions, parks and libraries activities.

Some of the more unusual events include designing a remote controlled robot or a joystick game and those with a sense of adventure can enjoy activities such as kayaking, outdoor climbing, wild camping and bushcraft skills.
Theatre, art, mosaics, dance, sewing and junk drumming with Trashbang are some of the arts activities helping to develop young creative skills, whilst sports activities from Total Sports,
York Knights Foundation and City of York Athletics are keeping fitness levels up throughout the summer.
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Mayors new clothes

The York Council is embarking on a, largely nominal, consultation exercise on the desirability of handing powers to an elected Mayor in Yorkshire.

Unfortunately what powers and resources such an official might have is largely opaque. Hence it is impossible to predict with any accuracy what impact such a post might have on everyday life.

Up and down the country there have been some able Mayor elected. They are balanced by some pretty poor ones in places like Tower Hamlets and, much more close to home, Doncaster who have presided over poor services and questionable practices.

In London, the Mayor spends most of his time on public relations duties. London is, in any case, very much different from Yorkshire.

The latest push for devolution coincides with a plan to give Scotland more powers. Yorkshire has broadly the same population as Scotland so why shouldn’t it be able to determine its own priorities goes the argument?

But would a Mayor under siege in a Doncaster bunker be more sensitive to local needs than someone in an office a further 180 miles away.

We doubt they would.

The Council is right to give people a chance to air their views. Given the lack lustre information pack issued by the Council they would be wise not to expect a big response.

The pack contains some strange claims, not least that the new system might help to “preserve the green belt”. The contrary might more likely be the case. A regional baron exercising powers from Bradford might find it much easier to ride roughshod over the views and aspirations of a small City like York

The new Council has inherited a mish mash of regional and sub regional bodies. It is in two enterprise partnership areas and seeks to maintain a foot in both the the Labour dominated West Yorkshire Combined Authority and in Tory dominated North Yorkshire. Added to mix, are four Police and Crime Commissioners (whose role could be taken over by an elected Mayor). Their demise would, at least, be a welcome relief for taxpayers.

So some rationalisation is needed.

But change should start with the principle of subsidiarity – that decisions should be taken at the level nearest the people that the decision affects.

Unless that principle is agreed, and electoral systems are used which ensure that all views can be articulated, then further consideration of elected Mayors, or extending the powers of the currently opaque “combined authority”, is simply not worth spending any time on.

The Council says, “a series of drop-in engagement events will be held across the city from next week to offer residents and businesses more information about what devolution means for York”.

The drop-in events will be held at the following locations where officers, members of the Executive and the Chief Executive will be on-hand to answer any questions on devolution:

York Explore, Marriott Room
• Thursday 13 August 12.30 – 2pm
• Thursday 20 August 5.30 – 7pm

West Offices, Hudson Board Room
• Monday 10 August, 5.30 – 7pm
• Tuesday 18 August, 11.30am – 1pm

Alternately, email feedback to: devolution@york.gov.uk or write to: Devolution, Business Intelligence Team, City of York Council, West Offices, York, YO1 6GA.

Residents will note that the Council’s new found interest in devolution doesn’t extend to holding events in the suburbs!

£1m spending power proposed to be devolved to new ward committees in York

The return of ward committees with devolved power and budgets will be put to the cross-party Communities and Environment Policy and Scrutiny Committee on 27 July.

Ward committees may consult on investing in more off street parking

Then, on 30 July, Executive will consider the report which recommends significantly increasing wards’ share of a funding pot of £925,000. This could be used by the revised ward committees to allocate to projects such as street clean-ups, or grants to voluntary groups and, for the first time, to fund road repairs and to add more local capacity to the adult social care voluntary sector.

These proposals aim to be the first steps in devolving a number of funding streams to wards, and asks officers to identify further budget areas which could be localised.

The Executive will be presented with a set of options for the make-up and remit of ward committees.

They will be chaired by local councillors and at them, local residents will help decide collectively which projects will be supported to tackle local issues, to improve the council’s accountability to residents and to provide opportunities to influence services at the local level.

The number of times the new ward committees will meet and the degree of consultation they engage in will be considered, as will be the level of officer support allocated to them and their activities.

Ward budgets will be looked at too. The proposal is to devolve additional budgets to wards to create a single, enhanced pot for each ward which can be used flexibly to meet their priorities and to develop community initiatives which could reduce reliance on central council services. The new, revised ward committees will have a significant overall increase in budget.

The process for allocating highway improvements will be partly localised through the new ward committees. It is proposed to transfer £125,000 from the annual highways maintenance budget and £125,000 of Local Transport

Plan capital to create a £250,000 ward highways programme, and an allocation made to each ward from this.
In addition, the enhanced pot could be made up of:

a ‘Ward Grant’ of £150,000 (subject to council budget decision) allocated to each ward committee on a per capita basis.

More litter bins may be provided
a ‘Pride in York Fund’ totalling £450,000 (subject to council budget decision) made up of £250,000 on a one-off basis and £200,000 per annum on a recurring basis. Wards that receive the highest amounts from the Pride in York Fund will receive additional officer support to help them develop schemes and initiatives.
a ‘Community Care Fund’ of £75k per annum (from the Adult Social Care Community Development Fund and subject to council budget decision) will be devolved to wards, on a per capital basis, over two years to support the prevention or delay of people needing to access formal care packages and statutory support.

Examples of initiatives that ward funding could support include:

Helping a community group to take on management of a local project e.g. looking after a piece of local open space
Undertaking a local clean-up
Supporting affordable and accessible transport options so people are able to access services.

Cllr Keith Aspden, Deputy Leader of City of York Council with responsibility for Economic Development and Community Engagement, said:

“These proposals increase the money for ward committees to spend to nearly £1million. They begin the process of devolving power and budgets to local residents and community groups.

We want to give wards this enhanced pot of money so they can genuinely tackle local priorities and develop community initiatives.
“We also want to build on local spending on highways and are asking council officers to explore further budget areas which could be devolved to wards in the future, for example, public health budgets alongside a clear and transparent approach to ward spending.”

York data sharing website launched

York businesses invited to sign-up

City of York Council has launched a new website featuring local data, giving residents and businesses free access to a wealth of information about their city, which will be used to build new solutions to all kinds of challenges such as those around sustainability, transport, energy and community engagement.

York Open Data is a place for businesses and organisations to publicly share their data so that anybody can connect to hundred’s of up-to-date, searchable data sets and use them to make a difference in their local area.

Anybody wishing to get involved in York Open Data is encouraged to make contact and sign-up to future events at www.yorkopendata.org.
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Major revelations as Lowfields care village plans set for review later today

Leading Labour Councillors knew 12 months ago that project was “unaffordable”

Minutes of the Council EPH project board meetings are beginning to emerge into the public light. They reveal that the Councils requirements for the Lowfields care village and a similar facility at Burnholme School were described by Council officials as “gold plated”.

click to enlarge

A review meeting of the decision is set to start at 5:00pm today in the Councils West Offices.

As long ago as April 2014 negotiations with the only two remaining bidders for the project had revealed a £17 million gap in funding.

6 weeks later one of the bidders had dropped out, apparently leaving the board with no option but to abandon the project and find another way of dealing with the demand for care places.

At that time, closing all the Councils care homes and buying in all provision from the private sector was the tabled alternative.

The minutes reveal that both Leader James Alexander and Cllr Cunningham (Cross) were briefed that the project was failing. Despite this Cllr Cunningham maintained, in response to Council questions, that negotiations were still ongoing and claimed that procurement rules prevent other Councillors being updated.

In April 2014 the Council were still describing the two site project in glowing terms,

“It will deliver facilities that are light years ahead of our current care homes and ‘raise the bar’ of care provision in the city. The provider should have no difficulty in attracting self-funders into such facilities”.

“The project’s engagement of residents, relatives, staff, older people, voluntary sector partners, and other key stakeholders, in the vision and design of the care home modernisation programme was hailed at the time, and is a blueprint for our current re-wiring approach”.

“The timing of this decision is crucial too coming, as it does, at a point when we are about to publically launch a ‘re-wiring public services programme’ founded on transforming services and doing things differently, based on co-production with our staff, Trade Unions, York’s residents and other key stakeholders. Given the significant public consultation and co-production involved in getting the EPH project this far, if we were to back-track now our credibility would be questioned”

By February of 2015, the Council was describing the project as outdated with more modest localised facilities said to be an “exciting opportunity“.

The April meeting concluded with the warning “there is still a considerable risk of the procurement falling over (because of affordability issues, the Burnholme site issues, etc.”

A developing sense of crisis is evident in the June 2014 board minutes with a July meeting arranged to formally wrap up the care village option. It would be over 6 months before theist decision was made public.

Opposition Councillors are calling for the minutes of all the project board meetings to be made public.

It still likely that the project floundered as a result of the Burnholme school requirement being added to an already expensive project. In 2012 the Lowfields scheme had been declared financially viable following a “soft marketing” exercise.

It emerged that in 2013 officials had talked of fudging the financial aspects of the project

There is a lot more to come out about this scandal which has already cost taxpayers around £500,000 in abortive costs with promised annual savings of £500,000 a year also jeopardised.

“Save our bins” petition launched

Residents have launched a petition calling on the York Council to reverse its proposal to reduce refuse bin collection frequencies and scrap the £35 green bin emptying charge.

click to download

The petition also asks the Council to abandon its plan – agreed at its budget meeting on 26^th February – to introduce a £35 a year charge for emptying green bins. The charge has been heavily criticised as a new “stealth” tax – the equivalent of a 4% increase in Council Tax levels for most residents.

The Labour run authority introduced a £35 fee for emptying second, and subsequent, green bins last year.

The new tax will apply to all green bins and will hit the least well off hardest (as the charge will not be offset by increased benefit payments).

Residents fear that the charge will lead to more hedgerow dumping.

The risk will be increased by the move to 3 or 4 weekly grey bin emptying.

Dumping has already become an increasing problem on the west of the City since Labour’s controversial decision to close the civic amenity recycling centre on Beckfield Lane a couple of years ago.

Former Council Leader Steve Galloway is backing the petition.

“Many public service cuts are being hidden from residents by dubbing them part of a “rewiring” exercise.

This title means nothing to most people.

A consultation in February was a shambles with leaflets advertising activities being delivered after the event had finished. A bogus list of choices failed to specifically ask for resident’s views on bin charging and reduced emptying frequencies.

Residents need to make their views known now.

A new Council will be elected on May 7^th. It will have an early opportunity to reverse the damaging decisions that have been taken over recent weeks”

The petition also asks the Council to provide more litter bins and to give a higher priority to keeping highways and hedgerows free from litter and dumped items.

A copy of the petition can be down loaded by clicking here

The petition can be signed “on line” here

Have your say on the future of Adult Social Care

York residents are being invited to have their say on the future of Adult Social Care in the city this month.

City of York Council clams it is “committed to helping York’s residents live independent and fulfilling lives based on choices that are important to them. The authority already knows that where residents need care and support in older age, they want these delivering in their own homes or in a community setting. They also want improved signposting, advice and guidance, and for the agencies involved in health and adult social care to join up more and provide greater awareness of the local support and facilities available to residents”.

“To build on this, the council is carrying out a quick five minute survey to understand what is important to those who are currently accessing adult social care, and those who may potentially need to access care and support in the future. The authority is also keen to hear from Carers and those in the voluntary sector.

The results of the consultation will be used to shape services (jargon) for the future, as part of the council’s Rewiring Public Services (jargon) Programme.

In Adult Social Care, the council’s rewiring (jargon) programme is seeking to address some of the inherent failings of, and pressures on, the existing national model for adults’ care including a lack of clarity and understanding of the system by customers, an ageing population and people living longer with disease and disability.

Acomb care village site – project 3 years behind schedule

Following engagement with residents, staff, elected members and partners, the council is looking at a number of different ways it can achieve the outcomes that local people want -relying less on hospital-based care and care homes, with more care delivered in resident’s homes and in their local neighbourhood -within the budget available”.

The consultation is available at www.rewiringyork.com

Sad really that the Council is making it so difficult for residents to react to their programme of cuts in public service provision.

Language, setting up separate web sites, failure to issue timely notices of meetings….. all adds up to confusion for many.

NB. Following on from our story about the Councils clumsy consultation processes and use of jargon we understand that later today (Thursday 12 February) between 2pm and 2:30pm, “Sally Burns, director of Communities & Neighbourhoods, will be answering people’s questions about proposed changes to Place-Based Services (jargon) in a live streamed Q&A session broadcast on YouTube and www.york.gov.uk/webcasts “

The Council are encouraging everyone to put forward their burning questions either before or during the event by email at rewiringyork@york.gov.uk or on Twitter using the #RewiringYork hashtag.

Police Commissioner Orders 2% increase in Council Tax as Force accused of poor communications

Nick Love seeks meeting to discuss crime concerns and IT failures

The Police Commissioner Julia Mulligan has announced a 2% increase in the element of Council Tax which funds Policing in North Yorkshire and York.

The announcement comes only a few days after it was revealed that the levels of, some types of, crime were continuing to increase in the City.

Anyone looking to find a working link to the Commissioners web site (from the police site) will be disappointed Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire Anyone trying to follow a link to the Safer York partnership http://www.saferyork.org.uk/ will find similar frustrations. Even worse, a link to the equivalent site in Selby directs residents to a mortgage company.

And that is part of the emerging problem with local policing. Communications with the public are haphazard in some areas.

2014 by the numbers

Until 3 years ago we all knew how our allocated local “bobby” was”. There were dedicated Police officers and PCSOs for each ward.

There was a local web site which, as well as containing details of the local officers, also set out surgery dates and contact channels as well as crime prevention information.

This has largely disappeared.

While the web site still includes a – user friendly – map showing the distribution of crime reports it currently fails most other tests.

Some wards seem to have suffered particularly badly from the decision to centralise some police officers into an “anti social behaviour” hub located in the York Councils’ West Offices. There has been no report on the effectiveness of this unit although the York council is budgeting to throw a further £300,000 into it next year.

In fairness there has been some progress on some aspects of “social media”.

The twitter feeds for various parts of the force are appreciated by many residents. The daily news updates are also a positive approach

But little performance information is routinely published across the whole county – and what is available is broad brush. It is particularly difficult to find information on detection rates – one of the key tests for any police force.

Even the supposed independent police and crime panel receives little useful information and has a profile which can most kindly be described as subterranean

As a minimum these changes need to be made:

Safer neighbourhood web sites need to be updated and refined
Local communities should know who their dedicated police officers and PCSOs are
They should have an idea about the level of patrolling frequency that they can expect to see.
They should have access to surgeries where they can talk to (at least) a PCSO. (Only one surgery for the whole of February is currently advertised on the local York Police web site)
The positive engagement policy should be reintroduced with the police attending events at community centres, libraries etc possibly when another event is taking place. (unfortunately, with the demise of the Ward committee, one formal link with local communities was lost)
Residents should be clear how to make contact. If police desks like the one at Acomb are manned what the opening hours are and who will be manning the desks (currently volunteers)?
Local Councillors, neighbourhood watch and the media should be routinely told about local crime trends and prevention advice. All should agree to pass on information to local residents. Use could be made of notice boards and Council newsletters.
Crime stats should be routinely published at least for safer neighbourhood areas. These should include detection rates.
The Police Commissioner should ensure that all meeting agendas and supporting papers are readily available – including links to them from local Council web sites. She should trial webcasting and public access sessions.
There should be a review of the location of senior officers. Given crime trends, there may be a case for the DCC to be headquartered in York.

Those at the top of the local Police force need to get a grip on these issues quickly.

Nick Love the LibDem MP candidate for York Central says,

“I will be seeking a meeting with the Police to see how we can best address areas where crime has increased in York and to explore the possibility of a more senior officer being permanently based in the City such as the Deputy Chief Constable.”

York’s Sexual Health Service To Be Recommissioned

The procurement process to appoint a new provider for York’s sexual health service has now moved into its next phase City of York Council has announced today.

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Increased cost of Community Stadium is bad news for taxpayers

Future of Waterworld and Yearsley pools under threat

Labour are circulating a glossy brochure ahead of the publication of a report on the future of leisure provision in the City. Private briefings to staff and media have raised serious issues about the future of swimming and other facilities in the City.

The project will now cost £37 million in total with Greenwich Leisure (who have operated Waterworld for the last 3 years) taking on responsibility for all major sporting and swimming facilities in the City.

Greenwich Leisure are a CIC although the level of local York engagement – if any – in their management decisions and structure has yet to be announced.

Community Stadium

The project will cost taxpayers £8 million more than originally budgeted. It had been expected that a 6000 seater stadium and replacement athletics track could be built for the £12 million contribution from the John Lewis development. The Council would have contributed only the value of the Huntington Stadium site (conservatively assessed as £4.1 million). The Football Foundation would have put in the £2 million that it had loaned against the value of a redeveloped Bootham Crescent.

Later Labour said that they would spend the £4 million contingency included in the Councils budget for the project. This had been included as a potential loan which would be repaid from stadium income.

Now Labour are stating that they will borrow an additional £4 million bringing the taxpayers contribution up to £8 million in total, with the stadium capacity increased to 8000 (it costs roughly £1 million for every additional bank of 1000 seats).

It is highly unlikely that such an additional burden could be passed on to the Football and Rugby clubs with details of their rental agreements not having yet been revealed.

At a time when the campaign for” safe standing” – backed by the Liberal Democrats is gaining momentum – local fans will be bemused that the design does not appear to provide for rail seats (although this modification could still be made)

Council taxpayers will be responsible for the debt repayment charges on the amount borrowed which will be around £600,000 a year. It is far from clear where this money will come from although some additional “commercial elements” have been designed into the scheme.

Given the controversy about out of city centre shopping, this raises doubts about how long the planning process might take and with it the ability of any contractor to meet a July 2016 opening date.

Waterworld

Waterworld and its associated gym will close in December.

A new pool and gym will be designed into the stadium. However it will be more conventional than Waterworld with only a small “fun” pool included.

Waterworld is only 20 years old and with that kind of life one wonders how durable such facilities now are? (The Barbican pool lasted for 40 years, Yearsley is over 100 years old)

Since the opening of the Sports Village on Hull Road, the Council has met national standards for the provision of swimming pools. There is insufficient demand to pay for an additional swimming pool (which is why Labour quietly dropped their plans for a city centre pool).

Yearsley Pool

Under Labours plans, the opening of the new pool at Huntington will mean the end of the Council subsidy (around £250k pa) for the Yearsley pool. The unique 50 yard pool has fought off two previous attempts by Labour to close it although ironically in early 2011 – following a £1 million refit undertaken by the then LibDem controlled Council – Labour invented a bogus “closure” rumour and campaigned against something that was not going to happen. A new boiler was fitted at the pool meaning that the steam heat supply from the Nestle site could not attract disproportionately high charges.

Yearsley Pool

Labour have now performed a 180 degree policy about turn.

The only chance for the pool would be for users to acquire the site and run it independently as a community asset. However it is highly unlikely that that increased admission charges could make up the financial deficit – more so as it would have to complete with three other modern pools in the City not to mention those at several independent sports clubs, hotels and schools.

Its only hope would be for Nestle to relent and allow a profitable gym to be added although this might involve them losing some car parking space.

Energise

The management of Energise – the sports facility on Cornlands Road – seems less threatened by the take over plans.

The centre is very popular and no doubt Greenwich Leisure will want to keep it that way. However standardisation of charges and facilities, together with focusing some types of provision at just one site, may prove to be a challenge in the future.

No guarantees are being offered on admission charges although heavy competition from the private sector may help to keep them down.

What next?

The Stadium project is running over two years behind timetable. The publication of a report, for decision by the Councils Cabinet on 9^th September, is belated but welcome.

Residents will be looking very carefully at the business plan for the new facility as the Council – which will remain the freeholder – does not want to risk having to step in to recover a failing project a few years down the line (as happened in Huddersfield a few years ago).

The changes to the retail component of the project do raise planning issues that may take some time to resolve, jeopardising the construction start date..

Whether a July 2016 opening date is realistic remains to be seen.

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