York Council budget surplus hides underlying problems – Public service quality hits buffers

The York Council had an underspend against its revenue budget of £688,000 in the last financial year.

Most of the surplus came from a £2 million improvement in the central services budget which is heavily influenced by external factors such as favourable interest rate levels.

Worryingly all the major service departments were overspent with environmental services (which includes waste management activities) racking up a £941,000 overspend and Adult Social Care (services for the elderly and those with disabilities) came in £528,000 above expected expenditure levels.

An overspend on children’s services was blamed on difficulties with fostering and adoption services.

Landfill Tax payment increased to £4.2 million with 52,370 tonnes of waste dumped.

There was a £325,000 reduction in car parking income compared to estimates. This is partly blamed on unreliability issues at the pay on exit barriers installed at the Marygate car park. Most of the Environmental Services underspend was due to poor performance on waste management.

Following the delays to, and subsequent collapse of, the older persons homes strategy that account showed a shortfall of over £1 million last year. There has been a significant overspend of £1,021k within the Elderly Persons Homes budgets due to utilities, cleaning, catering and repair and maintenance (£325k), increased staffing ratios (£237k) and temporary staffing costs (£332k)

Public Health overspends (£658,000) are put down to the demand for genitourinary (basically sexual diseases) services being higher in York than the rest of North Yorkshire.

The Council is making a payment of £1.3 million to the Leeds City Region business rates pool.

The overspends are a concern as they carry over into 2015/16. Taxpayers will be looking with concern at the first quarter outturn figures (due on 24th September) to see whether there have been any improvements.

The last Labour Council approved a budget for the current year which included £11.9 million in cuts and efficiency savings.

Many of these look like they were built on – to put it kindly – shaky assumption.

Click for full list

Click for full list

The Council has also published updated performance information. Performance in many areas is stable although several wage level, public health,  and waste management indicators are below target.

The outturn report is due to be discussed at a Council meeting taking place on Thursday.

York Council slipping further in debt

The York Council’s debts increased from £118.3 million to £128.8m at the end of March 2015.

D4NT09 Council Tax bill 2013/2014 for property dwelling band F with 25% discount for sole adult resident

D4NT09 Council Tax bill 2013/2014 for property dwelling band F with 25% discount for sole adult resident

In addition £140.3m was owed on the Council housing account.

The debt represents part of a £317.4 million capital investment programme commitment (which is partly offset by fluctuating revenue balances).

The Council had decided to spend an additional £83.2 million in the current year. Borrowing will peak at £204.3 m.

It remains to be seen how successful the new coalition leadership will be in pulling back this potential additional Council Taxpayers liability.

The inherited labour programme committed between £13.9 and £26.6 m in expenditure in subsequent years (excluding housing)

12% of Council Tax in the City is now spent on debt charges (interest plus principal repayments)

Details can be found by clicking here

LibDem reaction to Tory budget

Anyone interested in the details of summer budget can find some useful briefings and information here:

BBC
Local Government Association
Liberal Democrats

As a Liberal Democrat, this is obviously a difficult day. Our party spent five years preventing the Conservatives from implementing policies that we felt were unfair, as well as introducing distinctive Lib Dem policies that made our recovery fairer and more sustainable.
Sadly, today’s budget shows the real difference that Liberal Democrats made in government, and are no longer able to make after May’s elections.

Welfare Cuts – The first of an excessive £12 billion in cuts which will fall disproportionately on the poorest. Also, limiting child tax credits and universal credit payments to only cover the first two children in a family sets a worrying precedent for any future Tory changes to child benefit.

Student Maintenance – We protected the maintenance grants for the poorest students and prevented any changes to this in the last parliament. Now the Tories are turning it into a loan and adding it onto students’ debt.generator

Green Energy – We created a system of subsidies for renewable energy production, funded by taxes on energy companies, to shift our economy away from our dangerous reliance on carbon. In government, we more than doubled the amount of energy the UK gets from renewable sources. Described by David Cameron as “green crap”, these taxes and subsidies are now being slashed. This is a tragically short-sighted cut that undermines the promising green energy foundations we have spent five years struggling to create.

Housing – The mass sell-off of housing association properties is a shameful example of short-term Tory electioneering at the expense of the social fabric of our communities. The plans for replacement of properties are threadbare and this whole plan has been ill thought-through. Now, these plans are being joined by the removal of housing benefit for Under-21s, which is going to make it even harder for young people and the less well off to find a home in our communities.

These are just four areas where the absence of Liberal Democrats in government will soon be felt. There will, no doubt, be more – such as protecting the Human Rights Act, fighting the Snooper’s Charter

Locally and nationally, we will continue to campaign for the fairer Britain. You can join us in this campaign by clicking here.

Join us today, and help us continue the fight to protect our environment, our civil liberties, our housing and welfare systems, and fairness in higher education.

More to be spent on road repairs and cleaning up York

No green bin emptying charges

The new Coalition Executive in York has announced some changes to the budget that it inherited from Labour.

Incoming

Outgoing:

arts barge

Arts barge

The papers published today for a Council meeting taking place on 16th July also promise a review of the Housing Revenue Account. This is the expenditure paid from from Council house rents. A “review” falls some way short of the expected commitment to undertake a major clean up and regeneration of the City’s Council estates, which is urgently required.

Also missing is any proposal to regenerate sub-urban shopping areas like Front Street.

Overall though the proposals are step in the right direction.

The Council will also need to get a grip on its capital expenditure (and resultant interest payments) while keeping something in reserve to address the underlying failings of the budget passed in March – which looks increasingly fragile.

Full details of the budget changes can be found by clicking here

York residents face price hike for entry to museums and art gallery

Angry mob - museums

A report to a leisure committee meeting taking place on 22nd June confirms that residents will pay for admission to the Art Gallery, and local museums like Castle, in future.

The Museums Trust is launching its own YMT card which will cost £22 a year.

This will offer unlimited access to York Castle Museum, the Yorkshire Museum & Gardens and the newly refurbished York Art Gallery for a year. The YMT Card saves £5 compared to buying individual day tickets for the three YMT charging venues.

It is clear that, if the Council want free entry for York Card holders to these venues, they will have to increase their subsidy to the Trust.

The move by the Trust is being viewed as retaliation for the decision taken by the former Labour controlled Council to cut its grant from £1.6 million to £600,000 pa.

Admissions to the two museums have remained fairly steady over the last 3 years with between 162,000 and 170m000 visitors being recorded each year.

Indecision grips York Council’s Environmental Services Director recruitment?

Jobs for the boys and girls

It looks like there could be a gap of over 18 months before a new senior manager is appointed to administer the Environmental Services Directorate at the York Council. The Directorate has many important responsibilities covering transport, planning, the Community Stadium and the York central development together with other economic development projects.

Darren Richardson left the post in June 2014 in the wake of the Lendal Bridge fiasco. He was replaced by a (somewhat controversial) consultant whose contract is due to expire on 9th July.

It looks like the Council are set to temporarily promote one of its existing staff to take up the responsibility pending a report on other aspects of the senor management structure at the Council.

It looks like this re-organisation report will not be ready until December 2015!

A report to a meeting taking place on 22nd June recommends that non Council staff would also be able to apply for the temporary post during a narrow widow of opportunity between 26th June and 10th July 

The post will be advertised on the Council’s jobs web site and could attract a, pro rata, salary of around £90,000 pa.

The York Council jobs web site can be accessed by clicking here https://jobs.york.gov.uk/index.aspx

As we remarked on Friday; it is one of what seems to be a proliferation of web sites now operated by the York Council (to the general confusion of many citizens)

Time to come clean on the costs of redundancy at the York Council

Angry mob - whole truth

The York Council has shed a lot of staff over the last few years.

The redundancy terms – and payments made – to an individual are understandably considered to be private matters.

But the expectation was that the responsible Council committee would receive a public overview report detailing the total cost to the public purse.

A report to a meeting taking place on 22nd June is remarkably lacking in candour.

Councillors had been told on 8th June that they could expect a “4 month overview” on redundancies. It seems that the information has not been made available or is to be considered in private.

That is a shame and an issue that Councillors should challenge the new Council Leader over.

There remains a suspicion that the York Council has lost too many experienced staff over recent years and this lack of understanding – and capacity – is at least partly responsible for the decline in public service standards in the City.

York looking a lot different this morning

Residents who went to bed last night knowing only the General Election outcome, will blink when they read the York Council poll results this morning

Labour have had their worst election result since the unitary authority was formed in 1997.

end behind closed door

Half the Labour Cabinet have lost their seats including the prime architects of the “behind closed doors” decision making processes introduced 4 years ago. Cllrs Tracey Simpson Laing, Dave Merrett and Lindsey Cunningham have followed James Alexander out of the door.

The new Council is well and truly balanced with Labour scraping back with 15 seats to the Tories 14 and LibDem 12. There are also 4 Greens and 2 Independents on the Council. Significantly the Tories got the largest number of votes (but not by many) while the LibDems share, at 24%, was three time the national average achieved by the party

The new Council needs to take time to make sure that it comes up with a decision making structure that is open, considered and sensitive to resident’s views.

The Council will have to decide how much time to spend calling the previous, secretive, Council to account. Labour and their allies halted plans for an inquiry into the Lendal Bridge/Coppergate shambles, secrecy still prevails on failed social care projects, delays to major schemes like the community stadium were never properly explained, while the £185,000 loss on the “Grand Departy” was swept under the carpet.

The Council will need to consider carefully how much time to spend looking under dirty floor-coverings.

“Labour” is a toxic term for many residents when used in the local government context in York. The three Labour Councillors who left that Group, in protest at the mismanagement, all lost their seats yesterday. They will have the consolation that fewer errors were made by the Council in the period since last October when they took their courageous step.

New personalities are needed to lead the Council.

The Council will also need to review its senior officer team in the light of the decision of the Chief Executive to accept a new post elsewhere.

While many may feel that something like the old committee system would satisfy these objectives, there will be opposition to what they may term “turning back the clocks”.

It will be the first test for the newly elected Councillors.

Consensus government does by definition require compromise.

Six to fix May 2015

York Council hoarding 110,000 square metres of vacant and derelict land

New figures obtained under Freedom of Information legislation suggest that the York Council has been slow to exploit the full potential of the  “brownfield” derelict land that it owns.

Vacant land register April 2015

The list includes the former park and ride car park on Tadcaster Road which current houses a little used pay and display car park.

Residents had already highlighted the vacant plot to the rear of the Acomb Library which has originally been intend to house a replacement Acomb Council office together with some much needed affordable homes. The project was dropped by the new Labour Council in 2011 and the site has remained derelict ever since.

Now officials have suggested that the project may be revived although there has been absolutely no consultation on any proposals.

Most  of the vacant land is at the former Lowfields and Manor school sites. The Council has also courted unpopularity at Lowfields by refusing to keep local residents up to date on its development plans.

Also on the list is Oliver House which has been empty for over 2 years and for which offers of over £3 million have been received.

The Labour Council leadership decided to delay its sale until after the elections.

In total the Council owns 110,877 square metres of unused land.

Release of some of the land would go some way towards reducing housing pressures in the City while helping those who are campaigning to preserve the City’s Green Belt.

 

Audit report on York Council highways repair priorities published.

Auditors find discrepancies and order process changes

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

An internal audit into how the York Council allocates its highway repair budgets has been published. The auditors have apparently failed to ask when, and by whom, the repair criteria formulae was last changed.

The report questions how decisions were taken which led to two – unnamed but apparently low priority roads – being included in this (financial) years repair programme.

The names of the roads will no doubt be revealed at the meeting.

The report is critical of the Cabinet member (Levene) involved who held one of Labours now notorious “behind closed doors” meetings to determine a draft programme.

The report details the scoring system used and the weightings given to complaints and petitions.

It acknowledges though that the poorest roads usually get the highest priority for limited funds whichever ward they fall within.

The actual score for each scheme (and those just below the cut off line) were not included in the final (public) report when it was published and debated on 20th March 2014.

Behind closed doors logo

In total the auditors recommend 5 changes to current processes.

It will be interesting to see what the Cabinet member involved will say at the meeting on 25th March when these criticisms are put to him. He will probably advance the “Constantine the Great” defence – “its always gone on , I was just doing what previous office holders did”.

We understand that a separate allegation of conflict/bullying involving a Cabinet member and a Council official has been dropped because of lack of evidence.

NB. Labour are cutting highways maintenance repair funding by £300,000 in April.