£224k funding boost for York Central

York Central

City of York Council has been awarded £224,000 to help accelerate the development of York Central – a 72 hectare site situated in the heart of the city.

This was the maximum amount of funding the council could be awarded from the Department for Communities and Local Government, which will help speed up the delivery on York’s largest brownfield site.

The fund is part of a £16.5m pot of money called the ‘capacity funding’, which will support house building by providing extra resources to resolve planning issues and other delays.

 

The council applied for the funding in November 2016, with the Homes and Communities Agency receiving 180 bids. Of those, 98 English local authorities successfully received funding.

It is hoped the cash could aid the building of up to 800,000 new homes on sites of 1,500-plus units and in priority Housing Zones across England. York Central was allocated a Housing Zone in 2015.

To find out more about York Central, visit www.york.gov.uk/yorkcentral

Background information:

York Central is  a collaborative development partnership which includes City of York Council, Network Rail, the National Railway Museum and the Homes and Communities Agency to progress investment and delivery for the site.

The site has been designated a Housing Zone as well as an Enterprise Zone and public investment is planned to deliver key infrastructure with a view to de-risk and accelerate this project.

York Central development site – consultation starts

Taxpayers asked to provide £10 million subsidy for development

Papers released by the Council today suggest that York taxpayers will still be expected to contribute £10 million towards the development of the York Central site.

Enterprise Zone boundary

Enterprise Zone boundary

The expectation had been that this funding – provisionally allocated to fund an access bridge from Holgate Road  by the last Council – would not now be required. The site has now got Enterprise Zone status and also has financial support from the Homes and Communities Agency

Instead, a separate delivery company would set up to fund all infrastructure work. In turn this company would recover its investment from the uplift in the value of the site (currently estimated at £623 million)

Officials are reporting that the Council has already committed £1/2 million to the scheme and are asking for a further £250,000 to fund the administration of the project. The Council could only fund initial infrastructure investment from borrowing leaving taxpayers with an annual bill of nearly £1 million a year.  It could be decades before any return on the investment benefited local residents.

At the moment all the risk  – from what is a complicated project – seems to be falling on York taxpayers

The York Council has only a very small land holding in the area at present although it is seeking compulsory purchase powers to acquire the UNIPART site.

York central land ownership. Yellow -Network Rail, Purple - Railway Museum, Red - York Council taxpayers

York central land ownership. Yellow -Network Rail, Purple – Railway Museum, Red – York Council taxpayers

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