York Council and its empty buildings

A report to a Council meeting next week offers a limited insight into the York Councils property dealings. It comes at an opportune time with various other Councils having been badly burnt recent by injudicious investments in land and property. Croydon and the Cambridgeshire County Council are both heading for the local government equivalent of bankruptcy.

Against that background taxpayers might would hope for York Councillors to now to adopt a more measured approach to investment. The commercial property market is likely – in the wake of the pandemic – to remain depressed for some time. It is not a good time to sell assets.

Instead we find a plan to borrow an additional £4 million on top of the £384 million already committed. That is a debt of nearly £2000 for every man, woman, and child in the City. 20% of tax payments will have to go towards paying interest charges.

So what is happening to these assets?

Oakhaven Elderly Persons Home.

Oakhaven – empty for 4 years

This has remained empty since occupants were moved out – prematurely as it turned out – in 2016.  The sale for a new care home to Ashley House fell through in early 2017. No attempt was made to find even a temporary use for the site which occupies a prime location near to local amenities and good transport links. Maintenance expenditure on the empty building continued to fall on taxpayers. Now the council is proposing an “off-market” sale to regional care home operator, Burlington Care Limited. The size of the offer has not been revealed. Ironically, the officer report admits “An open market exercise may be impacted by COVID 19 suppressing property values. The council budget has been significantly impacted by COVID and there is a need to realise value from vacant assets in the near future”

Willow House

Another former care home, which has been empty for nearly 5 years, is Willow House. It is on a prime site located next to the city walls. The site was nearly sold for student housing in 2017 but ran into planning difficulties.  Other offers were ignored by the Council and an offer from a company which utilises empty residential accommodation to accommodate the homeless in return for caretaking and security duties, was spurned. Now it seems that the Council intends to build 40 apartments on the site and will probably use its own “Shape” development company to manage the investment.  The site is worth more than £2.3 million.

Willow House – empty for 5 years

Morrell House

An elderly person’s home empty since early 2018. No use has been found for the site. It is to be considered for use by “self-builders” but if that is not successful it will be sold on the open market.

Moor Lane car park

This is the site currently in use as a flu vaccination centre. It has mostly been empty for the last 4 years. There has been a lot of developer interest in building on the site. The Council has decided not to include it in the Council house building programme and may therefore sell it on. On the open market – even in these depressed times – it is likely to be worth less per acre than the Willow House site.

Haxby Hall

The sale of this home to private care home operator “Yorkare” has stalled. COVID is blamed

& the strange ones

Generally, taxpayers have benefited in the long run when the Council has bought land and buildings in the City. There have been exceptions. For example, when the authority impulsively sold the site now occupied by the Hiscox insurance company on Peasholme Green. Had it included a betterment clause in the sale then taxpayers rather than shareholders would have benefited from the subsequent increase in land values.

Knapton Forest

It looks increasingly likely that the purchase of good quality agricultural land near Knapton, with the intention of planting trees on it, may go into the same ill-considered category.  When wooded, the area will not have a resale option but will involve an ongoing maintenance liability. 180 acres will support 50,000 broadleaf trees making a, carbon sequestration, contribution to the £1.2 trillion additional trees which would be required on the planet to reverse climate change! The £1 million project is also hailed as a major new passive leisure option for residents although, in truth, it is poorly positioned to make up for the open space lost in recent years to building operations in the City’s poorer areas.

Knapton Forest site

The major issue remains the lack of an environmental impact assessment. The land currently contributes to the local food supply chain. If the land is lost to food production, imports may increase resulting in longer transport chains and – critically – higher carbon emission levels. Storing carbon – like burying nuclear waste – simply pushes a problem onto the next generation.

The key to improving the environment is to reduce carbon emissions. Even the government seemed to recognise this, with its initiative yesterday aimed at replacing gas boilers with heat pumps and other benign energy sources.

Eco centre

The Eco centre is the small business facility at Clifton Moor which was promoted by the Council some 15 years ago. It was provided via a “design and build” contract on Council owned land.

Occupation levels have been encouraging although usually reflecting the general state of the economy. There are 63 individual units there. The Council currently leases back the centre and has managed the facility since 2015.  The rent paid by tenant contributions is claimed to offset the current running costs.

Now officials are recommending that the Council spends £3.9 million buying out the interests of the owner of the building. The Council is not revealing how its business case figures stack up, but it claims that it may generate additional income by fitting PV (solar) panels on the roof.

Judged against the current economic volatility this looks like a high-risk strategy.

Guildhall

The plans for the non-listed section of the Guildhall have been an economic  “basket case” for several years. The opportunity to sell part of the building for residential, retail or hotel use represented the least risk option and should have been pursued in 2012 when the building first became empty.

Guildhall

Instead, against a background of neglect and rapidly increasing repair costs, the Council opted for a risky plan to establish a hi tech small business start-up centre. The overall viability of the plan depended on letting part of the space as a high-end restaurant. The Council said it would run the unit itself.

£20 million of taxpayers money is at risk.

Now York University, via its Science City offshoot, has apparently offered to lease the business centre space at the Guildhall. Some civic and community use would continue.  Science City has a generally good reputation and the offer to get the Council off its, self-inflicted, hook would seem to be an attractive one.

It is unclear how the success of the new enterprise would be judged. It is even less clear how the demand for City centre “incubator” space will mature in the wake of the pandemic.

The restaurant shell building will remain empty awaiting a resurgence of the local visitor economy.

The Council currently has a 9.2% minority stake in York Science Park Ltd. which it would sell.

The lease deal would be “off market” raising once again accusations of a “family and friends” approach to commercial dealings.

“Town and Gown” relations are already stressed in the wake of the pandemic and a perceived lack of accessibility for residents and visitors to the historic Kings Manor buildings in the City centre, which are currently occupied by the University.

The Council has pointedly not published updated business case figures which reflect the new offer being made as well as ongoing concerns about the cost of the renovation project..

Risk Management

On what must be one of the most risky approaches to the financial management of Council owned property, the Risk Management assessment included in the report amounts to only 7 lines of text and concentrates entirely on the planned bid for the Eco centre.

Carlton Tavern site still being promoted for elderly persons home use.

Interesting that the Council strategy for providing elderly persons care beds is still dependent on a 74 bed facility on the Carlton Tavern site.

The site was recently refused planning permission for an elderly persons care home by the Council’s own planning committee.

The revelation comes in a paper which considers how the  Morrell House home will be closed.

City of York care strategy report April 2018

Residents and staff at Morrell House to be consulted on closure plans

Morrell House, Burton Stone Lane

Residents, their relatives and staff at one of City of York Council’s older people’s homes – Morrell House – are being consulted on the option to close the home, as part of plans to modernise accommodation for older people in the city.

The plans look to address the needs of York’s growing and ageing older population, by providing modern facilities which allow high quality care and quality of life, but also increasing the quantity of accommodation available.

It also aims to make the best use of the city’s existing extra care housing, making it more accessible for people with higher care needs by increasing the support available at each venue and by replacing out-dated older people’s homes, with more modern accommodation.

Significant progress is being made to deliver over 900 new units of accommodation with care for older people across York with both private and public sector investment.

This progress includes the £4m extension of Glen Lodge, providing 27 new homes, which was completed last year and work being done to build a care home at the Burnholme health and wellbeing campus.

This and plans to extend Marjorie Waite Court with 33 new homes are just some of the schemes taking place across the city which will bring much needed improved accommodation for older people to the city.

Martin Farran, corporate director for health, housing and adult social care at City of York Council, said:

“Whilst residents, their families and staff at Morrell House are rightly proud of their home, we recognise that there is a need for more modern accommodation for older people.

“We understand that this consultation process can be an unsettling one and will be working closely with the residents, their families and staff to make sure they have the support and advice they need.

“Our focus remains on supporting our residents. The actions we take now will ensure that they – and future generations – will have the best possible quality of life, with greater access to modern accommodation across the city.”

Residents, their relatives and staff have already been informed of the proposals. Over the next six weeks residents and relatives will be consulted on their views and any preferences they have about where they would like to move to should the home be closed.

The results of the consultations will be presented to the Executive on Thursday 26 April.

York Council care home rated ‘good’

Care and support services at one of City of York Council’s care homes have been rated as ‘good’ by independent inspectors.

Services at Morrell House, which specialises in dementia-care, were inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in May. It was described as  good in all areas which included; ‘safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led’ by the team of inspectors, who spoke to residents, relatives and members of staff as part of their visit.

The inspectors highlighted the meaningful caring relationships between staff and the people they supported, and that residents were relaxed and at ease in their surroundings. They also praised some of the team’s innovative dementia care, including the wearing of night clothes on night shifts- to reduce anxiety for people exploring the home overnight, the introduction of telehealth equipment  to reduce hospital admissions, and the plans to use specialist lighting in communal areasto help residents with dementia to differentiate between day and night.
(more…)

All existing York Council Elderly Persons Homes set to close before 2019

£2 million price tag put on Lowfields site – Future of playing fields unclear.

Labours plans to abandon the super care home project mean that 7 existing elderly persons homes will close:

  • Grove House,
  • Haxby Hall,
  • Morrell House,
  • Oakhaven,
  • Windsor House,
  • Willow House and
  • Woolnough House.

All will close by March 2019.  The first will close its doors next year.

The Council expects many of the occupants to move into homes provided by the “independent sector”

Houses will be built on most of the vacated sites.

It is proposed that the Lowfields site be used for the provision of “over 100 new homes” including “downsizing” homes to rent and buy for older people as well as “starter homes to rent and buy so that younger families can get on to the housing ladder”.  

The Council says that a capital receipt of “at least £2m” for the land will also be realised, confirming that any redevelopment will be by the private sector.

Whether the playing fields are included in this purchase price is unclear

Oakhaven

Oakhaven

It is proposed that the “facilities for older people originally envisaged as part of the Community Village on the Lowfields site be, instead, provided at a newly built Extra Care and Health Hub which is expected to replace the Oakhaven OPH on “Front Street” (sic)”.

The Council says it

will be on making best use of the existing stock of Extra Care Housing in the city.  There are five dedicated sheltered housing with ‘extra care’ services in York containing 205 units of accommodation.

Four of these are Council managed schemes – Marjorie Waite Court, Gale Farm Court, Barstow House and Glen Lodge, whilst the fifth (Auden House) is managed by York Housing Association. All homes in these schemes are to rent”.

The Council claims that many of those occupying places in these homes don’t need “extra care” facilities and hints that they may be moved out to make way for those judged to have higher needs!

They say, “We will work with exiting residents to keep disruption to a minimum

The report concludes,

York is also under-supplied with Extra Care Housing given the city’s demographics and the anticipated growth in the numbers of over 75s expected over the next decade.

Analysis suggests that there will be need for 490 units of Extra Care accommodation by 2020, rising to 645 in 2030, based upon nation benchmarks. There is a need for both Extra Care to rent and Extra Care to buy; currently just one third of the provision in York is to buy despite 81% of York’s older residents owning their own home.

The independent sector is beginning to address this need. For example, McCarthy & Stone are currently building 28 new sheltered homes to buy at Smithson Court on Top Lane in Copmanthorpe. Elsewhere in Yorkshire they are beginning to build and provide their Extra Care offer – called Assisted Living – and we would expect that they will continue to provide new accommodation as the market demands”.

With the overcrowding in York NHS hospitals reaching crisis point over the last few months, partly as a result of a lack of availability of the right kind of care places for the elderly in the City, the prospect of another 4 years elapsing before the issues are resolved is deeply worrying.