Warden of the North

Initially we thought this was a joke but apparently not.

The York Council is now seeking volunteer “Leaf Wardens”. Their job will be to sweep up fallen leaves from (Council owned) public places including highways.

Now we know that many residents do try to keep the area outside their homes clean and tidy. Many will pick up litter, remove weeds and even mow verges.

Some may sweep up fallen leaves while others may clear snow.

The motivation for most volunteers is to improve the appearance of their neighbourhood over and above what is possible using the resources available to the local authority.

But it is what the label suggests – a voluntary action prompted by community pride.

In our view, the Council is now trying too hard to institutionalise and exploit that goodwill

So we now have “snow wardens”, “flood wardens” and “litter pickers” all kitted out by the Council.

The collapse of the weed killing programme this summer, footpaths blocked by overgrown trees/ hedges and, most recently, a sharp decline in the reliability of the bin emptying service should have acted as a “wake up” call to the Councils leadership.

What residents first want to see – before they are asked to do a second job as well as their day job – is the Council delivering good quality public services at street level on a consistent basis.

No one expects leaves to be swept up immediately the first bad weather of autumn arrives. But they do expect to be told what the Council will do, when and to what standard.

The council should publish revised “customer contracts” or “Service Level Agreements” and report back regularly on improvement plans.

They should then consult Parish Councils, Councillors and residents associations before they offer any patronising training on how to sweep up leaves.

Poor weather and neglect taking its toll on public service standards in west York

Bramham Grove carriageway needs patching

Damage to a telecoms cabinet on Bramham Road

"Fags ends" accummulating outside the shops on Bramham Road

“Fags ends” accumulating outside the shops on Bramham Road

…….and detritus at the former entrance to Lowfields School on Dijon Avenue. Reported 2 months ago but no action by the Council yet

A lot of detritus on the footpath at the entrance to The Wandle

Garage areas still a problem. Now we have dumping on The Kingsway West area.

Garage areas still a problem. Now we have dumping in the Kingsway West area.

Detritus , leaves and litter on the Grange Lane cycle path entrance

Dumping at Acomb Car Park recycling point

Fridge dumped in Chapelfields

Can banks on Acomb Car Park full. Cnas being hung on skip

Can banks on Acomb Car Park full. Cans being hung on skip

Leaf detritus on little Green Lane in Acomb – was reported 3 weeks ago!!

Similar leaf fall on The Green, Acomb

All these issues have been reported for action using https://www.fixmystreet.com/

Does the York Council even know how good its public services are?

A response to a recent Freedom of information inquiry suggests that in many cases they don’t.

We asked for performance information on 20 key Council service areas (see left). They are the kind of services that every resident is likely to use – or see – each year.

Performance information had been gathered routinely, and reported publicly, up to 2011. However, over recent years, the York Council has seemed to be increasingly reluctant to provide information about basic service standards.

The Council said that it didn’t measure how many issues it received – or how it responded – for five public service areas. They were:

Dog fouling
Fly posting
Play equipment defects
Public open space/park maintenance issues &
Council estate communal and garage area defects.
Garage area maintenance standards not recorded

That shocked us – not least because some involve safety issues.

We asked for information on the:

A Number of issues reported

B Average time taken to resolve issue

C Target completion time

D % of issues resolved within the target time

E Longest outstanding issue at the month end

F % quality checks which were considered to be satisfactory

The Council was able to provide volume information, on the number of issues that had been reported, for most of the activity areas.

Areas where the number of problem reports were increasing included

Trees, bushes and weeds overgrowing paths
Graffiti &
Street lighting faults

The number of reports in other activity areas was fairly stable over an 18 month period.

Looking at how quickly issues were resolved, the only target times regularly achieved were for clearing full litter bins “within 3 working days” (a fairly generous target) and removing “obscene” graffiti within 1 working day.

If you telephoned the Council offices in August you had a 75% chance of your call being answered in 20 seconds.

A visitor would have waited, on average, 8 minutes to be seen.

However residents emailing the Council and expecting a response within one working day, would be disappointed. The Council has stopped recording the length of time taken to deal with electronic communications.

So what’s the longest wait that I can expect?

Well the Council doesn’t measure the longest outstanding issue. So no one knows.

But there must be some quality checks?

Some issues like weed growth never seem to eb resolved

Some issues like weed growth never seem to be resolved

Well actually no. The Council says that it doesn’t record the results of quality checks undertaken by inspectors nor does it undertake any customer satisfaction surveys with complainants.

So work undertaken isn’t routinely checked and recorded.

Maybe the issue hasn’t even been resolved? Just ticked off on the work management computer?

Who’s to blame?

Poor management practices, Councillors, Directors, computer systems? The Chairs of the Council’s Scrutiny Committees – who should guard the public interest – have generally failed to table performance information.

So perhaps everyone shares the responsibility?

Will they put things right?

Maybe. The, still relatively new, Council deserves some time to put things right. But they need some quick wins to restore public confidence.

They could start by putting these, and other, basic KPIs on their “open data” web site and updating them each month.

The sooner that a new Chief Executive is appointed by the Council – and its management vacancies filled – the sooner we can expect to see an improvement in service standards.

The full set of results, covering the last 18 months, can be downloaded by clicking here or here (Sendspace Excel spreadsheet)

Our thanks to the FOI team at the Council who clearly tried very hard to provide the information that we had requested.

So what do we mean by getting public service standards in York back to an acceptable level?

The new Council Leader will face some difficult decision on priorities.

With the new Labour Leader promised to refund £1.3 million to Lendal Bridge motorists and also to freeze Council Tax levels (at a cost of £2.1 million?) many will wonder whether a further decline in street service standards may be in prospect?

We hope not.

Standards have dropped off since 2011, nowhere more so than in Cllr Williams own Westfield ward. We give some examples here.

Individually they cost little to remedy. They do however require a new, more proactive, approach to maintenance.

We have, of course, reported these issues for attention

Overgrown garage area

Litter Acomb car park

Insecure rubbish storage (Front Street)

Hedges overgrown and verges not edged

Uneven carriageways (Gladstone Street)

Latest updates on “improve our neighbourhood” campaign

More and more residents are following our advice that they should be intolerant of poor public service standards.

Here are some of the issues reported over the weekend.

Residents should click here to access the My Council reporting tool

Thoresby Road – litter

Litter – Cornlands Road

St Stephens Road – Poor street sweeping standards

The Wandle – detritus

Chapelfields – Grass growing THROUGH footpath surfaces

Chapelfields – Damaged verges

Foxwood – Graffiti

90% say “lift Lendal Bridge access restrictions”

click to enlarge

An overwhelming majority of residents have given the thumbs down to the current closure restrictions on Lendal Bridge.

Responding to a survey carried out by the Liberal Democrats, in the Dringhouses, Woodthorpe and Hob Moor areas, only 8% have said that the trial is a success.

90% want the restrictions to be removed.

A massive 95% say that traffic congestion in the City has got worse over recent months.

Stand and deliver
Labour adopt traditional approach to transport funding in York

The results underpin the findings from other sources.

Over 35,000 penalty notices have been issued since the Lendal Bridge and Coppergate ANPR cameras were installed.

The influential “Trip Advisor” web site has logged a large number of complaints from visitors who are vowing never to visit the City again.

A Facebook page has also been set up by opponents of the restrictions.

The Council leadership continue to maintain an air of lofty indifference to resident’s views prompting new calls for a referendum on the future of the restrictions.

An opportunity to test resident’s views, at a reasonable cost, will come on 22nd May when European Parliament elections are already scheduled to take place.

By then, however, some traders may have been forced to close as City centre shopper numbers continue to fall.

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There is no consolation for the Council’s Leadership from residents other responses to the survey.

88% say there is no justification for Labours plans to build on the Green Belt, while 80% remain opposed to a wide area 20 mph speed limit.

Most damming verdict comes from the 93% who believe that public service standards have got worse since Labour took office.

No one who has responded so far believes that standards have got better.