A new report reveals that Labour Councillors are planning to increase the use of offenders in maintaining public areas in the City.

Over 10,000 hours were put in by “Community Payback” workers last year.

Although the so called restorative justice policy has broad support, the idea of local streets being maintained by the modern equivalent of a “chain gang” seems deeply flawed.

Apart from anything else, standards would depend on the number of offences committed (hitherto the Councils objective has been to reduce crime!) and the number of community payback sentences handed out to those who are physically capable of work.

There is a case for using offenders to give an area a one off clean up. Community Payback have been praised for their approach to projects such as bulb planting in the Foxwood area.

But they are no substitute for well equipped professional Council workers.

The Council are also apparently expecting residents to take over some maintenance tasks.

They are asking people to “become a Street Buddy and adopt a bit of your street, repaint a utility box that keeps getting graffitied, or do some litter picking or weeding” !!!

The Council are hoping that this will allow them to cut around £325,000 from their maintenance budgets over the next 12 months. Grass cutting frequencies are likely to be the next service to suffer a reduction in quality.

It follows last years decision to remove litter bins and stop filling many salt bins.

Cuts to street level services click to enlarge

Labour’s hopelessly misjudged Council budget proposals are set to be approved tonight. Cuts to all front line public services are planned. A full list can be seen by clicking here

Labour intend to retain a £1 million a year “slush fund” which is used to pay for a range of inessential “vanity” projects.

The £1 million this year has been used to pay for lighting and firework displays, free WiFi access in the City centre, a plan to open the Bonding warehouse as a “digital media hub”, building design competitions, an “innovation catalyst” programme; not to mention the occasional foreign travel trip.

More waste is evident in the Councils capital programme where commitments to introducing an unnecessary Citywide 20 mph speed limit and the purchase of a barge for use as an arts centre have seen interest payments, on borrowed money, double since Labour took control of the Council.

Abandoning these “vanity” projects, and by making good use of the reduced running costs (down by £375,000) of its new HQ, would allow the Council to restore many of the most damaging cuts.

Labour’s key proposals would see:

• A 1.9% hike in Council tax levels (despite central government offering to underwrite the costs of a freeze)

• Privatisation or outsourcing of leisure/swimming pool management the Warden Call service and the “Sheltered housing with extra care” service. Even the Mansion House will be commercialised

• Grants to Museums Trust cut by £100,000, the Theatre Royal by £101,000 with similar % cuts other voluntary sector bodies

• At a time when people are rightly worried following revelations about meat quality, trading standards faces a £42,000 cut, while there will be less air quality monitoring.

• There will be less for job training as Future Prospects loses £150,000

• The closure of elderly persons homes will be brought forward meaning that some residents face double moves before new accommodation is completed. In 2014 pensioners will face a 90p charge when using their passes on Park and Ride services

• Disabled facilities at Greenworks and Brunswick Nursery cut by £50,000 Supported employment budget cut by £200,000 forcing disabled people into “mainstream employment”

• Social Service clients with personal budgets will lose out from a £500,000 budget cut

• Looked after children – basically those with foster parents – face a £700,000 cut with another £400,000 to come off in 2014.

• Respite services get a £50,000 reduction.

• Children’s centres face a £128,000 cut in 2014

• The toy library bus will scrapped in 2014

Some reductions in expenditure were inevitable.

Labour have simply chosen to economise on the wrong services.

City of York Council will be carrying out essential carriageway reconstruction and resurfacing works on Micklegate and George Hudson Street throughout March.

The work will start on Saturday 2 March and is programmed to last for approximately three weekends – Saturdays and Sundays between the hours of
8am to 6pm.

In order to carry out these works safely a temporary road closure of both Micklegate and George Hudson Street will be necessary whilst works are taking place.
Continue reading →

The Police have issued the following statement

“As North Yorkshire Police prepares for the transition from a single, mobile safety camera pilot, to three permanent mobile safety cameras, our usual system of deploying to specific routes for a week at a time, will temporarily change.

We will publicise the launch of the new mobile safety cameras ahead of their operational deployment”.

Mobile safety camera pilot – all deployment routes are listed below:

Continue reading →

There was a 3% reduction in the numbers of staff working for the York Council during 2012. The total number of employees fell from 2774 to 2687 (FTE). The figures exclude those working in schools

There were 8 compulsory redundancies and 87 voluntary redundancies during the period with 157 resignations/retirements.

However the Authority also took on 184 new staff.

During the year staff sickness absence totalled the equivalent of 27336 days.

The figures, released in response to a Freedom of information request, will come as a surprise to many. Residents and workers had been told to expect larger job losses.

The figures do not show any employees who left the Council under “TUPE” terms to join outside providers who were taking over Council activities. Nor has the Council released details of the numbers in its redundancy pool – essentially workers who are still being paid by the Authority after their jobs have gone and who are waiting for suitable vacancies to arise.

Hot on the heels of agreeing in December a 4% increase in rent payments, which will bring the annual charge for a full sized allotment in York up to £99, it now looks like the Labour Council could abandon the management of local allotments altogether.

Papers being presented to the budget Council on Thursday, would see further above inflation increases agreed followed by “handing the management of the allotments over to secretaries in 2014”

In line with national trends, York’s allotments have been increasingly popular with residents over the last few years.

York has 17 allotment sites with 1,500 plots (including half and quarter plots). There are 260 people on the waiting list for plots.

Separately, the Council is seeking an additional £100,000 a year income from the Energise sports centre. Part of this will come from the increased use that the expanded gym is expected to bring, but another ominous warning has been sounded by Labour Councillors who are hoping to outsource the management of swimming pools, sports and community centres “with the aim of eliminating all subsidies”

NB. The are no public swimming pools in the country being run without some sort of subsidy.

click to enlarge

The number of “affordable” homes built in York during the current financial year is expected to be around 102. It has fallen from a figure of 282 which were completed in 2010/11, the final year of Liberal Democrat Council control.

Now the Council seem to have realised that they bear a large measure of responsibility for the increase in the numbers on the waiting list for homes.

That list now has 4674 names on it!

In a pretentiously entitled report “Get York Building” the Labour Council blames everyone and everything for their failures.

Although making a claim that many developments are “underway”, the report fails to tabulate the position on the individual sites. In reality over 1600 potential homes are on sites with a current planning permission but are currently “stalled” . (Larger strategic developments that are ‘stalled’ – e.g. Nestle, Terry’s, Germany Beck, York Central & British Sugar are not included in this total.)

Contributory factors to the impasse include a continuing difficulty in getting mortgages while developers also have reported problems getting capital for small speculative house building projects.

The Council are proposing to ease the proportion of “affordable” homes required to 20% on planning permissions issued on brownfield sites. It remains to be seen whether this has any practical effect.

Labour are also reversing their objection to “off site” financial contributions in lieu of affordable homes being built on the development site itself. These will still be a hefty £23,133 per unit (a figure that is passed on to new home buyers of course).

The Council has now said that it will provide 1000 new homes each year on average over the next 5 years. That is a ludicrously improbable figure given past performance.

With a 20% affordable element, that would mean that only 200 affordable homes would be provided each year compared to Labours election promise of 790.

The Neighbourhood Watch organisation have launched a web site where you can see the latest Police alerts about crime in our area. Click here.

Labour Councillors have announced a 4.4% increase in Council house rents will be implemented from 1st April. It is the first increase to be decided locally following the Coalition governments decision to delegate Council housing finance management back to Local Authorities.

Labour have said that they expect to implement more above inflation increases which will see the average weekly Council home rent rise to £81-71 by the time that they are due to leave office in 2015.

Under that last Labour government around £7 million a year was being siphoned out of the City to subsidise housing in other parts of the country.

Now local authorities are free to make their own decisions about how to balance the housing account.

One consequence of this new freedom is that York will be able to invest around £6 million in building 60 new Council homes.

In addition the programme of extending existing council homes to accommodate larger families will be reinstated. The programme was suspended when Labour took control of the Council in 2011.

There has been speculation that the Council will build the new Council houses on the Beckfield Lane recycling centre site with the former Fordland’s site at Fulford and the now redundant Burnholme school site also apparently possibilities.

We hope that they will avid cramming more houses onto amenity spaces or unsuitable garage sites.

More information is promised in April

NB. The Council has now announced its window replacement programme for the forthcoming year. Draughty windows in the following streets will be replaced in Dringhouses:

• Chaloners Road
• Highmoor Road
• Wains Road
• Lovell House
• Don Avenue
• Eason View
• Leeside
• Lerecroft Road
• Leven Road
• Swale Avenue
• Thanet Road
• Turnmire Road