Details of Tour de France cycle race in York confirmed

There were no surprises when the route that the Tour de France will take though York was revealed today in Paris.

click for enteractive map

click for enteractive map

The route will start from the Racecourse on Sunday 6th July taking in the City centre before leaving the City via Bootham, Clifton Bridge and Boroughbridge Road and making its way to Harrogate and Sheffield.

York taxpayers are already set to get a bill for over £1.4 million for the stage two depart event.

There were no surprises either when it was revealed that another Labour Councillor jumped at the chance to visit Paris today for the, somewhat less than historic, announcement of “Le route”.

Labour reject calls for Tour business case

Liberal Democrats have attacked Labour run City of York Council for refusing to reveal the full expected costs of staging next year’s Tour De France.

TDF

Hosting Stage 2 of next year’s Grand Départ is already scheduled to cost York taxpayers around £1.3 million with speculation that these costs will increase when full details of the route are announced next week – planned road resurfacing work along the Stage 1 route has seen Leeds’ expected spending rise to over £3 million. The Government is providing a contribution of £291,000 to York, but confirmed in September that “no more money” is available.

At last week’s Full Council the Liberal Democrat Group challenged Labour to provide a full business case for investment on the event. They called for this to include details of the money already committed, expected future costs and which budget these costs would come from, detailed income projections, a cost/benefit analysis and information on how the success of the event will be measured.

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Council service satisfaction levels down as £1.4 million now allocated to pay for Tour De France start,

Public satisfaction with the way that the Labour Council is performing is dropping according to the authorities own figures.

Around 4000 residents responded to a Council survey. The percentage satisfied with the way that the Council runs things dropped from 63% to 54% in just 12 months.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge


The results need to be viewed with caution given the volatility of public opinion – and the likely sample bias on a post back survey – but other polls tell a similar story.

The Council could have taken the opportunity to test public opinion on a range of controversial issues such as:

• The proposed cuts to the number of roads being gritted this winter and the planned removal of self help salt bins.

• It’s plans to expand the size of the City by 25% over the next 15 years

• Changes to bus services and its refusal to publish reliability figures

• The bungled changes to refuse collection arrangements.

• Secret “behind closed doors” decision making.

• The introduction of wide area 20 mph speed limits

• The Lendal Bridge and Coppergate traffic restrictions.

Without these figures the Council may find it difficult to understand why its reputation is suffering.

Meanwhile Labour are now admitting that York taxpayers face an enormous £1.4 million bill for hosting the second day start of the Tour De France.

That is over and above the money being taken from existing budgets such as highways resurfacing.

Put in context, the annual repayment costs on the money borrowed to fund this one day event will be over £100,000 or enough to sustain existing winter maintenance (de-icing) standards for the next 20 years.

It is probably not surprising that residents weren’t given the opportunity to comment, in the Council’s survey, on this priority.