York Explore Library
The newly independent Libraries mutual company may reclaim this amount – which reflects the income that it lost – from the York Council.
A Libraries manager said that it now faces a “significant financial challenge”
The council and iChoosr held their first scheme between December 2013 and February 2014. A total of 751 York residents signed up, along with 36,000 people across the UK. Average annual savings for those York residents who switched was £169!
Supported by York’s Citizens Advice Bureau and Age UK York – the Save Money by Switching Energy campaign launched in December 2013. The scheme enables York residents to register for the assisted scheme through these four easy steps that can result in them being offered potentially cheaper alternative tariffs to consider switching to.
1) Anyone who pays a household energy bill can register for free. Registration is easy – you just need a recent fuel bill or annual statement.
2) Registration closes on 2 February 2015. The council’s switching partner iChoosr then gathers everyone’s registrations together and invites all the energy companies to offer their best prices. This is all done by iChoosr. You don’t need to do anything.
3) The cheapest tariffs win! Residents will receive an with details on the new tariff secured by the scheme from 16 February. It will tell you how much money you could potentially save if you accept.
4) Residents have until 16 March to decide to accept the offer or not. There is no obligation to accept and there are no fees or charges. You simply get a new offer that could potentially save you money on your energy bills. If you choose not to take up the offer, you can always register again in future schemes.
If residents are unable to sign up to this round of the Big Community Energy Switch they can join the next round, which runs from 24 March until 18 May.
To find out more or to register go to www.york.gov.uk/switchingenergy. If residents do not have access online please visit City of York Council’s customer service centre at West Offices or call us on 01904 551550.
The new company will have a budget of around £4 million a year. Much of this will come from Tourism activities although the Council will transfer its Shambles Market (£241k), Tourism (£232k), Science City (£100k), Economic Development (£337k) and Cultural activities (£229k) budgets into MiY control.
As well as tourism, the company will be responsible for an eclectic range of activities including “Christmas Lights”.
The outline business plan for the organisation can be read by clicking here
The Council’s interests on the Board of Directors will be represented by the Council Leader and Chief Executive.
Some will feel that the second Council seat should be allocated to an opposition Leader, rather than to a paid official. This might improve the chances of a consensus emerging on priorities and could give the company a life expectancy extending beyond May 2015
The move comes in the wake of a series of decisions which have, in recent years, steadily eroded taxpayers influence over how their money is spent.
As well as the Museums Trust, the City’s Libraries and Archives are now managed by an independent organisation. In fairness, both these organisations have so far been relatively benign and seem to be sensitive to users views.
Strategic transport and economic development powers have been partly transferred to a “combined authority” which has its headquarters in Leeds. Feedback from this body is poor with the decision making process largely impenetrable for the average resident. There will be big questions to be answered about York’s future in the “Leeds City Region” after the Council elections take place in May.
In the meantime, the major criticisms of “Make it York” remain its lack of accountability, transparency and its attitude to the needs of the City’s suburbs.
It could quickly enhance its reputation by publicly backing the Front Street regeneration project.
Residents will want to see the organisation making its decisions in public and will expect it to – voluntarily – agree to respond to Freedom of Information requests.
Tour De France launch dinner in Ripon Cathedral
The report rightly highlights the positive benefits which the event produced. Not least among these were the 200,000 spectators in the City and the international publicity which the City received as well as an estimated £8 million injected into the local economy.
The latter figure is estimated and does not seek to relate benefits to the £1.8 million that the taxpayer paid for the event.
That was the largest amount that the York Council has spent on a single leisure event.
To put it into context, a similar number of people visited the City for the “Royal Ascot at York” event held in 2005. That event cost taxpayers less than 10% of the TdF costs (with most costs relating to traffic management).
The reports are weakest in the areas which caused some local residents concern.
A much hyped claim was that merchandising, car parking and camping sales would produce a “profit” to off set costs. That simply didn’t happen.
Sparse crowd for Grand Departy
Many decisions such as the location of the event “hubs” were delayed before being imposed on unwilling neighbourhoods.
Some failures – post start entertainment and big screen blackouts – could have been avoided with better planning.
But the conspiracy of silence about the £180,000 Grand Departy decision making process remains the most significant outstanding issue. Only a passing reference is made to this event in the reports.
Hopefully the Scrutiny Committee meeting on Wednesday will finally insist on answers being given to the outstanding questions about the Grand Departy. When we know the answers, a more informed decision can be made about the level of public subsidy – if any – which should be given to the proposed “Tour de Yorkshire” (TdY).
Ironically that event is scheduled to hit the City on a busy bank holiday only 3 days before the Council elections are scheduled to take place.
The Council Cabinet will decide on 20th January how to implement the Councils decision to “automatically” refund those who were fined during the Lendal Bridge trial.
So far 12,512 refunds have been issued by the Council.
The most likely course of action is that all 35,000 motorists, who have not yet claimed a refund, will be written to and advised of their opportunity to claim.
After that the process will be much the same as the scheme currently in operation.
The cost of sending out and managing the notification process is put at £150,000. The money will come from grant income which otherwise would have been spent on public services in the City.
In total the Council took around £1.8 million in fines from the Lendal bridge and Coppergate schemes. The Council continues to pursue a claim that the Coppergate fines were levied lawfully but their appeal has been outstanding for over 9 months now.
Additionally, over £700,000 was spent on implementing and administering the original schemes.
The Council is shying away from simply putting a cheque in the post to the registered vehicle keeper details that its agents have on file. They fear that many of the payments would not reach the right people (hire cars, parental cars, foreign tourists, deceased etc) and Legal Counsel have said that such an option could jeopardise the Councils Coppergate appeal.
All in all it now looks like the Lendal Bridge experiment will cost over £1 million.
The York Council has fared relatively well in the grant settlement announced today.
The Councils “spending power” will fall by only 0.1% against a national average of 1.8%.
The “spending power” figure combines regular central government funding with one-off grants and things like Council Tax, a proportion of business rates and other fees and charges.
The government has also confirmed that it will underwrite the costs of freezing Council Tax levels. The new Labour leadership have promised to accept the offer of support unlike their predecessors who hiked up Council Tax rates unnecessarily.
Cllr Andrew Waller
The proposals were rubber-stamped by the Labour Cabinet last night despite concerns raised at the meeting by Lib Dem Cllr Ian Cuthbertson. Under the plans, City of York Council will spend an initial £500,000 on the project. The overall scheme is due to cost £9.2million with cash coming from council capital funds, borrowing and the council’s ‘Economic Infrastructure Fund’. £1.7million in funding is yet to be found.
The Lib Dems say there is not enough evidence on income to justify the spending and have ‘called-in’ the decision for review. The proposal will now be reconsidered at a cross-party scrutiny meeting in January.
Cllr Andrew Waller, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Finance and Performance, commented:
“It is astonishing that the Labour Cabinet has brought forward these proposals without a proper business case which shows how the council hopes to get a return on its investment to justify the spending. There is also currently a £1.7million black hole in Labour’s plans.
“If this plan proceeds, York taxpayers will be asked to underwrite £9million of risk on the project. As well as a huge upfront capital cost the plans would greatly increase the council’s long-term borrowing commitments, a burden which has already increased under Labour.
“The report passed presents no evidence that other options for the Guildhall have been properly considered, that this is the right location for the use being proposed or that the private sector will take on any of the risk of this project.
“At a time when Labour are cutting frontline services for ordinary residents and considering moving to monthly rubbish collections, we cannot support this sort of speculative spending on vanity projects in the city-centre.”
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Despite representations from Liberal Democrat and Independent Councillors at last nights Cabinet meeting, Labour decided to press ahead with their £9.2 million scheme to remodel the Guildhall complex as a “Digital Arts and Media Centre”
Guilhall entrance
The same meeting considered plans which could see major cuts made to the quality of the environment in the City, reductions in social care regimes, charges introduced for emptying waste bins and reduced highways maintenance standards.
The new Council leadership’s claim – that they would concentrate available resources on basic service standards and respond positively to public priorities – now looks rather less than convincing.
The “business as usual” attitude also confirms that the Council has yet to find a governance system which truly reflects the new “balanced” make up of the Council.
The simplest way to get a broader view would be to run all draft reports through the weekly public “urgency” meetings which take place. Reports could the be refined to meet the majority view before going through the formal decision taking process.
Until that happens, it seems that all controversial items will be “called in” for further consideration. This is a laborious process which doesn’t necessary result in a change in the original decision.
Ultimately, if Labour don’t respect the majority view, then a special Council meeting could be called and the Leader of only a few weeks could be kicked out of office.
It looks like Labour Councillors want to spend another £1/4 million on a 3 day cycling event next May. One of the stages of the new “Tour de Yorkshire” will finish in York with several local sprint races planned.
Taxpayers will be expected to pick up the bill, from the commercial rights owners, for a whopping £100,000 “hosting fee” for the event,.
A report which is being considered tomorrow, by the Councils Cabinet, shows no sponsorship or admittance fees aimed at offsetting the bills.
A decision will apparently be made before the Inquiry into the disastrous Grand Departy flop is completed.
Organisers were forced to admit a couple of months ago that the Huntington Stadium event – staged separately from the Tour de France start – had lost over £186,000. An inquiry into the event was subsequently ordered by the Council’s scrutiny committee.
The same Council Cabinet agenda talks of major cuts to basic service standards.
Road surfaces already breaking up
£1.3 million a year will be cut from social care budgets.
As well as the much publicised proposals to charge for green bin emptying and move to 4 weekly residual waste collections, Labour are now admitting that more cuts are planned to open space maintenance.
Volunteers will apparently be expected to maintain bowling greens, tennis courts, flower beds and undertake rose planting. The report says that the “replacement of bedding plants with ornamental grass at 18 sites could potentially save 1,519 hours of labour”.
Ominously the report talks of York’s roads and footpaths being “better than average” suggesting that further cuts in maintenance standards are planned.
Many residents will view with incredulity any proposals which would allow a further deterioration in the standard of highways surfaces.
Coppergate – York Council failure, to win appeal against unlawful fines issue, could plunge it into a financial crisis
Other areas of concern identified in the report include
A separate report identifies problems with the Councils capital investment programme.
Failure to move ahead with the reuse of the Guildhall means that £350,000 of “critical” repairs will now be needed.
And a major problem is arising with the Councils existing Elderly Persons Homes. These were supposed to have closed by now having been replaced by the new care village at Lowfields. But that project is 3 years behind schedule and the existing buildings will need to be patched up at a cost of £500,000!