World book day – “flash retelling” planned for York

Around 750 pupils from City of York Council schools will be taking part in a ‘flash retelling’ to help mark World Book Day on Thursday 5 March.

Pupils across the city will be retelling a traditional tale they have learnt off by heart at 10.30am.

The pupils have used the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach to help them learn the tale. This involves them using actions and a visual story map to learn the tale. Learning stories off by heart gives children the story language and text structures to be able to create their own stories.

Pie Corbett who developed the Talk for Writing approach, said: “The great City of York will ring together the bells of a thousand voices, telling and celebrating the joy of a story. Stories lie at the heart of every culture. Without them, education is dry as dust. They bind us together as one people helping us to understand ourselves and each other. Stories make us a stronger and better people. Let the story spread across the city and stay in the heart of every teller and every listener.”

World Book Day is a worldwide celebration of books and reading, marked in over 100 countries all over the world. For more information on libraries in the city visit www.exploreyork.org.uk

Bid for all party support for York Community Stadium

With the planning application for the new Community Stadium held up as highways issues are reviewed, the York Council will today decide to set up an all party monitoring group for the project.

Community Stadium Nov 2014

Such a group was in place until 2011, after which the newly elected Labour Council decided to take project decisions behind closed doors.

The result was a two year delay in moving things forward with the complication of adding City-wide  swimming and indoor sport management responsibilities into the contract.

One consequence was the closure of Waterworld and an emerging threat to the future of the Yearsley swimming pool.

The war between the Councils Labour Leadership and the Knights Rugby Club continues with both sides now engaged in a “mentoring” process.

A “call in” of the planning application by the Highways Agency is adding to the delays with even the most optimistic supporter now doubting whether the stadium could open as promised in July 2016.

The establishment of the all party group is a welcome step forward and should help to sustain the project over the “all out” Council elections, due on May 7th. The make up of the monitoring group would be:

  • 1 x Labour
  • 1 x Conservative Group (Councillor Steward)
  • 1 x Liberal Democrat Group (Councillor Ayre)
  • 1 x Green Group (Councillor Taylor)
  • 1 x Labour Independent
  • 1 x Independent
  • 1 place for a Ward Councillor (Councillor Orrell – Huntington & New Earswick)

Go from walking to jogging five kilometres in ten weeks!

Walkers who would like to speed up and start jogging are invited to join a new programme which transforms residents from striding out to jogging up to five kilometres after 10 weeks.

The Walk 2 Jog Programme, organised by City of York Council, starts on Tuesday 17 February at 6.30pm at Rowntree Park car park. The weekly sessions steadily increase in speed and distance, starting with a three kilometre walk which builds up to a five kilometre jog in week 10.

The fitness sessions are planned to be fun and sociable which participants really enjoy and feel the benefits of in terms of stamina, aerobic capacity and weight loss.

The course will be taken by Jonathan Nyman, qualifying as an England Athletics run leader. Jonathan first started jogging as a way of helping to control high blood sugar levels, which developed into setting up a social jogging group.

Jogging as an exercise is a great aerobic activity which can help weight loss and develop a healthy heart. While many people take up jogging to enter local races and raise money for charity, those who want to carry on will be given other options available, which includes joining other jogging and running groups held across York.

This Walk 2 Jog course is for adults and costs £10 for 10 weeks with each session lasting approximately 40 to 60 minutes. Participants are asked to bring a drink and wear trainers and comfortable clothes. For further information and to book contact Dean Sharp, Sports Participation Officer email dean.sharp@york.gov.uk or call 01904 553377.

Golf courses in York

An indoor golf course which started at the beginning of January sold out so quickly that it has prompted the council’s Sport and Active Leisure team to organise another for the beginning of February.

The course starts at Burnholme Community Sports Hub (formerly Burnholme Community College) on Monday 23 February from 7pm to 8pm and will last for five weeks. If demand proves to be high a second session from 8 to 9pm will be introduced on the same night.
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Grand Departy inquiry shelved for 4 months

Liberal Democrat Councillors have criticised a decision to delay an inquiry into the ‘Grand Departy‘ concert until after May’s Council elections.

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Sparse crowd for Grand Departy

Sceptics expect many of those responsible for the financial disaster to stand down from the Council – or be defeated at the polls – meaning that they may escape the consequences of the their negligence.

Cllr Ian Cuthbertson, Lib Dem Spokesperson for Leisure, Culture and Tourism, had submitted a request for a review into the “planning, promotion and delivery” of City of York Council organised events for last year’s Tour De France.

These included the £187,000 loss-making ‘Grand Departy’ music concert at Huntington Stadium.

Originally, a review was given the green light last year. However, at this week’s Learning & Culture Overview and Scrutiny Committee Labour and Conservative councillors supported moves to delay the inquiry until after May’s local elections and after that month’s inaugural Tour De Yorkshire.

Cllr Ian Cuthbertson, commented:
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Builder for new York Community stadium announced

Completion date slips to “Autumn 2016”

An article in “Construction Enquirier” has claimed that the new Community Stadium will be built by ISG.  

Community Stadium Nov 2014

ISG is a Yorkshire based company.

The article claims that the stadium will be completed in “Autumn 2016”.

That conflicts with the July 2016 occupation date previously publicised by the York Council and means that the football club may not be able to move home until the 2017/18 season.

The delays will come as no surprise to the many commentators who have queried the 15 month construction timetable.

The scheme has yet to get planning permission while the future of the Knights Rugby team is under question following a very public disagreement between a senior Council official and the Knights chairman.

The Enquirer article reads;

ISG has been confirmed as the preferred construction partner for the £41m York Community Stadium and Leisure Complex scheme.

ISG will be part of the successful consortium bid by Greenwich Leisure Ltd to build a new home stadium for York’s professional football and rugby teams including leisure, retail, office and community facilities.

The new 8,000 all-seater stadium will include hospitality and conferencing facilities, a new 25m six-lane swimming pool, fitness and active play facilities and a community hub.

Work is expected to start on site this summer with completion scheduled for autumn 2016.

ISG is believed to have beaten rivals Carillion and Barr to the deal.

Danny Murray, ISG’s Northern regional managing director, said: “Our involvement in the York Community Stadium project extends back to 2012 and we have worked closely with GLL and our consortium partners to bring the vision for this keynote regional leisure scheme to reality.

“ISG has exceptionally strong leisure sector credentials, delivering iconic sporting venues like the Olympic Velodrome and the National Football Development Centre in Newport, and we are looking forward to working with our consortium partners to create superb new facilities for York.”

 

 

Tour de France report leaves many unanswered questions

The Councils Cabinet and, later, scrutiny committee will be debating the final report on last years Tour De France event when they meet next week.

Tour De France launch dinner in Ripon Cathedral

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

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.

York residents deserve to know all the facts before Council discussions are veiled by the start of the local election “purdah” period.

Yearsley Pool decision on 12th January

A Council scrutiny committee will decide on 12th January whether to undertake a public review of Labour’s plan to withdraw the Yearsley Pool’s £250,000 a year subsidy.

Yearsley Pool

Yearsley Pool

LibDem councillors have proposed that a review begin straight away giving managers the maximum time possible to find alternative sources of income and savings prior to the summer 2016 cut off date.

The early review has the backing of the Yearsley Pool Action Group which has submitted a 4,500 signature petition supporting the retention of the pool.

Although the Council had agreed to hold talks in early 2016 about the future of the pool, these would be held in private. They would also have presumed that no ongoing subsidy would be available.

One of the factors bedevilling the process is that with Council elections in May, it is likely that the majority of existing Councillors will not be re-elected to the new authority (many have said that they are standing down).

As the decisions of the present Council cannot bind the new one, priorities are likely to change.

Both LibDem and Tory Councillors have said that they want to move resources away from prestige projects preferring instead to improve funding for basic public services. These would include existing leisure facilities.

In 2007, the last LibDem Council invested over £1 million in upgrades to the Yearsley pool. It was expected that this would give the pool a life of over 20 years before additional investment was required.

In January 2011, before coming to power, Labour began to question the future of the facility.

The Theatre Royal and York’s other historic buildings

The proposal to sell the building that houses the Theatre Royal to the York Conservation Trust has raised some eyebrows in the City. The main issue seems to be the proposed £1 valuation.

York Theatre Royal was built in 1744 on, and among, the site of the medieval St. Leonard’s Hospital. Immediate repairs (roof replacement) are estimated at around £320k with significant further works needed in coming years

Separately £4.1m is being spent on a programme of refurbishment and improvement

The York Citizens Theatre Trust has a 25 year lease on the property at an annual rent of £27,250 with a 2 year rent free period during the refurbishment, It Achieves a significantly higher proportion of earned income (around 75%) and requires below average local authority funding in both the amount and proportion of turnover (around 7-8%). The Council provides a subsidy of around £250,000 a year to the theatre but has said that this will gradually reduce over the years.

Uniquely for a City the size of York, the Theatre Royal faces commercial competition from both the Barbican and the Grand Opera House

walking-guide-cover

The Conservation Trust is a charity and was set up in 1976 as the successor to Morrell’s “Ings Property Company Ltd”. This company had been established by the Liberal supporting family in the 1940’s with the intention of securing York’s historic building heritage. It is run by Directors who are all related to the original family.

Together with the York Civic Trust, it can claim to be the principle reason why we are still able to enjoy a large number of, generally well conserved, old buildings. Another reason is, of course, that most are “Listed” meaning that they cannot be demolished and that any alterations are subject to restrictive conditions.

The York Council has also accepted over the years a responsibility to maintain buildings like the Mansion House and Guildhall. That sense of responsibility has been undermined recently, not least by the Labour group’s decision to spend £9.2 million converting the Guildhall buildings into a “media centre” (currently subject to a policy review “call in”).

The York Guilds – essentially craft based trades organisations – also take responsibility for maintaining three ancient halls in the City, with much of their income derived from private lettings and (high) membership fees.

Finding uses for buildings, which are expensive to maintain and heat, will always be difficult. Currently there are at least three historic buildings with a question mark about their future use. St Anthony’s Hall (soon to be vacated by the Quilters Guild), St Williams College (where the Minster Trustees are seeking uses that could offset large repair bills) and the Guildhall.

The York Conservation Trust has already acquired two former Council owned buildings near to the Theatre (The Assembly Rooms and the De Grey Rooms).

While many York residents may feel, in an ideal world, such assets would remain in public ownership, the actions of the Council over the last 3 years is a reminder that public election does not automatically bestow either wisdom or financial acumen.

On the other hand, the negative side of large parts of the (former) public realm falling into the hands of a Charity – no matter how benign – is that public accountability all but disappears.

Residents of York will be dependant on the Charity Commission and the contestants of the planning system to ensure that the Trust continues to fulfil its founder’s altruistic aspirations.

York Stars

A young people’s theatre group has devised, written, produced and performed a short play for residents of the city’s care homes.

The York Stars, a small, local theatre company specialising in community-based productions, was one of four organisations to receive a grant through the Community Play fund. The £90,000 fund was set up to provide fun, stimulating play opportunities, activities and events for children and young people, as well as their parents and carers, within the local community. The programme was managed by Your Consortium on behalf of the council.

Around 20 young people were involved in the project, which got under way at Easter. They put together their own performance, entitled The volcano in Ashraino, writing and directing the play themselves, before embarking on a tour of four residential care homes during the autumn of 2014. They performed at Oakhaven, Willow House, Red Lodge and Dower Court, for almost 60 residents in all.

To view a review of the scheme click

To find out more about the projects being funded through City of York Council’s Community Play fund click here