How to get residents attention? Call your project something impenetrable

York Council reduces opening hours

The Council is being asked to approve the next stage in it’s, ludicrously titled, “rewiring” project.

The project has nothing to do with moving electricity supply cables in the Councils West Offices!

It is just a euphemism for another reorganisation; but the non de plume will effectively raise a barrier to resident understanding.

A report to a meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) proposes to reduce the hours of opening of the Councils contact centre. In future it will open between 9:00am and 5:00pm (Mon-Fri)

Although it is claimed that this is a response to resident contact patterns, the reality is that the centre is hopelessly overloaded with IT systems unable, after 6 months, to even provide complainants with an issue reference number.

The Council report also makes much of devolving management of public services to local communities.

Incredibly it talks of the need for “local buildings to be multi agency focal points”.

This is the same Council which has cut Community Centre support –all of which are located in the least well off communities – to the bone.

Two face closure.

It comes from a Council which has off loaded, to an independent trust, local libraries – one of the few successful public services provided in the City over the last few years.

The programme aims to facilitate cuts of £5.5 million in the Councils budget.

The largest part of these will come from Social Care. The Social Care budget overspent by more than £1.3 million last year.

While some change is inevitable, the Council would be wise to provide more details of the implications of its plans for residents and in plain English.

Dropping gimmicky titles would be a good start

Community centre income queried

The Council opened a new community centre (“Space 217”) serving the Lindsey Avenue area last year.

The initiative seemed to signal a welcome reversal of the current Council Leaderships policy of cutting all funding support from local community facilities.

However more information has become available which suggests that there is no ongoing business plan to support the facility.

At present all costs are being born by Council tenants (rent payments) through the housing account.

Ironically the two community centres most likely to close, as a result of Labour’s cut’s programme (Foxwood and Chapelfields), were also built on Housing Department owned land.

The Council says that it has had to spend around £31,000 bringing the former shop up to a standard that would allow it to be used as a community “hub”. This cost included the provision of disabled access and the removal of asbestos

The Council says that ongoing costs will also be paid for from within existing ring fenced “housing maintenance budgets”.

Strangely the Council is not offering financial support to other community centres from its housing maintenance budgets despite them being used by estate management officers, and other Council staff, as local meeting points.

NB. Lindsey Avenue is currently represented by Council Leader James Alexander. He will be under a lot of pressure if he is to retain his seat in next years local elections. The decision to open the new centre was taken behind closed doors.

Breakthrough in Journey planning in York

click to access Google Maps

Google have added a comprehensive bus timetable to their “Google Maps” web and app sites.

The facility allows users to compare the time it would take to use different forms of transport and the length of the journey.

The site gives access to bus timetables and routes across the whole country.

The site already provides details of local cycle tracks and can provide a recommended optimum walking route as an alternative.

Its advantage over previous systems, is that it allows for integrated journey planning across the whole country.

It is also available on some mobiles.

More here

Is it going to rain? Have a look at the real time radar map of Yorkshire

Residents can now access a radar map showing current weather conditions across the county. Click map for access. http://preview.wunderground.com/wundermap

click to access

And a reminder that a real time map is also available showing congestion levels, current and planned road works http://roadworks.org/

click to access

Road damage claims up 67%

Call for Lendal Bridge fine income to be used to repair roads

The number of claims for compensation following damage to vehicles caused by poorly maintained roads in York dramatically increased last year.

Damaged speed humps. Already dangerous for cyclists.

The change followed a decision by the Labour controlled Council to reduce expenditure on highways maintenance by over £2 million.

The number of claims received, for incidents over recent years, has been

2011 – 75
2012 – 52
2013 – 87

There are now calls for the Council to agree, at its budget meeting next week, to increase the amount it spends on maintenance back to the £5.5 million figure which was being invested each year by the previous, LibDem controlled authority.

Pressure is also growing for the £1.3 million – taken in fines from motorists on Lendal Bridge and in Coppergate – to be used to address the backlog in resurfacing works.

York Council complaint levels high

The Council have belatedly published answers to questions posed at its meeting in December. One of the questions tabled asked about complaint levels towards the end of last year and also sought information about the source of service reports.

Concerns had been raised about whether some web generated reports had found their way into the system.

The number of complaints received by the Authority is reported as

Complaints	Jun – Nov 2013
Stage 1	511
Stage 2	126
Stage 3	2
Total	639

Stage 3 complaints are the most serious. The classification means that the complainant remains dissatisfied with the response provided by the Council

The overall number of contacts with the Council (by channel) are:

	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Total
Total telephone calls 2012	23980	23525	22654	22654	22373	23938	140851
Total footfall 2012	5775	6167	5706	6456	5997	6427	36528
Total Emails 2012	3716	2969	3232	4570	4134	3413	22034
“do it on line” calls 2012	1230	709	1101	1606	1291	1841	7778
*Total telephone calls 2013*	*33587*	*29971*	*26320*	*34132*	*26385*	*32990*	*183385*
*Total footfall 2013*	*10415*	*9757*	*8061*	*10123*	*10259*	*12226*	*60841*
*Total Emails 2013*	*7088*	*5199*	*4474*	*5823*	*4825*	*4697*	*32106*
*“do it on line” calls 2013*	*755*	*634*	*934*	*1667*	*1471*	*2387*	*7848*

“Smarter York” App 2013 – 200 reports.

So the number of reports of public service failings being made by York residents to the Council continues to grow.

The much vaunted Smarter York mobile phone “app” has proved to be a flop. The “app” was under-developed when launched and is very limited in its scope when compared to commercial alternatives like “My Council”.

The costs of dealing with contacts made by residents are much higher than were expected when the Council moved to its new HQ.

They bring further into question the wisdom of the decision by Labour Councillors to close down local branch offices in sub-urbs like Acomb.

Public conveniences in York

A proposal to put out the maintenance of public conveniences in York to the private sector was nodded through at the last Council meeting without any opportunity for debate.

Auto toilet

It was yet another victim of the mismanagement of the Council agenda by the current administration.

A report on the issue, made to the Council Cabinet on 3rd December, was incredibly short on detail.

It emerges that the new loos will use a coin entry system on the door. There will be no free urinals*. The cost of a visit will be 40p with no change given. Apparently Euros and other foreign coins will not be accepted (not too bright a policy for a City which attracts a large number of tourists each year).

The contractors will be responsible for cash collection and security arrangements. In additional they will be paid £62,000 a year by the Council.

New York trial

The Council says that, “All needles and other debris on the self cleaning units are washed into a sump and removed as required”.

The Council says that existing staff will be transferred to the new contractors under TUPE regulations. Quite how that stacks up with the self cleaning strategy remains to be seen.

While auto toilets are commonplace in other parts of the world, in the UK they have generally been regarded with some suspicion following some examples of people being locked in them for extended periods of time.

Continental solution

The biggest problem would be deciding where such modern structures could be fitted into the historic streetscape of an historic city.

“Modernising” the existing toilets will cost taxpayers over £600,000.

*Under s87 Public Health Act 1936, the Council has the power to provide public conveniences and may charge such fees for the use of such conveniences, other than urinals, as it thinks fit.

Council’s Christmas opening hours – last chance to get a library book!

The council’s main offices at West Offices and Hazel Court will be closed as usual on the Christmas period bank holidays – Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. The offices will close an hour early, at 4pm, on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

There will be plenty of opportunity to keep fit and healthy over the festive period at Energise and Yearsley Pool. Energise is open over Christmas except for the usual bank holidays, closing at 1:30pm Christmas Eve. It will be closed on 1 and 2 January, closing at 1:30pm on New Year’s Eve. Yearsley Pool closes at 4pm on Christmas Eve and opens on Sunday 29 December. It will close on New Year’s Eve at 4:30pm until Thursday 2 January.

All libraries will close over Christmas and New Year. York Explore will close for Christmas at 4pm on Sunday 22 December with all other libraries at their usual closing time on Saturday 21 December. All libraries will be open as usual from Thursday 2 January, except York Explore which will re-opens at 9am on Friday 3 January.

Out-of-hours and emergency contact numbers can be found at http://www.york.gov.uk/ or by calling 01904 551550. Alternatively, please follow @cityofyork on Twitter or @yorkgritter for up-to-date information.
City of York Council tenants who require emergency repairs out of office hours should call 01904 630405.

The Emergency Duty Team for Social Care can be contacted outside office hours only by telephone: 0845 034 9417, or by email: edt@northyorks.gov.uk.

For all other emergencies call 01904 625751.

Local public service standards threatened by Leeds super authority

Liberal Democrats have raised fresh concerns over York’s membership of a new super council after it was revealed that money could be cut from frontline survices to fund the city’s contribution.

Labour run City of York Council has decided to join with Leeds, Bradford and other West Yorkshire metropolitan authorities in a new super council, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, from April 2014. York will be expected to contribute around £4million-a-year to the authority, which will have a range of roles including deciding major local transport schemes and overseeing economic development.

At last week’s Full Council meeting, in response to a question from Lib Dem Councillor Keith Orrell, Labour confirmed that they did not know where the £4million-a-year would come from but they would consider taking it from York’s revenue budget – which funds frontline services.
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More and more residents contacting the York Council – Smarter York “App” fails

Lunched amidst a blaze of publicity 18 months ago an “App”, that was supposed to transform the way that residents communicate with the Council, has flopped.

Council Leaders in London looking for an “App” 2 years ago.

The Smarter York mobile phone “App” allowed residents to report an incident – including a photo – straight into the Councils contact handing system. The “App” cost £8000 to develop.

It ran into problems with the Data Protection Act in October of last year

Now figures released by the Council have revealed that only 200 reports were made using the “App” between April and September 2013.

That is only 0.07% of the total number of contacts from York residents.

Last year 321 residents used the system during the equivalent period.

Many of the reports are understood to have been made by Council staff during the course of their normal duties.

During the same 6 month period, other residents used the following channels to contact the Council.

Telephone 183,385 (2012 – 140,851)
Personal visit 60,841 (36,528)
Email: 32,106 (22,034)
“Do it on line” (council web site) – 7848 (7778)

The figures show a 37% increase in the number of customers contacting the York Council this year.

This will be deeply worrying for the Council, Leadership who anticipated that changing customer preferences would see a big shift to using electronic means to contact the Council.

Electronic transactions cost a fraction of the expense incurred in dealing with personal callers.

The whole business case for the new Council HQ was based on assumption that heavy investment in state of the art IT facilities would reduce day to day running costs for the Council.

This appears so far not to be the case.

The period covered was a time when residents were besieging the Council with complaints about revised bin emptying arrangements and new traffic restrictions in the City centre.

Meanwhile the Smarter York App needs to be upgraded to cover more public service areas.

In that respect at least, it has fallen far behind proprietary web based reporting tools such as “My Council” and “Fix my Street”.

Cllr Stephen Fenton, Cllr Ashley Mason & Cllr Paula Widdowson

Dringhouses and Woodthorpe Liberal Democrats