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.

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.

Council leadership policy mistake costing average York resident £50 a year

The government has announced that how individual Councillors vote on crucial budget decisions – like Council Tax levels – will, in future, be published.

In York, such decisions are often the subject of a “recorded vote” anyway although it can be weeks before vigilant taxpayers can find the records in meeting minutes.

Meanwhile the government has again offered to underwrite the income required to freeze Council Tax levels. £779,000 has been offered to the City. The funding would continue in future years.

The Council has made poor decisions over the last 3 years when turning down this funding.

Council tax

The inexperienced Labour leadership – wrongly – assumed that the subsidy would be available for 1 year only. In reality the government has built the payment into the basic grant that the City receives.

This means that York Council taxpayers are – on average – now paying over £50 a year more for local services than they would have been if the Council had accepted the central government offer.

Next year a band D council taxpayer will have to find  £1,165.54 to pay for York Council services, to which will be added the costs of Fire (4% increase planned) and Police (2% increased proposed)

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The York Council is planning to give £1 million to the Leeds Council “infrastructure fund”.

In addition, around £300,000 in additional (new) Business Rates is being “pooled” with West Yorkshire Councils.

These are optional payments with no guarantee that any of the money will be invested in York.

Local public service standards threatened by Leeds super authority

Potholes

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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Highways maintenance cuts for York revealed.

The Council has revealed how it plans to spend £2.6 million on highways and footpath resurfacing over the next financial year.

road works

The provisional expenditure is down on the £3.4 million being invested during the current year.

That in turn was well down on the budget agreed by the last Liberal Democrat administration which held power until 2011 and which regularly invested over £5 million a year in the highways network.

Carriageway surfaces are now breaking up and the repairs backlog is growing.

In the Dringhouses and Woodthorpe ward only part of the Moor Lane carriageway will be resurfaced.

No footpaths in the area will be resurfaced.

Behind closed doors logo

A full list of streets where repairs are planned can be downloaded by clicking here

A final Council highways budget for next year will be announced in March.

The decision, on which roads to resurface, was taken in another “behind closed doors” meeting. There was no consultation with residents on the options.

£1.66 million costs but no income from Tour De France?

It is scarcely 6 months before the second stage of the Tour de France cycle race is due to set off from York.

However, the Council still hasn’t identified how it will maximise income from the event.

TDF York Council budget, click to enlarge

TDF York Council budget, click to enlarge

The Council has budgeted to spend £1.66 million hosting the event which is taking place on 6th July.

Most will go on crowd control on the day although the organisers have also demanded a £480,000 “hosting fee”

£200,000 will go on road repairs and cleansing, while marketing and publicity will cost £100,000 and “legacy events” £99,000.

However the Council has so far only identified a government grant of £291,000 to offset the costs.

No local sponsorship deals have been identified although it looks like tourism businesses will be the main gainers from the event. There is talk of £88 million being generated for businesses in the region.

The additional income that could be generated from car parking, merchandising, camping etc have also not been identified although £221,000 is being spent on a “project management team”.

The absence of an agreed business plan and any criteria, on which the success or otherwise of the event can be judged, is a major concern.

Old cyclist

In response to a Freedom of Information request the Council says,

“In order to maximise value for money and benefit from appropriate economies of scale an economic impact study will be commissioned (through Leeds City Council) on behalf of all LA districts through which the tour will run. This will cover all three stages including the Cambridge to London stage and will be undertaken in conjunction with partners including all relevant LAs (inc. Cambridge, Essex, and London), Sport England, and Transport for London. The study is expected to provide impact information at a LA level (i.e. we should be able to get specific figures for York).

The detail in terms of the methodology and therefore the assessment criteria and performance indicators associated with the work are currently being developed and therefore we are not in a position to provide these at this time.

It is probable that these will be based on a standard methodology developed by Sport England which typically measures impact based on an assessment of additional visitor spend as determined through on the ground survey work. We are also discussing business survey and/or longitudinal study to measure any catalytic impact on business growth and have an ambition to include aspects of the cycling legacy work being undertaken, as well as some of the more qualitative impacts”.

Many residents would no doubt take the view that the objectives of the project should have been clear long before the Council committed £1.66 million of its scarce resources to underpinning the event.

Bizarrely it seems that some Labour Councillors are unaware of the financial risks of the project.

At the last Council meeting one (Cllr Burton) successfully proposed. “that all income generated for City of York Council from the Tour de France Grand Départ is spent on frontline services for residents

Officials have now confirmed that there is likely to be little or no income from the event which could provide a boost for Council coffers.

The Council taxpayer is likely to be over £1 million out of pocket, with front line public services being the ones to suffer when further budget reductions then become inevitable.

As previously reported, even the less than parsimonious Sheffield Council – where stage 2 finishes on 6th July – is spending much less than York on the Tour.

Some trimming of the costs of the event would seem to be a prudent and urgent necessity for the York Council.

Labour to ditch York Community Centres.

The latest in a long list of poor decisions by the Labour Council could see four community centres in York close.

The provisional budget for next year sees all the community centres (Chapelfields , Foxwood , Tang Hall , and Bell Farm) lose their Council grants.

Typically a community centre costs around £50,000 a year to run with most income generated from hiring rooms.

The Council are to cut their financial support entirely leaving some of the centres with a 5 figure budget deficit.

Already the community centre caretakers have been issued with redundancy notices (although they are likely to be redeployed within the Council).

The Council says that it wishes to see the buildings transferred into the ownership of a voluntary committee with a community asset transfer by April 2015

This seems to be what has prompted the Tang Hall centre to announce that it is changing the legal status of its voluntary committee.

The voluntary committees undertake a thankless task and deserve Council support.

The Foxwood and Chapelfields centres depend entirely on the resources of local residents to continue, while Tang Hall was only kept going when Labour Councillors were parachuted into key roles.

Burton Stone community centre future unclear

Burton Stone community centre future unclear

Burton Stone is a larger building and its future is much more unclear.

Without caretakers, the buildings will be closed to general callers reducing their use as a focal point for neighbourhood communications. One Community Centre (Tang Hall) has already leased office space to an outside organisation.

All the Community Centres are located in what the Council regards as “deprived areas” .

The Council hopes to save £180,000 through the cuts. Most of this will come from the Burton Stone centre.

NB. The Council is planning to spend £1.6 million hosting just one day of the Tour De France cycle race.

Click here to download a full list of proposed cuts (see ref Can 12)

£4 million landfill tax bill hits York as recycling performance crashes

Council performance stats click to access full report

Council performance stats click to access full report

A Council report has revealed that the amount of waste going to landfill in the City is significantly increasing.

As a result York taxpayers face a £3,918,960 bill – up over 17% on budget forecasts.

The fall in performance comes only weeks after a change in collection arrangements brought chaos to some streets in York.

The position is likely to deteriorate further over the winter as the Council is stopping collecting green waste altogether. The winter months accounted for around 18% of this type of waste last year.

The fear is that most of this will now go to landfill.

Historic recycling rates in York. Click to enlarge

Historic recycling rates in York. Click to enlarge

During the period when the Liberal Democrats led the council the amount of recycling and green waste sent for composting had substantially increased each year.

Now, against a background of delays on the longer term Allerton Park waste treatment project, prospects look increasingly bleak for both taxpayers and environmentalists in the City.

Labour add £1 million to York’s annual debt repayment levels in just 24 months

The Council has admitted that increased borrowing means that Council taxpayers are now paying £1m a year more in debt charges than in 2011.

Kings Square work

Kings Square work

Most has been used to bolster what the Council describes as its Economic Development Fund.

£18 million has been committed to this fund already which is being used to pay for projects such as:

• Refurbishment of Kings Square

• Acquisition of an “Arts Barge”

• Tour de France start

• Newgate market refurbishment

• New City centre bus stops

Of the annual additional payments around £0.5 million goes on interest charges while £0.5 makes staged repayments of the principal.

It will take over 20 years to fully repay the borrowing