Agenda item

To question the Leader and/or Executive Members in respect of any matter within their portfolio responsibility, in accordance with Standing Order B8.

Members were invited to question the Leader or Executive Members. Questions were received from the floor from the following Members, and replied to as indicated:

Questions to Cllr Douglas, Leader of the Council

Armed Forces Day

From Cllr Healey: It was reported in the Independent that the Peace Pledge Union threatened to protest the Armed Forces Day if military equipment was displayed. Will the Council Leader condemn these threats and ensure that in future years we properly honour our Armed Forces?

Response: I’m afraid I can’t really give you a full answer as quite frankly it is just fake news. So much of what was printed was absolutely, totally and utterly not the case at all, and I would say to Cllr Steward as well on that note, the fact that you said there was a ban on military vehicles is just absolutely not the case. So, what can I say – fake news, nothing to answer.

Supplementary from Cllr Healey: A surprising answer, I must say. Could the Council Leader please elaborate then on whether there were residents’ concerns, and who those residents were, particularly if they were part of an organisation, and whether any directive, advice, conversations therefore happened with the military organisations about equipment as certainly one of the cadet forces have relayed on to myself that they were asked by the media not to bring equipment?

Response: I can say to you that of course there were resident concerns made about the presence of military vehicles and also decommissioned arms on Council land, yes there were, but they weren’t from any organisations, they were from individuals who wrote to me, just as I’m sure they wrote to many people across the chamber about concerns that they have. And what I did was I decided to take a balanced approach and thought about the potential for any protest for people with concerns about that, no particular organisation, and on balance with discussion with our military partners we decided that it was the best thing to ask the Queen’s Own Yeomanry to see if they would be consenting of not bringing that equipment. And so that is the conversation that was had, it was a reasonable conversation, it was balanced, and unfortunately what we have at this point in time is a press that once they think that there is a wedge issue that can drive division in our communities and they see this issue as one of those, then they started to print fake news, and that’s where we ended up. So I think we all need to think about the language that we use. There was no ban on anything, I must have said this numerous times; it was a reasonable conversation between participants, there was a decision made, unfortunately the Queen’s Own Yeomanry therefore decided not to attend. They were more than welcome to, and that is all I can tell you. There is nothing more to it.

Supplementary from Cllr Mason: Will the Leader commit to a cross-party review for next year’s Armed Forces Day to make sure we can get an appropriate location, get it on the date that everyone else is celebrating it, a plan something that we feel is appropriate for a city with such a military history and with so many veterans living here?

Response: Yes. On that, I don’t know whether others were aware, but the plan was to have a similar day as happened in 2024, the football game at the Community Stadium which was really well attended. Unfortunately because of the Women’s Rugby World Cup coming to York this year, the stadium had to raise the pitch and reseed earlier than they would do in an average year, hence that event couldn’t take place. So the officers and the team have already booked that date in for a similar time period, it will be in early July I believe, and everybody is thoroughly looking forward to getting back to that. I also must mention to everybody that our military partners – the garrison, the Armed Forces Covenant Liaison Officer from Imphal Barracks – there was a joint decision made a couple of years ago now that Armed Forces Day in York should be about a day that people who are armed forces and their families can come together and have a day that gives them a day off from their work, so anything that requires them to bring equipment or participate in a parade was actively decided against in order to have a more informal, fun day to allow people to celebrate and enjoy with their families. We’re looking forward to getting on with that next year and the arrangements are in place already.

Point of order from Cllr Steward: That was in no way the question that was asked, the question that was asked was would there be a cross-party working group set up, not can the Council Leader list lots of potential events that may occur.

Response: It’s already organised. Unfortunately, the horse has bolted on this one.

Fair Funding Review

From Cllr Fenton: The government’s fair funding review is currently taking place. Can the Leader tell us what representations she has made to the government on this, and if, in the event that we are not successful in lobbying for York’s interests, she will be in a position where she has to raise council tax above the current maximum threshold?

Response: I imagine from that question that you likely have been briefed by officers on the work that they are carrying out at the moment around the likely impact of the fair funding review on York. That is still under assessment as I think you likely know. At this point it is really hard to see exactly where we can lobby in order to have a positive impact for the benefit of York but rest assured, that work is taking place and over the next week or so we will have a better view of that. As far as speaking to other authorities goes, I am speaking to partners, other leaders in other parts of the country, and also to the LGA just to try and understand as much as we possibly can about the fair funding review, and the impact on other authorities as well, if there are any. There will be some losers, and there will be some winners. I am talking to our MPs and our Mayor. We’re juts waiting for the final assessment as to how to best go about responding to the consultation, but also speaking to government where it’s appropriate.

Supplementary from Cllr Ayre: The second part of that question – will you categorically, yes or no, if the government allows you, rule out raising council tax above the current 4.99%?

Response: I have absolutely no idea that that will be necessary, it’s just not really a question that has any bearing on our calculations at the moment. But we cannot raise it more than 4.99%, and until we get the go-ahead I really don’t see that we’ll even be asking for it. Would we be able to do it? It's not really based in any sense of truth or reality at this point in time.

York Central

From Cllr Taylor: Obviously Leeman Road has been rerouted which is a massive and significant development, and probably the first thing that residents in the area can see about the area that’s going to change for the rest of their lives. There’s been a lot of history around that, there are still live views on it and there’s still work to be done to address some of the issues around that, but looking ahead, what work is being done to keep bringing the overall development forward, and what next big things can residents expect to see, and when?

Response: It was absolutely great to see that the travel routes through York Central have now been opened, but of course we’re all alert to the challenges that will continue for those communities that are immediately around the development to make sure that they feel that York Central is delivering for them and they are heard within that. I know that engagement from the York Central Partnership has been taking place and I would really welcome hearing from residents as to how they think that’s going. As far as the development goes, I hope that people have taken the opportunity to go and use those travel routes that are open now, there’s fantastic cycle paths and footways, bus lanes and also the road, and I think you can see the scale of the project that is ahead for us. We had absolutely commitment from the government about the civil service building that is going to go on there and that is a key part of the development, it’s a key anchor tenant and it will drive innovation and also investment into the site, so we should start to see that coming up out of the ground soonish because of course that already has planning permission. The other elements that are going forward are the NRM expansion, that has been given the funding that allows that to take place as well, so that should be starting before the end of the year, in November I think they are hoping to get the spades in the ground on the next stage of their work. And then also the developers on York Central are going to be bringing forward phase one planning applications towards the beginning of 2026, so that we can see up to a thousand homes, including affordable homes, commercial space, green space, so it really is moving ahead. There’s always going to be tonnes of work to do, there will always be issues that we need to sort out together. We want to hear from residents as that progresses, so please do get in contact, but it’s looking very rosy at the moment.

Supplementary from Cllr Taylor: Thanks for the answer, I suppose one of the big outstandingto-dos on the list is the riverside path upgrade which bumped up the priority list significantly as a result of York Central, so can yourself or maybe the Executive Member for Transport provide an update on where that project is to reassure residents that it’s very much still at the top of the agenda and that it will be seen through by this administration?

Response: Absolutely, it is very much a priority, Cllr Ravilious will be better placed to give an update on that.

Additional response from Cllr Ravilious, Executive Member for Transport: Yes, I had a briefing from officers recently, and I’m very happy to talk to you further about that as I can only say a short amount now. We’re progressing to detailed design by the end of this year, and in the meantime they’re carrying out embankment stability, looking at reinforcing the concrete of the riverbank which needs to be done in parallel. That’s getting started this summer, and they are also looking at removing some sort of underground storage with the Environment Agency, which is also taking place this summer. They are doing all the groundwork, and moving forward with the Traffic Regulation Order as well, so that will come to a Decision Session soon. So it’s all progressing, we’ve got the officers in place, and we are trying to bring that forward as fast as possible.

Supplementary from Cllr Widdowson: Just building on Cllr Douglas’ answer, can you confirm that the civil service jobs that are being brought to the site are new civil service jobs, they’re not being moved from one place to another?

Response: 2,600 jobs is the capacity of that building, we at this point are expecting that there will be a majority of new jobs in York, but there are already civil service jobs in York, particularly at King’s Pool, and so we are waiting to see what’s being moved over to York Central, but those plans haven’t been finalised yet; it’s still a good chunk of new jobs which is great.

Questions to Cllr Kent, Executive Member for Environment and Climate Emergency

Parks Investment

From Cllr Coles: I understand that this week, and it’s in her report, that there has been some budget allocation to spend on parks in the city. I think it’s up to a million pounds to invest in park improvements, and pride in place is a really big priority for my Westfield colleague Cllr Nelson and I, and we were at Chesney Fields Park at the weekend. We think there would be a very strong case for Chesney Fields to benefit from this new investment, but I wondered if the Executive Member could set out the types of investment that might be seen through the parks investment fund?

Response: I’m delighted to do so. First of all, if I could just clarify, the investment fund is £500,000, but because officers have done a lot of work on looking at section 106 and third party funding that we can put towards this, it increases it by at least another £200,000, and I’m hoping it will amount to around a million or just under a million in the end, but that last part has still got to be worked through. The criteria that we’ve set out to use it are fivefold, they’re based mainly on areas of indices of multiple deprivation, so areas which have most need, as you’d expect. We are also looking at age since last investment, so areas which haven’t had any funding for many years. Some of our playgrounds and parks have not had anything spent on them for over twenty years, some items of equipment are over twenty years old, and you can tell, they are uninspiring to say the least. We need to address some key infrastructure. Because one of our criteria is accessibility for any project that we are able to undertake, we want to make it as accessible to as many people as possible, and part of that is key infrastructure, things like footpaths. It doesn’t sound exciting but it really is exciting if it means you can get into and out of a park safely and easily. It may include removing structures which block sightlines or which make people feel unsafe in the park, and we’ll talk to communities about that and also work on the great work that Make Space for Girls has done in looking at how areas are laid out can make people feel that it’s inhospitable or that they might feel trapped in corners, so if we can open spaces up or make them feel more friendly and usable we’ll focus on that. We also have a priority to try and increase the number of Green Flags in our city, that was a manifesto promise. It was great that we saw Rowntree Park regaining its Flag this week; it missed out last year because of the extended flooding when planting couldn’t get done in time. We’re now back up to four and I very much hope we’ll add to that in the next couple of years with the assistance of this fund. As for Westfield, I myself was out at Chesney Fields with one of the council officers looking at various bits of equipment. Westfield scores quite highly on all of those criteria, so I’d be surprised if there isn’t some love and attention paid there which it thoroughly deserves, and I look forward to talking to the communities about that.

Supplementary from Cllr Baxter: Following Cllr Coles’ question you won’t be surprised that I’m going to ask about Hull Road Park. It’s a brilliant park and thanks to the Friends of Hull Road group, they’ve got a real chance of doing the improvements there that they want, so I wondered if Cllr Kent could highlight what benefits that could bring to my park, and especially in terms of accessibility; we have a great accessible rail which is fantastic for the park, it’d be great to see some more of that throughout the city.

Response: I know your and Cllrs Pavlovic and Moroney, your ward colleagues’ love of the park. I’ve gone along to a Friends of Hull Road Park meeting to meet you there and talk to residents, and I’ve been there on other occasions where it’s so fantastic to see the tennis courts full of people of all ages playing and a thriving community, not least the TCV volunteers who do huge amounts of work there, and I’d really like to offer my thanks to them. I can’t definitively say because no projects have been chosen yet what exactly will happen, but again Hull Road Park does score highly on those criteria. The accessibility trail there is great, but you might know that one of the footpaths there actually has a gap in the middle of it, which means you can get so far but not beyond it, and various bits of fencing in Hull Road Park are also needing attention; I think some of the play equipment is also rather old, to put it mildly, so I hope that all those sorts of things can be looked at. As we all know, all these things are expensive and although this is a once in a generation investment of £500,000 it won’t cover everything, but I’m really sure we’re going to make significant improvements to make as many parks as we can fun, beautiful and accessible to all.

Questions to Cllr Pavlovic, Executive Member for Housing, Planning and Safer Communities

Neighbourhood Policing

From Cllr Warters: Under community safety I note the Executive Member referring to an extra twelve police officers and nine PCSOs shortly to join York and Selby Neighbourhood Policing teams. An increase in officers all well and good you may think, but it’s 21 extra officers across a huge, enormous, ridiculously sized geographical area. Can the Executive member indicate what this actually translates to in terms of neighbourhood policing officers on the ground in York? For example, using York Outer East – that’s a police designation – as a good demonstration, a mere five officers cover from Tang Hall to Gate Helmsley, Kexby, Elvington, Wheldrake, Escrick, Acaster Malbis and all places in between. The constant theme from residents is lack of visible policing. It is a physical impossibility for five officers to cover an area like this properly. So how many to York, and how many on the ground in any particular shift please? I appreciate the Executive Member will take some time to answer but at least he is taking the responsibility to answer when the Monitoring Officer amazingly states that such matters are nothing to do with the City of York Council any longer.

Response: I’m a bit non-plussed not being the Chief Constable, but I’ll give it my best shot. Over the York and Selby Division, as I put in my report, there will be an extra twelve PCs and nine PCSOs. There will be a significant uplift; as you know, there’s a new neighbourhood policing Inspector. Neighbourhood policing forms the basis of much of my discussions with the Divisional Commander, with the Deputy Mayor for Policing; it comes up regularly at the Police and Fire Panel where we hold the Deputy Mayor to account, so although the Monitoring Officer is right in that I don’t influence the operational deployment of either PCSOs or PCs, it is incredibly important. I get the point he is trying to make, we need to see more neighbourhood policing. The government have put an extra £2million into additional neighbourhood policing in North Yorkshire; that money is being spent, officers are being recruited, they will be operational. I will endeavour to find out exactly what number it is that will be deployed within the York element of the York and Selby Division, but the point is well made that we want to see neighbourhood policing in those areas where crime and antisocial behaviour is at its highest.

Supplementary from Cllr Warters: My brief supplementary question, thanking the Executive Member for trying to answer, is: is he content that five police officers in a geographical area like York Outer East is at all consistent with neighbourhood policing and will the addition of these officers make any measurable difference to that situation?

Response: I can’t answer the first part of the question because I can’t confirm or deny that there are five neighbourhood officers; I’ll take his word for it until I’ve got definitive figures. The point of the question is, is neighbourhood policing important? Yes, it is. Is there going to be additional resource to it? Yes, there is. Will it make a difference? It will, I firmly believe that, but there are challenging situations, from a policing perspective, from a council perspective, and we will do everything we can to work together with our colleagues in the police to develop joint problem-solving approaches, because whilst we can’t do everything ourselves, we are always better when we work together. I hope that you will also support that intention, because I know that this is a matter of significant concern to you; you copy me in to all of the emails that you send to the Chief Constable which are many and varied.

Questions to Cllr Steels-Walshaw, Executive Member for Health, Wellbeing and Adult Social Care

Healthwatch

From Cllr Cullwick: Scrapping local Healthwatch, Wes Streeting said ‘patients do not need ventriloquists’. Will the Council Leader and Executive Member condemn this and recognise Healthwatch’s vital role in this city and elsewhere amplifying patient voices, including those who can’t speak up or write to the government urging a rethink?

Response: When I saw the NHS 10 Year Plan, like everyone else, I was really, really shocked how it spoke about Healthwatch, and I would like to say, before I go into this any further, that we really are mindful that there are staff and volunteers at Healthwatch at the moment who are going through a really difficult, uncertain time. I will try and be really mindful of them, and say that everyone in York truly, truly does value Healthwatch; they provide a huge contribution to our community. When I first came into this role, I found that I valued their reports, I still really value them; they were able to show a way of understanding and hearing people’s voices and people’s voices were so clear, they were done in a respectful, accurate picture throughout. These relationships with our charities and organisations in York cannot be underestimated, they are so valuable and they also provide a fantastic service. They are not just the reports; they are signposting, and I want to be really clear that we want to continue to engage and identify issues. Our Health and Care Partnership in York is a brilliant example of success and everyone on this board goes above and beyond in providing for York and reducing health inequalities, working for the people of York. We have been in discussions with the ICB and they have been very clear that what we are doing at our Health and Care Partnership is fantastic and shows really effective examples of joined-up working. They have been really clear with us that as long as we are meeting our statutory duties, we can design our pathways and services, and we would love to see Healthwatch be maintained. We recognise the new structures are needed but we will do our very utmost to maintain that independent voice for our residents. It’s too early to say exactly how this is going to look, but as a Health and Care Partnership we will do our very best to continue listening and innovating for people.

Supplementary from Cllr Cullwick: I’m very pleased to hear the Executive Member taking the stand that she is, and I’m pleased that she disagrees so strongly withWes Streeting; I’m sure you’ll communicate that to him. Do you agree also that pushing people to provide feedback through an app and only through an app will only serve to widen heath inequalities and disenfranchise millions of patients?

Response: Of course I am concerned about digital exclusion of people, and this is also something that’s very clear in the 10 Year NHS Plan, that yes, absolutely there will be more going towards digital, but also my hope through reading it is that will free up extra support to be available for those people who absolutely are unable to use digital. I will continue to advocate to people that digital is not the only way, that people do need to have access in alternative ways.

Questions to Cllr Webb, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education

Children’s Services Ofsted inspection

From Cllr Clarke: There has been much made in recent months of the Council’s Outstanding in all areas Ofsted judgment for Children’s Services. It’s been mentioned a few times, I’ll mention it again – Outstanding in all areas. While this is fantastic and very welcome news can the Executive Member outline some of the areas that needed addressing to ensure our services matched what we expect for our children and young people?

Response: I’m obviously very, very happy to talk about our Outstanding Ofsted result. I was gutted that I couldn’t talk to you about it at the last Council meeting – I know that all councillors at that point did know about it but we weren’t allowed to for timing reasons. It’s important to remember that the last inspection under the Liberal Democrats and the Greens was a Requires Improvement judgment. We’re the only authority in nine years to move from Requires Improvement to Outstanding. The key thing, the key change that took place that’s really important for members is around corporate parenting, and that’s something that is important to mention her. I have mentioned corporate parenting before, that we should all take it incredibly seriously. In the inspection, it stated that political leaders and the Chief Operating Officer are well informed about priorities and challenges that come through our Corporate Parenting Board. In the previous inspection the voice of the child was clearly not where it needed to be, and I’m so glad that we’ve transformed the Corporate Parenting Board so that I have two young people co-chairing with me, and they lead on most of the items, it’s a much more inclusive meeting now and that’s really, really positive from our point of view. I’ll just finish with responding to Cllr Ayre and Cllr Steward – thank you for acknowledging that this happened, I think it’s really positive. Cllr Ayre, I knew you’d claim it; it was inevitable that you would claim it, but that seems to be what you do. Thank you Cllr Steward for just praising, I thought that was very kind, thank you.  

Supplementary from Cllr Crawshaw: You mentioned corporate parenting and I just thought that it’s an opportunity to reiterate some of the work that’s going on around foster placements and placement sufficiency, and in particular what we’re doing to help support fostering in the city?

Response: What I would say on that is that since this Labour administration came into power – we committed in our manifesto to reviewing fostering services and supporting those who are most vulnerable – one of the things that we’ve changed is basically the pay of our foster carers firstly, so now if you’re on the lowest rate of foster carer pay you’re actually paid more, and now it’s become competitive with other areas in the region. That is a big step forward in an expensive city like York. We’ve moved to four bands which are based around the needs of the children presenting into those foster carers, and we’ve increased the support for those foster carers in times of hardship, which inevitably they will face. I think it’s a great opportunity to finish with celebrating Sue and Martin Hill who recently you might have seen in the press. They have been fostering children in this city for forty years; they’ve been fostering for longer than I’ve been alive. I know that’s a surprise to a lot of you, but no, they’ve been fostering for forty years. That is amazing, and I want to put on record and personally thank them for what they do. Thank you very much.

[Cllr Vassie arrived at 7.58 pm during this item].