Decisions

York Hungry Minds (YHM) has funded pilot free school breakfasts at Burton Green Primary School and Fishergate Primary. Following the success of these pilots a further 10 schools have shown interest in delivering a targeted offer for free school breakfasts. The additional schools submitted a full expression of interest, with three-year costs, considered at the Children Services and Education Directorate Management Team. All schools considered were deemed appropriate with a request that one school change (lower) their funding model to ensure it was of good value. It was agreed to recommend all the schools for 3-year funding to the York Hungry Minds Steering Group subject to funds being available. It was also agreed to recommend the original pilots for a further three-year funding. No funding is required from the council and this decision was final following confirmation of available funding at the YHM Steering Group.

Decision: Approved All expressions of interest as outlined subject to available funding.

To agree to change the charge for provision of a copy of the HMO Licence Public Register

Section 232 of the Housing Act 2004 requires every local housing authority to establish and maintain a register of all licences granted by them under Part 2 or 3 of the Act which are in force.

Section 232(4) requires the authority to ensure that the contents of the register are available at the authority’s head office for inspection by members of the public at all reasonable times.

To comply with this requirement, City of York Council allows members of the public to view a full copy of the HMO licence register at West Offices, with a 20 minute appointment being given when booked with the HMO Licensing team.

Section 232(5) requires the authority, to supply a person who requests it, with a copy (certified to be true) of the register or of an extract from it, which may be subject to payment of such reasonable fee (if any) as the authority may determine.

Details of what must be provided is detailed in The Licensing and Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation and Other Houses (Miscellaneous Provisions) (England) Regulations 2006.

Fees vary between local authorities, as each sets its own charge to recover administrative costs and there is no standard national fee.

The current charge for provision of a copy of the HMO licence public register in York is £636.00, with this fee having historically been set and amended each year, in line with annual inflationary linked increases, and agreed at the Council’s annual budget council in February each year. For 2026/2027 the proposal was to increase the fee further to £668.00.


Compared to other local authorities in England, City of York Council’s fee is significantly higher than most other local authorities, with most other authoirities charging between £25 to £100 for a copy, or free of charge in some cases.

Following a review of this charge, it is proposed that this fee in York be reduced to a lower level in order to make the register more widely accessible to those requesting a copy.

On this basis, it is proposed that the HMO Licensing Public Register Fee should be reduced to a fee of £112.50 for 2025/2026 or £118.00 for 2026/2027 (the latter is subject to council budget decision-making), with this fee based upon the time taken for officers to prepare the information for release, including any necessary redaction, and time taken entering information on the database, correspondence, invoicing and so on (estimated to be around 1½ hours).

To take account of concerns over use of the data for marketing purposes, or concern over revelation of sensitive properties, it is also recommend that the Council’s webpage at https://www.york.gov.uk/private-landlords-tenants/list-hmo-licensed-properties is updated as follows:

Copies of the full HMO licence register

Under section 232 of the Housing Act 2004, City of York Council are required are obliged to maintain and make available a public register of licensed HMOs.

The register includes details of all properties for which an HMO licence has been issued but does not include details of licence applications which have been received but the licence not yet issued.

Whilst we endeavour to make the public register as comprehensive as possible, where a property houses vulnerable tenants such as persons seeking refuge from domestic abuse, this property’s details will be redacted from the register.

The information provided on these registers sets out the number of HMOs which are currently licensed by the Council and does not provide the total number of HMOs in the city as a whole. This information should not be relied upon for deciding whether a property is an HMO or not.

If you wish to find out if a property is an HMO then you should carry out additional enquiries. A small number of properties may be excluded from this list for public safety reasons.

Please be aware that York landlords have advised us that they do not wish to receive unsolicited marketing material. The publishing of licence holders' addresses on the public register does not constitute consent of the licence holders to be contacted for marketing.

A full copy of the HMO licence register can be viewed at West Offices. Contact HMO Licensing who will be able to book you a 20-minute appointment to view the full register.

Alternatively, we can provide you with an electronic copy for a fee of £112.50

Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant (RSPARG) – Voluntary & Community Frontline Sector Allocation decisions.

This relates to the RSPARG funding from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which is to be used for prevention of, and recovery from, rough sleeping.

A minimum of 20% of the £480,000 received by CYC is mandated to be spent in the VCFS (voluntary/community frontline sector), this proposal totals £216,000 which is 45%.

The proposal is to use funds for the following:
• £40k to Peasholme Charity for Transitional Tenancy Support worker – key role for preventing homelessness and rough sleeping by working with people newly moving into a tenancy or precariously housed
• £40k to Restore to increase the existing floating support service delivered to CYC tenants with a view to maintaining tenancies and preventing homelessness
• £41k to Lived Insights to maximise pool of lived experience researchers
• £25k to CareCent towards existing city centre breakfast and shower drop-in provision, and to enable focus on those presenting from out of area with generic support needs so CYC Navigators can offer more specialised support
• £70k to York in Recovery for two part-time outreach workers (one male one female), who can work with hostels and people on the streets to signpost to services, and also offer consistent drop in at the recovery hub for people at any stage of their recovery journey. They are a LERO organization so they would be people with lived experience offering peer to peer support.

This is in line with the Homelessness strategy’s focus on multi-agency working, and all works towards prevention of, and recovery from, homelessness. The additional support and floating support made available from this funding is a step towards increasing Housing First in the city and defining the model to ensure the required support is available, and that prevention of homelessness is front and centre of York’s approach.

The outputs required in return for the grants will been defined through the process of completing Grant Agreement forms.

New license The Guildhall for the solemnization of Marriages and Registration of Civil Partnership.

The Guildhall applied to hold a license for the solemnization of Marriages and Registration of
Civil Partnerships.

This grant of approval will start from 15th January 2026 and continue, subject to revocation (Annex C),
until the 14th January 2029.

This round of the grant application process ran from 30th October – 3rd December 2025 inviting applications from wraparound providers who wished to create or expand to offer wraparound childcare places. This round has now completed and resulted in the following successful applicants:
Wraparound Revenue Grant:
o Primary Sporting Solutions Ltd (Premier Sports) at Clifton Green – Funding to deliver a 35 place breakfast and after school club at Clifton Green Primary School - £30,000.00
o Dringhouses Out of School Club – Funding to deliver an additional 25 after school club places – £15,000.00
o Wheldrake Out of School Club – Funding to deliver an additional 8 breakfast and after school club places - £6000.00

Total funded to be awarded in this round – £51,000.00