Decision details

1. Reimagining York’s streets

…to tell a new story about our city centre

York’s city centre is a world class destination for retail, hospitality, and office accommodation. Outperforming high streets across the country, with more till receipts more visitors and internationally renowned festivals, York has ambitions for its city centre to rival any. A more accessible, sustainable, family friendly destination that provides a global platform for Great Britain.

2. In October 2024 at the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority Executive Meeting, £430k funding from the Mayoral Investment Fund was approved to develop a public realm improvement strategy for city centre public spaces, delivery strategy and identified pipeline of capital regeneration projects.

3. The development of a public realm improvement strategy is a continuation of the Our City Centre project (formerly named My City Centre). This project developed a 10-year ‘Our City Centre Vision’, which was based on extensive public engagement and stakeholder involvement. The vision defined a ‘long term social, environmental and economic strategic vision for a sustainable future for York city centre’, responding to the changing consumer behaviours, regulatory change for accessibility and business activity and climate change.

4. The Public Realm Improvement Strategy will aim to deliver on the outcomes of the Our City Centre Vision, to ensure that the city centre, as a key economic driver for the whole city, will benefit from improved quality of the public realm and improved legibility of links between city centre attractions, culminating in economic benefits associated with city centre activity. Implementation of the strategy will help the city to maintain its reputation as a world class visitor destination and to create direct financial value from increased footfall.

5. There are currently several key developments within the city centre, such as York Central, Coney Street Riverside and the development of an Area Action Plan for the Abbey Precinct. The public realm improvement strategy will provide a key reference strategy during the critical development stage of these developments, providing opportunity to work closely with key partners, to understand and shape the role each of these spaces will bring to the city.

6. It is proposed that, due to the specialist nature of the public realm improvement works, a specialist consultant is procured to undertake the work, helping to build the brief (RIBA Stage 1), and carrying out Concept Design (RIBA Stage 2). Due to the resource which would be required to carry out multiple procurements for consultants, and the benefits of continuity of using the same design team, it is recommended that the same consultant is procured across the stages of work.

7. It is proposed that the ‘My’ approach to consultation is adopted for this work. This approach was successfully used in previous phases of the project and the My Castle Gateway scheme. Over 5,000 contributions to the vision development have been made to date on Our City Centre, including almost 1,000 questionnaire responses in the most recent stage to test the draft vision. The consultation process engaged with the public across a wide range of platforms, from pop-up events and interactive consultation stands in early stages, through use of the council’s Our City publication (received by all households) and interest group attendance, to social media videos and animations, wide press coverage and the interactive Facebook live question and answer event.

8. The resource levels required to undertake an extensive consultation process, such as the ‘My’ approach, cannot be resourced fully in house. It is proposed that an external consultant will be appointed to undertake the consultation and analysis of outputs.

Approve the recommendations within this report:
1) To procure a specialist consultant in relation to the public realm improvement works to help build the brief (RIBA Stage 1), and carry out Concept Design (RIBA Stage 2).
2) To procure an external consultant to undertake the consultation and analysis of outputs adopting the ‘My’ approach to consultation
3) To use the funding which has been allocated through the Mayoral Combined Authority to progress this work.

Reject the tender for a consultant to undertake the public realm improvement strategy - Due to the specialist nature of the public realm improvement strategy, it is recommended that experienced and competent external consultant undertakes the work, to allow York’s strategy to be in line with current trends in regeneration and placemaking, and to compete with other leading cities. A consultant has been recommended rather than a short, fixed term member of staff, as it is a discrete piece of work and would not justify the level of HR resource required to recruit this post.
Reject the approach for consultation – This is not recommended due to the high levels of interest the project is likely to generate and the high reputational risk should consultation not be managed to an appropriate level. The ‘My’ approach is an approach the public are familiar with, having been used across a number of high profile capital projects.
Accept the approach to consultation but reject the tender for a specialist consultation consultant – The level of resource required to deliver the proposed approach to consultation cannot be fully resourced in house. A consultant has been recommended rather than a short, fixed term member of staff, as it is a discrete piece of work and would not justify the level of HR resource required to recruit this post.