Agenda and minutes

The drop-in surgery gives you the opportunity to talk to your councilllors, safer neighbourhood police team, street environment officer, neighbourhood management officer and visiting speakers in an informal setting.

Apologies from Simon Haddock, Street Sports York and Pat Holgate, Bootham and Clifton Out and About.

During the surgery residents had the opportunity to talk to Graham Trewhella and Nigel Robson and see plans about the development at Nestle South Site. They also had the chance to talk to Rachel Stewart, Street Environment Officer and the Safer Neighbourhood Team. About 30 residents took one of the audible carbon monoxide detectors that the ward committee had funded.

It was decided to allow Sarah Nicholson talk on behalf of the York Youth Council and Jo Gilliland speak on behalf of Active York before the meeting as they had to get away early.

Sarah Nicholson explained that York Youth Council has approached each ward committee to ask for a contribution to help set up a city-centre place for young people to meet (Scheme 21 on the Ward Action insert). So far the Youth Council has raised £94,000 and are a registered charity. The location is on Fossgate and they have spoken to residents and businesses in the area who are positive about the ‘Youth Café”. There were questions about opening times but these cannot be resolved until it is opened. It was also made clear that this does not take the funding from City of York Council youth provision.

Jo Gilliland spoke about the ‘Fund for the Gifted’ (Scheme 17) project which supports young sports people and their coaches. She explained that the fund can help families with the expenses of equipment, travel and training for promising young sports people.

The safer neighbourhood team will give an update on their activities and operations in the area.

Before Sgt Martin Metcalfe spoke Councillor King read out a letter form a resident praising the safer neighbourhood team for their intervention in getting abusive anti-social behaviour stopped.

Sgt Metcalfe handed out his contact details asking residents to ring him if they have any problems. He explained that crime is up slightly in the area but it only amounted to a handful of incidents a year. He told the meeting that the Clifton team carried out 55 drugs warrants and over 200 stop and searches of suspects in the last year. The team have visited most houses in the area and have given out free timers for lights and low-energy bulbs.

Some of the increase in crime is casued by thefts form local shops but the team have visited the shops and given advice which has reduced the number of incidents.

We will give an update on the developments in the ward including the Nestle South Site and the Shipton Street School site.

Graham Trewhella presented information about the outline planning proposal for the Nestle South Site. He explained about the east of the site being commercial the centre having accommodation for the elderly and the West of the site being residential. The proposal is for a footpath to run through the centre of the site linking all the open spaces that have been designed in. He showed an illustration of the relative heights of the buildings being 5 stories on the east working towards 3 stories on the west.

Nigel Robson explained about the traffic on the site. During peak morning periods it will add in an extra 180 cars and the afternoon peak more than 200. He explained that there is no through road from Wigginton Road to Haxby Road in the proposals except for buses and that the plans have restricted the amount of parking so as not to encourage additional parking.

There were questions but many of these were about who would develop the site which hasn’t been decided yet. It was also asked if this is a good time to start the process. Graham said that they felt that the type and size of the development would attract a developer. Other questions revolved around times that the work would be done the amount of disturbance etc but this cannot be determined until a developer is appointed.

There were questions about the trees along the Sustrans cyclepath to the south of the site. It was explained that many of the trees were on the Sustrants side and wouldn’t be removed. In the proposal there are two new access points to the cycle path but these haven’t been finalized yet and may not appear in the final development.

We will talk about the proposed schemes for next year. This is your chance to tell people about any schemes you have suggested and to get more information about schemes you support.

In addition to the earlier discussion about the Youth Council and Active York schemes `lee from York St John University Student Union explaine about their proposal to forge stronger links with the community by having community co-ordinators to work with residents and come to ward committee meetings (scheme 7). Another resident supported the proposal to investigate traffic calming on Clifton Green (Scheme 1).

One resident questioned the alleygating at Kitchener Street(scheme 5), this is only a suggestion made by a resident and before putting in alleygates all residents affected are consulted. The find for increased recycling was mentioned and it was asked if £3,000 was too much considering the increase in recycling collection now being done by the council. It was explained that this will be considered but that part of the fund would be used to continue the kerbside recycling of garden waste for streets that don’t get a regular collection.

Because other items had overrun Rachel Stewart was available for residents to take their issues to while Have your say was on. Residents still had the opportunity to have their say as well as talking to Rachel.

Your chance to ask questions about local issues and concerns not covered on the agenda.

One resident asked about the orbital cycle route and they were directed to the Cycle City pages on the website. Another resident asked about wheelie bin collections in their street their enquiry will be forwarded to the Waste Strategy team. There were no other issues raised.