Agenda and minutes

The surgery gives you the chance to meet and speak with your councillors, street environment officer, safer neighbourhood policing team, neighbourhood management officer and visiting speakers informally.

Residents had the opportunity to speak with Councillors Ian Gillies, Paul Healey and Ben Hudson; Rachel Stewart (Street Environment Officer); PS Anna Daniels, PCSO Nigel Colley; PCSO Elle Smith; Cindy Benton and Julie Hood (Neighbourhood Management Unit)

Including an update on any action points.

Cllr Ben Hudson welcomed everyone to the meeting.

The minutes from the last formal meeting (April 2010) and the notes from the informal BBQ in July were agreed and signed by Cllr Hudson.

The Safer Neighbourhoods Team for Rural West York will give an update on police operations within the ward and answer any questions you have.

PC Anna Daniels provided an update on the work of the Rural West Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team.  She welcomed PCSO Elle Smith to the team. The following points were made:

Since April 2010 there have been 229 crimes, this is 26 more than the same period last year.

There have been 53 reported incidents of anti-social behaviour between July and September an increase on the 34 reported incidents last year, for the same period.  These are predominantly in Poppleton, and are currently reducing.

Overall crime in the ward has reduced by 6%.

The Policing priorities, determined by residents for this year, are antisocial behaviour, theft and speeding. 

The team continue to work on antisocial behaviour and theft, the work on speeding has closed down.  If there are any issues with speeding the 95 alive forms can be completed, which will help traffic management determine the priority areas.

Theft in the ward is mostly theft of bikes and theft of petrol at petrol stations.

The following questions were raised:

Q.        Has the cycle tagging had any effect in regards to returning stolen cycles to their owners?

A.        In York as a whole, recovered bikes are being returned to their owners,  Operation Spoke is a development of cycle tagging, which is proving to be more effective.  The Safer Neighbourhood Team carry UV lights which are used to identify the bikes.  Bikes can be marked at Police surgeries, dates of which are in Your Ward and on the website.

Q.        If a bike is stolen from a garage or house is this classed as bike theft?

A.        It becomes  burglary if stolen from a house, garage or outbuilding.

Q.            Poppleton firework display is expecting 3,000 people, are the necessary measures in place to Police this event

A.        All the preparations are in hand.

Sally Burns, Director, will explain about the work and responsibilities of the Communities and Neighbourhoods Directorate.

Sally Burns, Director Communities and Neighbourhoods gave a presentation of the services delivered by the Directorate and the opportunities it offers.

She explained that the Communities and Neighbourhoods Directorate was formed on April1st 2010, and consists of three service areas.  They are:

Environment which is made up of highways, waste, street environment, parking, cleaning and fleet management.

Housing and Public Protection which is made up of the management of housing stock, safer York, environmental health, trading standards, the crematorium and the registry office.

Communities and Culture which is made up of the neighbourhood management unit, culture, arts, adult education, play, libraries, equalities and voluntary and community.

This gives the opportunity to make efficiencies in services e.g. officers working in the community bringing information which may not be part of their core work and passing the information to the relevant officer, so creating more value from existing resources.

Area based working pilot.

·        This pilot covers six wards, of which Rural West is one

·        Will run for a 12 month period

·        Builds on the strengths of the ward committee structure

·        Is a partnership model

·        Involves evaluation including service delivery and efficiencies, neighbourhood plans and increased engagement.

Currently we mostly deliver ‘one size fits all’ services, the pilot project will design new ways of addressing issues.  These will be based on local knowledge, residents priorities and profiles of the ward.

The following questions were raised:

Q. Harewood Whin, at times, creates issues in the area, with litter on the bypass towards Hessay.

A. There have been focussed litter picks in the past and we are working with the board to address the issue.  The Directorate also supports voluntary groups to undertake litter picks and works with Community Payback to address these issues.

Q. As Rural West have few issues will they have less resources?

A. Hopefully not.  Minimum service needs to be determined, there is a need to improve the quality of life for all residents of York whilst being as fair as possible.

Winter Maintenance

Following the unprecedented winter last year a full review of the winter maintenance service has been undertaken.  This has included what work is undertaken, when and where.

Several developments have been included within the service which include:

·        The identification of secondary routes being identified

·        Obtaining a gritter for cycle routes

·        If this winter is similar to last yea,r builders bags (which usually contain sand) of salt will be placed at strategic points throughout the City.

·        There is a team of Officers on standby monitoring the temperature who will instruct the gritters when necessary.

The potholes created last year have all been repaired.

Your opportunity to raise any issues that have not been covered by the agenda including questions about the local improvement scheme suggestions in the Ward Action insert.

There were no further issues, comments or questions.