Minutes

From 5:30pm to 7:00pm there was an opportunity prior to the formal meeting for residents to talk informally to ward members, officers of the council and representatives from other organisations as listed under attendance.

Cllrs Looker and Watson welcomed everybody to the meeting.

Inspector Mark Khan introduced Sergeant Colin Sutherland who gave the Police update. He introduced the Police Community Support Officers and urged residents to approach them if they needed to.

He mentioned initiatives especially anti-social behaviour in the Scarborough Bridge and Museum Gardens area. He mentioned that they were tackling the problems pro-actively. As an example he mentioned that youths had been caught doing graffiti in the underpass at Navigation Road. The youths were taken to their parents who were told what they’d done and then returned to the underpass to clean of the graffiti. The Police, with the Council’s Architectural Liaison Officer are looking into ways of removing or altering the underpass.

The City Centre alcohol exclusion zone is going through consultation at the moment. It had been trialled in Portsmouth,  Brighton and other towns and cities with success. The aim of the scheme is to target anti-social behaviour linked to alcohol not families or individuals.

Home Office Funding was mentioned because it had been covered in ‘The Press’. Inspector Mark Khan said that The Home Office have told the force that they have to save £5m across the whole of North Yorkshire. The force was conducting a review to find out where savings can be made. North Yorkshire has the lowest crime rates in the country and that York has 50% of the crime in the County but only 30% of the force. He said that the Chief Constable was committed to Community Policing.

He then mentioned the location of the Police Office in the City Centre. An office behind the Magistrate’s Court was being considered. There was also a review with the Council and Westfield School for locating an office in Westfield School. The plan was to share offices with partner agencies.

A resident asked if it could be noted that PC Milligan had done a very good job looking after some residents of Park St. after an incident.

Cllr. Brian Watson mentioned Duncombe Place. John Wood had printed some mock-ups of how it might look with the new lighting. Cllr Watson asked for comments to be written on the back of the copies and returned to him.

John Oxley gave a description of the process involved to become a World Heritage Site, some of the advantages and suggested some of the possible disadvantages. He told the meeting that the process of consultation would take a year and that nominations to UNESCO wouldn’t happen until 2015 or later.

There was discussion about the boundaries of the site. Whether it would be within the city walls or just a part of that. John Oxley also mentioned that UNESCO seemed to be concentrating on sites other than Western Europe as there were already several Medieval Walled cities on the list.

He mentioned that in his opinion even going through the process would have beneficial results and could raise the standards of planning and strategy in the city. He asked if people could complete surveys and look at the on-line survey to complete that.

The Planning Panel was re-elected by a show of hands – a list of Planning Panel members is going to be compiled to make sure all the details are accurate.

James Player gave a short presentation on the work of Age Concern and their work with older people within the ward. Paul Ramskill talked about the work of Street Sport York and that they hoped to reach 4,500 people between 5 – 18 years old in the year. There was a discussion about the benefits of Alleygating.

There was a discussion about illegal car parking and traffic wardens. It went on to cover the cost of the residents’ parking permits. Some problems along the river from Museum Gardens to Scarborough Bridge were mentioned.