Agenda item

At this point in the meeting members of the public who have registered to speak can do so. Members of the public may speak on agenda items or on matters within the remit of the Executive.

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It was reported that there had been two registrations to speak at the meeting under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

Gwen Swinburn spoke on governance matters in relation to procurement and the budget. It was referenced that the procurement report stated that the strategy was to be presented directly to Executive for approval. That meant there was no routine independent scrutiny of a document that guided procurement decisions worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

It was added that in those circumstances, recognised good practice, including CIPFA and National Audit Office guidance, would expect the strategy itself to operationalise governance. That meant setting out decision routes, member oversight points, treatment of key decisions and cumulative value, handling of extensions and variations, escalation, and routes to audit and scrutiny. It was felt that on that basis, the proposed strategy fell short. That whilst it asserted strong governance and accountability, it did not embed those mechanisms in the strategy itself.

There was also a specific concern about risk. That the decision report stated that there were “no known risks” associated with this strategy. That statement was considered objectively unsustainable. That the Audit and Governance Committee tomorrow contained extremely critical audit reports on capital projects massive overspends. Good practice would expect those inherent risks to be acknowledged and addressed within this strategy and they were not.

This represented a clear change from York’s previous approach. An earlier procurement strategy explicitly embedded governance in the document itself. It linked procurement to key decision thresholds, required significant procurements and contract extensions to appear on the Forward Plan, and treated extensions and cumulative contract value as governance decision points. Those safeguards were no longer set out in the proposed strategy and had not been replaced. That was considered a material diminution of governance. It reduced clarity, visibility, and democratic control over how major procurement decisions were taken.

Given the scale of spend this strategy will guide, and the absence of Audit and Governance scrutiny, Members were requested not to determine the strategy this evening, but to refer the strategy to Audit and Governance at its next meeting.

Reference was made to a specific, evidence-based table addressing the governance issues that had been raised, which enabled the team and that Committee to consider whether the strategy adequately operationalised the Council’s own governance arrangements before approval.

Joe Nasson spoke in relation to agenda item 10, Financial Strategy 2026/27 to 2030/31. He stated that it was a deeply disappointing budget for so many people who expected that with a Labour Council that they would start to see reductions in the cost of living, more affordability, and better local services. That the budget included further cuts to day-to-day local services that residents relied on and that it would only get worse in the next few years.

He added that even with a maximum council tax rise of 4.99% each year, York will be the lowest spending council per head of its kind in the country by 2028. That instead of a budget to start repairing the damage done to local councils over the last 15 years, we were offered more than £4m of cuts in 2026 with a further £2m written in for 2027 and cuts to vital support for some of our most vulnerable residents. This included £400,000 reduction in government funding for the household support fund and discretionary housing payments. That many York residents, which included many households in work, relied on these grants to supplement low household incomes.

That instead of providing hope for 2026, the budget promised the start of a £2.5m transformation programme to further cut local services to close the £20m funding gap for the next two years. That every aspect of council spending was to be considered, ranging from libraries to bus subsidies to grants to voluntary organisations. That there will be no areas left unaffected. More services will be distanced from residents through digitisation and more public assets will be sold off. 

As a Green Party campaigner, it was considered a let-down for York residents. That we lived in one of the richest countries in the world and were unable to provide decent services for residents to tackle the high cost of living. The Executive was urged to challenge central government and put this right.