TALK about cutting it fine.

York has until early next year to agree a local plan that will shape the city's future.

Fail to make that deadline and we run the risk of Whitehall imposing a plan. York could also stand to lose millions of pounds in 'New Homes Bonus'.

So will a plan be ready in time?

Last September, the city's new ruling Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition pledged one would. A cross-party Local Plan Working Group would meet every month until one was agreed, council leader Chris Steward said.

Since then, however, the working group has met only three times - and not once since November.

Cllr Steward and the authority's Liberal Democrat deputy leader Keith Aspden now insist work has been going on behind the scenes, and that things will move forward this summer.

The working group will meet next month, a recommendation will be put to the council's Executive, and the public will then be consulted, they say.

Labour, however, say there have been "nine months of no progress followed by three months of total silence", and claim that privately the ruling coalition accept they will miss the government's deadline.

There is, as usual, a lot of politics being played here.

But it is precisely this inability of local politicians to sit down together and thrash out an agreement they can all live with that has, for decades, prevented York from adopting a local plan. Astonishingly, the city has been without one since the 1950s - leaving it at risk of overdevelopment or the wrong kind of development.

Time is rapidly running out to meet the government's deadline. If local politicians fail again, it will be a long time before York people forgive them.