SIX months after a planning application was submitted, the people behind an ambitious plan to create a new floating music, drama and exhibition venue on the Ouse are still waiting for a council decision.

The Arts Barge team put their planning application in to City of York Council in late July last year, but the case still has not made it to a committee for a decision.

The group have bought the barge - the Selby Tony - and early last year brought it into York. It is currently moored in the Foss Basin awaiting its full fit-out, but needs planning permission before it can be permanently moored on the banks of the Ouse in Tower Gardens.

A target determination date was set for Monday, September 26, but one extension of time has already been granted. With the Arts Barge application absent from the January planning meeting's agenda, it will be at least another month before a decision is made.

Since the application went in, dozens of supporters have written to the council to support the scheme but objectors have also been in touch about their concerns over noise, river safety, and the impact of the barge on the conservation area.

The project architect has now drawn up a response to objections, saying that the noise estimations have been agreed by council experts, and trying to correct erroneous ideas that the barge will attract anti social and disruptive stag and hen parties.

In the meantime, the backers are working on funding applications so they can get building work started as soon as possible, and so arts projects can get started.

Hannah West, a co-director of the Arts Barge project, said they are working on bids to both the Arts Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and were trying to raise the final £200,000 needed for the project in the first half of this year.

Those funding bids could also help with a community history project to capture the memories of the river's industrial past.

Hannah said: "We want to look at at the heritage of the river and the barge, and the industrial culture there was in York.

"Even in the 1950s, it was absolutely crammed with barges - they would have been right up and down the riverbank unloading goods brought up from Hull."

The group have been doing archive research to find out more about the river's history, and they want to use their findings and stories gathered from people who remember the area to create exhibitions, drama and music to represent the river's past - to run before the barge is open and during its opening.