• Tax to rise 3.7%
  • Leaders vow to focus on key services and vulnerable residents...
  • ... but debt worker to be axed
  • £10m extra for both housing and roads
  • Parking to become more expensive
  • £500k boost for Haxby library
  • New warning over stadium project
  • £800k to be spent on drains, after last year's crisis

COUNCIL tax is to rise by nearly four per cent in York, as budgets for the year ahead are set.

City of York Council has released its budget plans for 2017/18, and councillors want to put bills up by 3.7 per cent, to help deal with falling central government grants and growing demands for things like adult social care.

Council leader David Carr said they had faced “difficult decisions” balancing the budget this year.

“It’s been a difficult budget to sort out. We are facing extreme spending pressures, we have to do more with less, and the area of adult social care is a challenging one.

“At the same time we are mindful that families in York and facing financial pressures of their own, and some of them are hard stretched and we want to put as little pressure on them as possible.”

The council could have increased council tax by as much as five per cent, but Cllr Carr said they had tried to find a way of balancing the authority’s books, while not putting too heavy a demand on people who live in York.

Bills for Band D properties will see annual bills rise by around £55, from £1483.39 to £1538.28.

Car parking charges are also set to increase by 10p an hour at most car parks during the daytime - increasing the amount the council makes from a major part of its income by an estimated £151,000.

York Press: Lendal Bridge (for library). Pic: Mike Tipping (9472519)

Meanwhile, almost £700,000 left over from the Lendal Bridge trial – from fines refunds that were not claimed – is to be spent on transport improvements like pothole and footpath repairs, and investigating things like a cycle hire scheme.

The budget is also banking on bringing in £125,000 in fines from the newly reintroduced Coppergate enforcement.

Around £6 million worth of cuts are on the way, including £75,000 fromprevention work in adult social care prevention work. The budget papers say that with a major cut in government’s public health grant, the council cannot justify its current level of funding for things like falls prevention and social isolation work.

At the same time, a fresh £295,000 cut has been proposed for assessment and care management in adult social care, meaning the council will have to rely more on technology and local communities helping to prevent or delay people needing social care.

Other cuts include:

  • £35,000 over the next two years by cutting a debt advice worker at the CAB
  • £50,000 from the Wellness Service which encourages sport and physical activity
  • £300,000 over two years cut from York Museum Trust’s annual grant, which will be replaced with a one-off investment of £1.5 million
  • £150,000 over two years from the Healthy Child Service
  • £60,000 by cutting 1.5 full time licensing and trading standards jobs
  • £100,000 from the York Financial Assistance Scheme

Overall, the council expects to lose at least 40 jobs as it implements these cuts, and others already agreed for the year ahead.

However several areas are seeing new investments, including: 

  • £1.8 million additional funding for adult social care contracts
  • £48,000 for additional resource in planning enforcement
  • £37,000 for additional resource in procurement to improve contract management across the council
  • £400,000 for financial inclusion

A £200,000 investment has already been announced for mental health projects, and £52,000 to put 42 kms of roads back on gritting routes.

The capital budget for 2017/18 sets out £36 million of one-off investments, including an extra £10 million already announced for road repairs. Other capital investments are:

  • Another £10 million for housing.
  • £2.8 million for street lights
  • £2,350,000 for the city walls and a new library for Haxby
  • £800,000 for drainage

Council deputy leader Keith Aspden said they were investing in front line services.

"Our proposals double the planned investment in roads and pavements over the next five years, to over £20m alongside £3m over five years for street lighting.

“We’re also investing significantly in social care as well as in gulley cleaning, drainage and litter bins."

York Press:

DILAPADATED drains in York are getting an extra £800,000 for repairs in the year ahead.

City of York Council’s capital budget shows councillors are planning put an extra £800,000 into the drainage budget in 2017/18.

Last summer Cllr Andrew Waller, executive member for the environment, said he was pushing for extra money for drains maintenance, after heavy rain caused flash flooding on some streets.

In June  some parts of York, including Huntington Road which was the scene of some of the worst floods on Boxing Day, were hit by surface water flooding caused by intense rainfall and drainage problems.

Melrosegate and Bad Bargain Lane were also badly hit.

When an investigation was carried out, Cllr Waller said he would press for extra resources to make sure they could tackle the scale of the problem.

The council wants to check all 41,000 gullies in the city but that could take three years.

York Press:

HAXBY is to get £500,000 towards a new library, to replace a building forced to close because of structural problems.

The town is currently being served by a mobile library, but the capital programme announced yesterday includes £500,000 towards a new permanent library for the town.

Culture and heritage budgets also include new money for the city walls.

As well as £90,000 already agreed in a rolling programme of repairs, another £1.6 million between now and 2022 has been agreed for repairs at ten locations including Micklegate bar roof, the road arch on Station Rise, Monk Bar steps, and the stretch from Bootham Bar to Robin Hood's Tower on Lord Mayor's Walk.

York Press: Artist's impression of the community stadium plan

THE delayed Community Stadium project could pose a key risk to city council finances in the years ahead.

The authority's chief finance officer Ian Floyd has picked out the stadium, and other major capital projects, as key risks facing budgets in the year ahead.

He warned that if any of the complex capital schemes which are currently in early stages of development are not fully completed, any costs already incurred will have to be paid for out of the council's reserves. 

That already happened with the aborted plan for a new council HQ on the Hungate site, and if the council were not to proceed with the stadium it would be left with significant costs, he said.

Abortive costs on the stadium projects have been estimated at £4.2 million.

At the moment, reserves stand at around £7 million but Mr Floyd urged councillors to put any unspent money from the current year into reserves, to bring that buffer up to £8 million.

"If the worst comes to the worst we would be able to manage, but we clearly need to make proper provision and manage that carefully. 

"If an administration were to come in and ask to reduce the reserves by, for example, £2 million, to maintain services, I would strongly recommend we don't do that."

The warnings also mention the state of the health service in York, and say with health bodies facing their own financial problems and deficits, that could pose problems for care services in particular.