York council seeks to heal relationship with human rights campaigners

Senior councillors have been working with human rights campaigners in recent months to “reset” their relationship after it suffered a huge blow when the council voted to permanently remove the exemption which allowed blue badge holders to park in the city’s footstreets.

The November 2021 decision was strongly opposed by the York Human Rights City Network (YHRCN), a civil society partnership hosted jointly by York CVS  and the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York.

York was the first place in the UK to declare itself a Human Rights City in 2017.

Campaigners had questioned whether the council was still committed to the idea and said the blue badge decision was “the biggest challenge to-date to York’s Human Rights City status”.

Stephan Pittam, chair of the YHRCN steering group, said the latest report to Cllr Darryl Smalley’s decision session had come about because of a “crisis”.

He added: “The network strongly believes that human rights considerations were not taken into account by the council on the city centre access decision, otherwise known as the blue badge ban.

“The views of the network, based on a professional human rights assessment, were ignored.

“The York Human Rights City Network hasn’t changed its mind on this and publicly and strongly supports the ‘reverse the ban’ campaign.”

The council has agreed to a “refreshed structure” for the council-led human rights and equalities board – which has not met since the blue badge decision – as well as facilitating a regular human rights conference.

Mr Pittam added: “What is now important is that we move forward to develop a stronger culture of human rights in the city.

“We believe that working to reset the relationship within a new framework, and with the commitment that all parties have made to build a culture of human rights, and to move forward on implementing the vision of York as a Human Rights City, is the right way forward.”

Council staff will also get human rights training and a review will take place of the Community Voices project after campaigners said it was ignored during the blue badge process.

Cllr Darryl Smalley

Cllr Smalley, executive member for culture, leisure and communities, said the 2017 declaration marked a “starting point and not a destination”.

He added: “It is very important that the work that’s outlined in this paper continues at pace because we need this new infrastructure to work to learn what’s happened where the previous set-up fell short and to make sure that, whatever decisions come York’s way in the future, we have that infrastructure in place so that human rights are considered from start to finish.”

The meeting also heard from the chair of York Travellers Trust, Caroline Hunter, who said there had been “no dialogue” from the council about its Local Plan, despite requests from YTT and the government’s planning inspectorate.

Mr Pittam, who is also a trustee at YTT, said: “We know that the right to participate and be heard has not been afforded to York’s oldest and possibly most disadvantaged ethnic minority community in establishing the policies for delivering appropriate accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers in York through the Local Plan.

“These examples demonstrate that we still have some way to go.”