Update 13th June 2023
The York Council has agreed on how it will allocate the money provided by central governmewhichihc seeks to safeguard children receiving free school meals during school holidays.
The programme – which has run for several years – aims not only to provide meals but also leisure opportunities. A number of organisations bid to provide the services across the City.
In total £182,154 has been allocated. It covers activities in the spring, summer and Christmas bank holidays,
The decision was taken in a “behind closed doors” decision session with no information published on the scope or range of services offered by the bidding organisations.
Around 2100 (15%) of primary school children claim free school emails in York.
The new Labour administration in the City has promised that they will extend free school meals to all pupils.
It is remains unclear where the money for this initiative will come from or whether they hope to provide free meals for 365 days a year.
There has been no word on when the moratorium (see below) on ward committee expenditure will be lifted. In the meantime, planning for events covering the summer holiday leisure needs of the majority of York children remains awkward.
A source within West Offices says that individual Councillors will be allocated a budget of only around £700 to spend on summer children’s activities in their wards.
Last summer the three Councillors in the Westfield ward spent over £5000 on children’s activities organised by the Rugby and Football clubs
Final “Ward Committee” expenditure for 22/23 published as doubts surround intentions for current year
Update 4th June 2023: Sources within West Offices are claiming that the new Labour administration has put a freeeze on Ward Committee expenditure.
The move is currently affecting planning for activities aimed at young people during the summer school holidays.
This is often the time of the year when anti social behaviour levels peak.
For some years local Councillors have sought to provide so called “distraction activities” aimed at giving young people an alternative to wandering around the streets.
The rugby and football clubs have been actively involved in providing some of the programmes
If true, such a moratorium seems short sighted.
The examples below do suggest that a more inclusive form of allocation process for delegated budgets is required. But such changes require time if they are to be developed successfully.
Some Labour Councillors did in March vote to tranfer ward committee funding to a new sort of “neighbourhood caretaker” role. But again, such change needs careful preparation and is not something to be embarked upon without proper consultation and a tranparent decision process.
If the new administration hopes to revise the Councils budget for this current year, then such a proposal will need to be added to the forward decision making programme.
Legally 4 months notice of any proposal must be given.
So any changes won’t be possible before the school holidays start. Leisure providers should now be recruiting youth workers to lead the actvities programme.
They need to be given the go ahead to do so straight away
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The York Council has published a list of all the schemes that have benefited from delegated ward committee budgets during the last financial year.
A list containing details of every transaction in every York ward can be downloaded (single spreadsheet) by clicking here The data is published on the Council’s “open data” website.
There may be some surprises for residents.
Taking Westfield (see below) as an example, several of the schemes listed have not been subject to any public consultation.
In the past, residents were circulated with a draft list and allowed to vote on priorities. That hasn’t happened in recent years with local Councillors taking it upon themselves to determine priorities. In some cases, including Westfield, there was not even a public meeting held to discuss the plans. Obviously the pandemic affected ealier yearsm but things were returning to normal by last summer.
The Westfield expenditure totals around £100,000 albeit there may be some double counting in that figure.
There doesn’t appear to be a public record of what the schemes actually achieved or, in the case of some, whetherr they even got off the ground.
There are some questions to be answered. Delegated ward budgets were a genuine attempt to give local people more say on how money was invested to address local priorities. The system seems now to be failing.
NB. The published figures don’t seem to include the element of the highways maintenance budget which has also been delegated
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