£250,000 was cut from ward committee highways maintenance budgets in the summer. Labour Counclllors claimed that it would be used to “Increase efficiency and prolong the life of roads by increasing the number of structural repairs to our road surfaces”.
A response to a Freedom of Information request has revealed that the £1/4 million has been spent on patching up just seven roads across the City.
It is unclear how the decisions on priorities were made but poorer areas like Westfield have missed out under the new system. .
We have advocated switching funds from pothole filling to larger patching works in the past. That required a rebalancing of the internal highways budget.
The ward budget could and should, have been spent on full width resurfacing schemes – providing a long term life for worn out road surfaces, with a marked improvement in safety standards.
NB. There is an estimated £10 million backlog in urgent highway repairs work in York. £350,000, provided to the Coucnil for road repairs by central government in November of last year, has still not been spent
Earlier 1st August 2023
Revised ward budgets approved by York Council at a “behind closed doors” meeting
Major 30% cut to funding
The York Council is dramatically cutting the amount of funding which will be available to spend on nighbourhood problems.
A much-reduced base budget has been made available following an officer decision taken at a private meeting. There has been no consultation with residents’ associations or Parish Councils on the proposals
The Council claims that the allocation process has been tweaked to try to direct resources to the less well off neighbourhoods but, in effect, this makes little difference.
Overall, there will be a 30% cut in funding and that before highways and estate improvement budgets are considered.
The most deprived ward (Westfield), which had £40,000 a year to invest until recently, will see that fall to £24,646 a year.
It means there will be little opportunity to tackle crime prevention issues while the community pride programme – which aimed to keep neighbourhoods clean and tidy – has also been jettisoned.
The cuts actually run deeper. The locally determined road repairs budget has been cut completely with doubt about whether even schemes which were in the pipeline – and funded from last years budget – will actually happen
The future of the housing estate improvement programme (HEIP) budgets – funded from Council tenants rents and allocated by local residents – is also in doubt.
The funding has been used in the past to improve local communal areas for the benefit of all tenants
While few would argue that previous attempts, to give local residents more say over how their communities are maintained, have been an overwhelming success, cutting budgets and taking decisions behind closed doors in West Offices, represents a return to the worst type of civic paternalism.
It is a major error of judgement by the new Labour controlled Council.
York News Focus 
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