It has been an interesting past week from my perspective as a cllr at North Yorkshire and here is a flavour of some of the ‘happenings’ in the region.
- I had a report of an abandoned car which I tried to report. In the end I succeeded but only through grit and determination. Email council staff. Told to contact police. Emailed police. Told to ring 101. Get confirmation email from police and that they are going to get the council to shift it. Get confirmation email from council it will be shifted. One month later and it’s still not moved.
- Whilst out leafletting I discovered that there is a pile of paperwork involved in growing and selling a lettuce and future generations may no bother!!
- We now have had the fiasco of the whole of the residents of North Yorkshire having to fund issues that are wholly made by Scarborough Borough Council. This is the Water sports facility which has cost North Yorkshire £9m and has been written off. Then we have the judgement that North Yorkshire should have collected and held locally for the harbour area in Whitby all collections. This money has been going into general funding for years—could be costing millions. And now we have the Scarborough Football Club issue. Their ground is no longer fit for purpose and all their home games will probably have to be played elsewhere. A big factor in this is the now defunct drainage system which they reckon will cost £3.5m to fix. Guess who the landlord is!!! Had these issues been dealt with BEFORE we had gone unitary SCARBOROUGH BOROUGH COUNCIL WOULD HAVE GONE BUST. Now it is ALL the residents in North Yorkshire who are having to fund this. I can see now why there was this big push to go unitary!!! LET ME BE CLEAR ON THIS. I AM NOT AGAINST SORTING THE FOOTBALL PITCH OUT (OR ANY OF THE OTHER ISSUES) I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO BE AWARE OF WHAT PREVIOUS INCUMBANTS WERE UP TO AND HOW POORLY THEY SERVED RESIDENTS.
- And finally we have the issue of Voids in our council house stock. They didn’t pay staff enough to come and work for the council so they went out to contractors. That hasn’t worked out and we still have a lot of empty homes and that list has grown. So much so that, for instance, a 4 bed house in Carlton has been empty for 5 years!! Finally they have completely refurbished it and a family will be moving in soon. And guess what? They have gone back to employing people, paying them more and they are ‘cracking on’ with refurbishments. It is hoped a lesson has been learned and we can start to see more homes back in use.