Pledge – Recruit a new team of Neighbourhood Caretakers to look after our communities.
Labour will find inventive ways of providing services despite falling budgets.
We’ll spend your money wisely to deliver cleaner, greener and more efficient services.
We’ll recruit and train a new team of Neighbourhood Caretakers to look after all our communities and put pride back into our streets.
• We’ll develop a strategy for York’s parks and green spaces to ensure they are used well, enhancing the physical environment and meeting the needs of people who use them. We’ll also strengthen planning protection for York’s playing fields and green spaces.
• We’ll improve recycling, introducing the collection of food waste.
Labour’s big focus in York will be on improving people’s wellbeing:
• We’ll use the land the council owns for the common good so that it’s a space for everyone (not just tourists). Street-life will feature spaces that everyone can enjoy, with more benches, accessible toilets and changing spaces, as well as street markets that work for residents.
• We’ll build a children’s play area in the city centre so families who live in York can enjoy their city.
• We’ll fight for equality, so everyone can enjoy life in York: we’ll listen to the Poverty Commission, we’ll address the needs of disabled people, and we’ll ensure safety for women. We recognise, support and celebrate the diverse cultures in our city, and we’ll vet our proposed initiatives and actions against their equality impact.
• We’ll make sure the Council is better run when it comes to our daily lives by making the council more focused on people and customer service. This will include improving customer service standards, overhauling digital respark, improving ways to report problems and making the council website easier to navigate. We’ll follow up on issues like fly-tipping, potholes, anti-social behaviour, goose poo and other niggles of everyday life. We’ll put service-level agreements in place to give accurate timings on when fixes and repairs will be completed. We’ll also find ways for public servants to report council issues and share relevant information.
• We’ll work to establish a tourism levy for the betterment of the city.
• We’ll make sure the new Community Woodland is more accessible for everybody by bus, bike and on foot.
• We’ll support and enact the council’s existing cultural strategy with its radical focus on children and their right to access culture by being a hands-on partner with cultural institutions like museums, leisure centres and libraries. We’ll promote the cultural activities of the city and local parish councils.
• We’ll make better use of ward funds for small local projects.
• We’ll link up and support and encourage volunteer groups so they can work better together.
We’ll protect the environment for everyone’s future:
Pledge – Insulate thousands of York homes to cut bills and carbon.
Labour will work without delay to meet the city’s climate commitments.
We’ll work without delay to cut carbon emissions and accelerate towards the city’s climate commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030.
New council builds will be completely energy-efficient, and we’ll insulate thousands of older council homes to stop them leaking heat.
• We’ll ensure tackling carbon emissions underpins all the council’s activities, to lessen York’s impact on climate change.
• We’ll work with the Environment Agency and other partners to reduce pollution in York.
• We’ll promote nature and re-wilding in York and improve the biodiversity plan. We will fund and promote Wild York as a mechanism to promote collaborative working between environmental volunteers. We’ll do more tree planting (including fruit trees), mapping out a plan for grass verges so some can grow wild; we’ll use better street and road cleaning techniques to limit weed growth; we will ban toxic pesticides; we’ll grit in the right places.
• We’ll collaborate with regional and local projects and bodies on environment projects, including: restoring peat and water meadows; delivering sustainable urban drainage schemes in new developments; creating green corridors linked to walking and cycling routes; planting trees and other measures that reduce flood risk and improve biodiversity.
We’ll use green initiatives to maximise carbon sequestration (using plants to trap carbon).