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'An endless stream of excuses': Councillor blasts lack of progress on cycle routes

'A stream of excuses': York councillor blasts slow bike route progress. Pictured: Christian Vassie <i>(Image: Staff)</i>
'A stream of excuses': York councillor blasts slow bike route progress. Pictured: Christian Vassie (Image: Staff)

A leading York councillor has blamed ‘some senior (council) officers’ for the city’s lack of progress on new cycle routes.

Wheldrake Liberal Democrat Cllr Christian Vassie says he is particularly angry about the failure to create an Elvington to Heslington cycle route.

“In summer of 2022 Sustrans, the national cycling organisation, produced a report for the Department for Transport on an Elvington to Heslington cycle path, passing through Wheldrake,” Cllr Vassie said.

“The 153-page report sets out in great detail, with maps, exactly how and where to get the path built.

"Shockingly, when I sat down with the executive member for transport, Cllr D’Agorne, and senior transport officers last September, those officers admitted they had not even read the Sustrans report.

“Even now they continue to claim we cannot advance the scheme because we lack detailed plans. It makes no sense.”

Cllr Vassie said he was also furious at York’s general lack of progress on extending the cycle network around the city.

“In council offices I hear an endless stream of excuses as to why we cannot get on with delivering the transformation that most residents and councillors want to see,” he said.

“It is utterly bewildering that some senior officers are apparently able to ignore the expressed will of the city’s politicians and the city’s residents.

“I work with some great council officers who are as committed and passionate as I and other councillors are to delivering change but I am afraid there are others who appear not to care whether we succeed or not. It is a tragedy for our city."

But the council has denied that officials are failing to deliver on what elected councillors want.

A council spokesperson said: “At all times, officers are delivering the decisions made at Executive.”

The council applied for active travel funding to improve cycle routes in 2019.

The bid was successful and the Government awarded the council well over half a million pounds to get busy.

“But spending the money has proved all but impossible!” a frustrated Cllr Vassie said.

But the council spokesperson said that the authority's Executive, made up of senior councillors, had met in November last year to consider which active travel schemes the council should move forward with and which should be reserve schemes given the budgets available.

“The Executive … approved a prioritised list of schemes which should be progressed," the spokesperson said.

"This inevitably meant that several schemes were put on a reserve list, as delivering every scheme on the list would require tens of millions of pounds of additional funding.

“The Wheldrake / Heslington scheme was put on the reserve list, reducing the project budget to £0, but with a recognition that negotiations on land acquisition would continue.

“The council recognises that this is disappointing for both the ward councillors and residents who want those schemes placed on the reserve list to be delivered, but officer time is understandably spent on the projects prioritised by the Executive.”