City Centre access improvement progress

A report to City of York Council’s Customer and Corporate Services Scrutiny Management Committee has set out the progress being made to support York as a safe, thriving and accessible city centre.

In November 2021, the Council’s Executive made decisions to give effect to Police counter terrorism advice. The advice, since reiterated by security experts and Police, was to make the City Centre as car free as possible and install Hostile Vehicle Measures, in order to reduce risk to life caused by the possible use of vehicles as a weapon in the most heavily pedestrianised streets.

At that time the Executive recognised the access impacts of such a decision, particularly on blue badge holders and committed to adopt actions as part of the “Strategic Review of City Centre Access Action Plan” - to improve and support access in and around the footstreets, and a ten year vision - “My City Centre Vision” - to support an accessible and thriving city centre.

The progress report shows that a growing number of commitments contained in the Action Plan have now been delivered. Completed actions include:

• The delivery of disabled bays, with all those approved at the Executive Member Decision Session implemented, except at Blake Street which is dependent the placement of Hostile Vehicle Measures
• Additional specialist advice on a broad range of access issues has been obtained, through a contract with access specialists, MIMA, being appointed by the council to lead on a number of actions including the pavement café guidance review
• Permanent access officer recruitment is set to be completed shortly
• Investment in York’s Shopmobility scheme
• Investment in the Dial-&-Ride service
• Improvements in access to disabled toilets in the city centre with £244,000 funding from Changing Places secured to deliver improved facilities over the next three years
• Eight new dropped kerbs have been added in Stonegate with existing ones refurbished on Colliergate and Church Street and further works being delivered on Fossgate with works in Low Petergate, Blake Street and Lendal in the Spring.

Various further measures are set to be led by the access officer and consultants. These include, development of York Standard for accessibility, coproduction on possible vehicle and service options for a city centre bus shuttle, amongst other longer term actions.

Cllr Andy D’Agorne, Executive Member for Transport, said: "We acknowledged from the outset that significant work needs to be done on developing City Centre Access, which is why we agreed a number of actions. Listening to the disability community has been an important contribution to shaping the development of this work and a really important feature in the delivery of the mitigations we knew would be needed from the outset. The balance between meeting safety concerns, and making our city centre as accessible as possible is a difficult one, but this welcome report shows progress is being made.

“While the progress is obviously welcome, we are not complacent, and recognise there is much more that we need to do  to support the promotion of a safe, thriving and accessible city centre and we are still working to accelerate further access improvements”. 

James Gilchrist added: “In line with Police advice, the vast majority of vehicle access have been removed from the footstreets, excluding blue light, emergency repair and waste service vehicles. However, we are aware of breaches of the current rules, which have seen bullion vehicles or post office vans enter the footstreets area during pedestrianised hours. As this is a moving traffic offence in which the council has no powers, we are actively working with the police to enforce the rules. This issue will be resolved with the installation of the temporary safety measures for the Christmas Market and with the permanent safety measure, which is set to begin in the new year.”