NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNCIL

15 May 2024

STATEMENT OF EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION

Highways Capital Programme

North Yorkshire’s annual surface dressing programme got underway at the beginning of April this year, with milder daytime temperatures facilitating an early start to this work. The programme of works this season will cover some 142 miles of roads at a cost of around £5m.

The works commenced in the Selby area, moving to locations in and around Harrogate before heading further north covering a range of sites in the Northallerton, Stokesley, Helmsley and Malton areas to name a few. Gangs will then move into the Richmond area with locations from Catterick Garrison to Muker and Aysgarth in the Yorkshire Dales adding to the list of sites that will benefit from this treatment. Towards the end of the programme the gangs will have moved to the west of the county around Skipton, including Cowling, West Marton and Cross Hills.

Progress during the first part of April was somewhat hampered by repeated spells of wet weather and, as such, the programme is being revised to reflect this on a regular basis.   Wherever possible, teams will always endeavour to recover time to achieve the overall programmed completion date of early July.

A59 Kex Gill

A further landslip on the A59 occurred in early February of this year. This is the fourteenth in 20 years, necessitating the closure of the road. There are four fissures in the surface, the worst of which is 400mm in width 1m deep and 40m in length. The highway supporting bank has also washed away.

It is of paramount importance that this route reopens as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the repair scheme design has been more complicated than previous landslips as it has continued to deteriorate. Works have commenced and teams are working long days, seven days a week, so the road can hopefully reopen by the end of June. Meanwhile, delivery of the £68.8m scheme to divert the A59 continues. This will be essential to ensuring the A59 is no longer affected by disruptive landslips such as the one we are currently experiencing.

Transforming Cities Fund – Harrogate, Selby and Skipton

We continue to make progress on work on transformative Gateway schemes to improve access to three of North Yorkshire’s rail stations. Full Business Cases have been submitted to West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) and Department for Transport (DfT) for all schemes and all three have now been approved with conditions.  Final works pricing is currently in progress by contract partners prior to a final approval stage, with work expected to commence in Skipton in the summer and Harrogate and Selby later in the year.

Electric Vehicle Charging

North Yorkshire Council is leading the way for rural areas with its roll out of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We have already received £3.27m funding through two Office for Zero Emissions Vehicles (OZEV) grants to deliver 220 Electric Vehicle Charging Points (EVCPs) in total. We have also now successfully bid for a further £4.88m from the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Capital Fund. This should enable delivery of around a further 1,300 EVCPs. Subject to approval, this would see us deliver our target four years ahead of schedule. NYC also received £494,000 from the LEVI Capability Fund to cover resourcing of this project. We expect to procure a charging point operator over the Summer subject to DfT/OZEV confirmation of the procurement process, meaning we can start delivery of EVCPs early in the next financial year.

Buses

At the end of March, Executive agreed plans to allocate the Bus Service Improvement Programme 3 (BSIP3) funding of £3.5m and subsequently submitted the proposals to the Department for Transport (DfT) in line with their guidelines for expenditure.

We will be able to include service enhancements and £1 fares for under 19s, initially for a period of a year. The hope is that supported services will become financially sustainable after the pilot period. We are currently revising our BSIP document for submission to the DfT later this Summer which we hope will then allow DfT to indicate how much funding we might see in future years. 

Meanwhile, revised contracted, local bus services have been introduced alongside home to school services from 8 April following a re-procurement of services in the Ryedale, Craven, Richmond and Harrogate areas and these are working well across all areas.

COUNCILLOR KEANE DUNCAN