Following the update the Chair opened the meeting for questions from Members.

Councillor Jabbour raised a number of issues that had been highlighted at a meeting he attended of the Care & Independence Overview and Scrutiny Committee in relation to the Get Britain Working Trailblazer.

Response:

That trailblazer has been delivered in partnership with both York and North Yorkshire, Officers are feeding into that and projects have already been delivered because, as frustrating as it sounds, to spend £10 million in a year into a new programme is actually really difficult because you have to develop something, spend it and then you've got to ramp it down because you can't just cut it off after 364 days.

Our plan is to support both York and North Yorkshire and what they are delivering now to really maintain and ramp those up. This gives us a bit of leeway to have some different ways of working maybe and having that little bit of essential where we can work at a slight risk and maybe try new things because this is meant to be a trial of doing things in a new way. But as we said, it has been raised with all CAs that to do this inside 12 months is difficult and there have been calls to extend it over 18 months.

We want to be quite bold and ambitious in our patch and kind of go OK, if you're going to give us that money and that's the time frame, then then we will go and do it because that's just the way we function really. But we are very determined and we know we will get that out the door and we are using partners to build that framework, so it's not going to be going off into random places. What CYC and NYC have already been delivering is where that money will go.

I don’t know if it will be on an annual recurring basis, we don't know, but we think probably that will be the direction it will go in. I don't know that for definite, but obviously you have a trailblazer. You trial it, you see if it works well. If it does, then it will carry on. We're confident that it will carry on, but there's no guarantee of that yet. We are working on the parameters that it's that much money, deliver it in a year, get it out the door. We will be using partners who are already delivering most of that work already to go and do that.

Question from Councillor Sam Cross.

I represent Filey, which has been sadly left behind in recent years, and one of the reasons is due to lack of Community transport. 

An announcement was made that £2.15 billion will be spent on transport for the north. As you’re probably aware, the Bus Bill is currently going through Parliament and clause 12 of the Bill says that what they would like to do is reinstate previous rules. This links with your own plans of developing transport in the Filey area, so there are links with bus stations, rail stations and medical centres.

Could some of this funding be directed to Filey?

Response:

When we just came into office in May 2024 we were not set up to take on that responsibility, so to make sure there's no loss of services, we initially gave this work over to York and North Yorkshire to carry on work as were. However, we take over responsibility of buses from next week in terms of the funding, which has just been confirmed.

We are developing our transport plans as we speak, working with York and North Yorkshire. We have already supported the moor and dales bus operators and we're looking at expanding operations to places like Filey. We know whatever route we go down for bus services, if it's an EP plus, if it's a full franchise model, whatever it may be, our geography is very different to other regions. A model such as Manchester’s would not work here.

We need to develop a plan that works for us such as a part franchise model that covers two thirds of North Yorkshire and then we look at local operators like Moor Bus, Dales and in Filey for the remainder. We are exploring all options, working closely with York and North Yorkshire to achieve that.

We also have a unique opportunity to look at cross-border operations.  We're working with other combined authorities to have a joined-up approach.

 We have a duty of care as a combined authority to have coastal representation, to deliver economic opportunity, to build houses and maintain communities.

Question from Councillor Caroline Goodrick.

You've suggested we need to have a sense of ambition. We need to have economic growth. We need to have a regional strategy. Please help me understand why you can't support the duelling of the A64?

It is a blight on the people who live around the Hopgrove area. We carry so much trade that comes from West Yorkshire, over to the East Coast. It affects our East Coast traders, including international companies who struggle to get down the A64 with refrigerated lorries.

The buses are delayed, they then change the timetables and don't go into the villages and leave people with no bus service because the A 64 is rammed. So, I need to understand why you can't support it.

Response:

We have been working and talking to government about the importance of the A64 and the A 66, but both projects will cost many £billions and we don’t have the funding for that.

We do have money and powers to support public transport and active travel. We're working with TPE to develop the train service from York to Scarborough, which would open that entire corridor. We're developing public transport, so we can move people sustainably and on mass.

The Green Book requires an infrastructure project to have significant impact, Although it's important for us, it doesn't impact the millions of people that other projects would.

We will continue to press government about this is important project.

Councillor Michelle Donohue-Moncrieff asked if the Mayor would be strong voice for coastal communities and call for a national coastal strategy.

Response:

We're have opened conversations with business leaders and the TUC and welcome Schneider’s investment in Scarborough. We've supported the harbour boat hoist project in Scarborough, giving £700,000 of funding from the combined authority to NYC and are reviewing how we can develop that strategy.

We've identified food and farming as priorities, which includes the fishing industry and see this as our number one growth priority.

We are looking at the affordability of homes because we know there is so much of our region where people can't afford live, particularly our coastal towns and we're developing strategies for how we can support the development of housing on the coast.

We're also developing strategies incorporating colleges and universities right across the region, including on the coast, which will support jobs and aligning those to our local industries. We're also looking at how we can also support the skills village.

Our plans are geared towards the whole region. If we improve the affordability of homes, improve transport connectivity, improve the skills provision and align skills into industry we support our communities.

Question from Councillor Steve Mason

With regard to the A64, are we talking about to Scarborough or just to Claxton? At an AC meeting last year, the MP in attendance said that it would be unlikely to go further than Claxton. I think we need some clarity on exactly what is being lobbied here.

The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) situation is more of a concern, with our landscapes and nature restoration projects. Will you lobby for a quicker action on that, so we can deliver the natural capital projects?

Will you monitor progress year on year, or at least every couple of years, on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Response

We are commissioning a farming review with the Grow Yorkshire arm of the combined authorities, focusing on farming with representation from the NFU and the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and others. This is considering the factors impacting farming including inheritance tax, sustainability, the impact of Brexit, the impact of energy prices, the impact of flooding, the whole spectrum.

We have been running a project that supported 30 farms with a sustainable and environmentally aware farming programme of 30. We are hoping to expand that project and submit to government, asking DEFRA to fund this across the region as farmers need

I plan to get to Net Zero by 2034 and farming and how we use our land is going to be a key element of that.

We are really determined to get to net zero and be a much more sustainable region. This is not just how we use our land, it's how we look at our transport, it's how we look at our housing, which is why the retrofit strategy impacts on this.

The combined authorities will be monitoring progress towards Net Zero.

My frustration with the A64 is that it hasn’t come up in the last six months since I've been in post. This has been talked about for a long time but no one seems to be clear exactly what we want. I've asked for that from a political perspective but haven't had the information.

The costs of improvements for five miles, 10 miles, 15 miles, start going into the billions. If you consider what you could do around train stations and bus improvements for that sort of money, it would impact the whole of the region not just that corridor. If it's so imperative, where is the solid business case, the details of etc.

Councillor Caroline Goodrick added:

There were plans drawn up with National Highways. The A66 wasn't done at once. It's been an incremental improvement across the East West connectivity and we want the same thing for the A64. We accept that it's going to be a huge project costing a huge amount of money, so let's make incremental changes like A66, so let's do the incremental changes and remove this pinch point.

Question from Councillor Greg White

Active travel isn't going to help people the more rural and remote parts of this Committee’s area. Buses, if we have them, are once every couple of hours and that’s not a credible service for people to get to work or where they need to be. The nearest railway station is nearly an hour and a half away from parts of my division.

Community transport services are welcome but they're not an answer to the transport needs of the majority of people in the rural parts of North Yorkshire. We require good quality roads where we can get reasonably from A to B.

People will continue to use cars, and we need to remember that.

I'm very much in favour of trying to head towards net zero but we need to be realistic.

Response

What I have control over and money to invest is in buses, active travel and some I have some say in rail services. I don't have a cheque book for £100s millions for roads. We have £16.6 million extra for pothole repairment this year on top of the money that we already had.

I have no doubt that the car is still the dominant mode of transport in North Yorkshire.

That said, we have to improve the public offering of transport, the improvement of walking, cycling and wheeling across the region, and particularly looking at things like road safety at places like schools and crossings.

I don't have a cheque book of £2 billion for improving and building new roads but we will continue to press government of the importance of roads and things like dualling the A64 and the continued work on the A66. I take your point that in some areas bus and rail provision is always going to be very difficult because of the rurality of the region. This why we need to support services like Moors Bus and others. Can we have a bus operating within a circumference of f 6-7 miles of a railway station, so people have central transport hubs that serve the wider region? These are the sort of plans we’re working on but the car is going to be a dominant mode of transport.

I'm saying we can do both at the same time. We can press the government on the importance of road infrastructure. We can spend money on repairing the roads but we can do all this and if we do, it will move people en masse, more sustainably and in a more environmentally friendly way. It will take strain off the roads because more people are using bus, rail and other options and it will give people freedom to move around.

That they may not drive five days a week, they might drive four days a week and that impact on our region is enormous.

We've got the option now to improve reliability and improve the bus services which hasn't been done previously. We have some extra money and powers to do that, and that's what we're doing. So that's what I have powers. Where I don’t have power and money I can lobby government.

Question from Councillor Dan Sladden

There are various proposals for battery storage facilities to which is the right thing to do for sustainable futures. I hear what you're saying where you have money and power but also your ability to lobby. What lobbying and what influence can you have on making sure that those battery storage facilities are put in the best strategic place?

Response

This comes down to local planning decisions, over which we don't have any say. We have some lobbying and possibly some influence. I think it's important that we're looking at the land use and making sure they're put in the right place on the right type of land. We have high quality arable land that, in my opinion, should be used for farming and food production.

I think we have a moral duty, possibly, about making sure they have been put in the right location. It does come down to the local plan which we don't have say over, but we will be reviewing of the capabilities of our region. We are doing that piece of work now, which is something that that the London mayor has done and got ahead of the game with great British energy and actually looking at what are their capabilities in their region for things like battery storage around solar, on offshore wind etc. We're going to be doing a review of the same thing but taking into consideration where things like battery storage can go and where on and offshore wind can go. It's putting together where we think the capabilities are and having a voice.

Question from Councillor Lindsay Burr

My question is about affordable homes that must be affordable for people to be able to live and stay in the area that they love. The problem is that our infrastructure is creaking, especially in all of our rural towns, Pickering, Kirby, and Helmsley they're all suffering the same.

What is your strategy about how we can improve the infrastructure and what does that mean?

Response

We're developing a strategic based partnership with Homes England and obviously working with local authorities because the infrastructure is important. When I talk about infrastructure, it's not just the road provision, it's things like connectivity to the grid, water, the waste, what provision is going to be for schools, the GP.

We're developing that place partnership now with Homes England to factor in that no one wants to build homes where they've got no connectivity and no access to anything because that doesn't work.

We need to be building communities and it's emphasising that and bringing our transport strategy into that too. It's bringing our strategic homes plan together to look at that all in the round, rather than looking at things in isolation of just housing or just transport and just skills, it's actually doing that collectively.

We're also working with the York and North Yorkshire Housing Partnership to hopefully be the first combined authority that that has affordable home standards. So we're not building homes that are not fit for purpose. They've got a tiny box rooms that aren't of high energy efficiency and all the rest of it. We want to be building homes that are right homes in the right places and of the quality that our people deserve.

The plan with Homes England is looking in the round in terms of the road infrastructure and things like connectivity to the grid, the connectivity to everything else rather than just building dormant villages in the middle of nowhere that exacerbate the problems we have moving people around. We're also looking at those growth corridors and actually where those key developments could come from, for example the York to Scarborough rail line and developments in those areas because linking people directly to a rail line which may be hundreds of metres away. Then you can develop a bus system or an active travel provision that then moves people to those transport hubs. You can move people more connectedly rather than living 15 miles away from the train station and having to drive. If you're living in those corridors, you are much better connected.

The work that North Yorkshire have done on their on their local plan strategy about where those developments are, we can identify those going forward because they're better connected to the infrastructure that’s already there.