Cllr Chris Steward is the Leader of the Conservative Group on York Council.
Wherever you are reading this, I can as good as guarantee you know York and think well of it. Everyone who has been likes it. Well, perhaps not Swindon Town fans, who took a 4-0 hiding at the Community Stadium on Saturday as York City continue their rise after promotion. The Knights rugby league have just finished a creditable first season in Super League. Great clubs, great success and a great stadium – facilitated by the council a decade late and millions over budget!
The sports teams and stadium are a great example. York’s reputation was built by the Romans and the Vikings, by chocolate, by Rowntree and Terry’s, by the railway, by two universities and so much more. So little of it was built by City of York Council, which more generally stands in the glow and can be a blocker – e.g. huge fights currently between city centre business and the council as the latter tries to make the city the most expensive place to park worldwide.
Notably, car trips to the city have fallen in number whilst revenue per user has risen, i.e. our Labour council is squeezing out those on lower incomes. The city looks like a success from the outside, but that has bred complacency. When scrutiny committees compare performance to other cities we do of course excel in the likes of visitor numbers, but too many basics don’t work like they should, often stemming from the unitary being too small at just 200,000 people. Some things do definitely work well; it hasn’t been any political narrative but great work from the director downwards that has seen Outstanding recognition in Children’s Services and now being asked to mentor others.
Why next May is the one that counts
The city elects an entirely new council on 6 May 2027, and I do not think we have had a more important local election here in a generation. The Boundary Commission reports at the end of this month and on its draft map the likeliest outcome is No Overall Control, Labour will certainly lose power. A Liberal Democrat majority is possible, which would give York more of the same under a different coloured rosette.
We Conservatives hold three seats. We will not win a majority and I am not going to pretend otherwise, but a group large enough to hold the balance could finally impose some financial discipline. York has been Conservative-led for only four of its thirty years as a unitary authority, and then only in coalition. Those four years delivered the last council tax freeze the city has seen and made York’s first Local Plan in sixty years something residents could live with. Labour leafleted in 2023 promising another freeze and has broken that promise in every budget since.
They also promised free school meals for all children, but instead we have only had some limited pilots and a boom in affordable housing on council land and yet have not built a single home, it is hard to imagine a council getting away which such a number if they tried to sabotage things. The hype has been superb (and the comms teams is always well stacked with spinning any positives), the delivery less so.
Partly bad choices, partly a bad deal
Every council in England says its problems start in Whitehall, and on the funding formula York’s administration has a case. But the settlement does not explain York’s real problem with borrowing, which goes up every year. On the last published comparison, York’s debt worked out at roughly £1,600 per resident, against roughly £744 in neighbouring North Yorkshire.
On central government funding York has had a truly awful deal from the Labour government, worse than anything under the coalition, when cuts were most needed. The city’s Labour leadership are of course as good as silent.
From £20 million to £60 million
The clearest of the capital budget blowouts is improvements to the railway station, where just on its part (LNER and Network Rail have been far more competent with theirs), the council is £30 million over budget, and rising, on a remodelling meant to cost barely £20 million and now set to breach £60 million! The Executive Member responsible introduced regular reporting to her only after the overspend began emerging; she could work bolting stable doors after horses have left if the riding industry was not too private sector for Labour.
It gets worse. In July 2025 the council agreed to phase the York Northern Ring Road and move £14.55 million of its funding across to finish the station scheme instead. The dualling gained planning permission in 2024 an was expected to cost £66 million, the budget now stands at around £164 million but funding has been eaten into to fill other overspends. The road York needs was slowed to pay for the paving York did not ask for, and the delay has more than doubled the bill. Set against that, HS2 looks like a model of project management.
None of this is new. The Clifton Green cycle lane went in and straight back out. Lendal Bridge was closed to cars, abandoned in national embarrassment with every fine refunded. A million pounds was written down over a car park the Lib Dems wanted and Labour did not. The common thread is not ideology. It is three near identical parties each needing to look different from the other two, and none willing to sign up to a long term plan.
It is Labour all the way in York: the council, both MPs, the elected Mayor, plus of course the government. There is nobody left to blame. We will not win York outright next May but we can make ourselves impossible to govern without. A council that spends within its means, finishes what it starts and remembers the rural parts of this city pay council tax too is not a radical proposition. In York it would count as a revolution.