Andy D’Agorne looks over the past year, and thinks about the year ahead.
What has been good about 2022 – both locally and nationally/ internationally?
After decades of talk and plans, York has seen progress on several visionary schemes, with work paving the way for York Central to become a massive green heart right next to our mainline station.
Many of our businesses have certainly been successful at b ouncing back from the impact of the pandemic, with city centre footfall close to 2019 levels and the end of lockdowns allowing most people to resume social and work contacts face to face.
World events have motivated residents to open their homes and hearts to refugees and we now have a climate change strategy as part of an overarching 10 year city strategy to help us respond to the soaring cost of energy and the climate crisis
What have you yourself achieved during the year?
Progress has been made opening up two EV ‘hyper hubs’ which will help boost take up of clean, low carbon driving as an important element of reducing carbon emissions.
In February I signed off the design specifications for a number of active travel measures to help make walking cycling, scooting and public transport attractive alternatives to short car journeys. These are really setting a new standard for York to secure quality routes in the next few years. Detailed designs for Tadcaster Rd have been worked up ready to be implemented in 2023. Other changes have already been made permanent including the Groves Low Traffic Neighbourhood, and the one way set up on Navigation Rd and Coppergate, all helping to reduce non essential city centre through traffic while allowing for access to homes, businesses, and car parks. The growing use of the escooter and ebike hire scheme is giving more people the experience and flexibility of ‘shared mobility’ without the cost and parking nightmare of car use.
Working as part of the council administration has seen a plan to trial a city centre shuttle bus and work starting on our first zero carbon new homes at Duncombe Barracks along with plans to improve insulation across council properties as part of routine maintenance.
What has been bad about 2022?
February saw the start of the tragic war in Ukraine. The year also saw more extreme weather with floods in Pakistan, drought in Africa and a record heat wave in Europe including the UK. Politicians sank in public esteem following the ‘partygate’ scandal and the disastrous short Liz Truss premiership coinciding with the funeral for our longest serving monarch. The Brexit fudge over Northern Ireland has led to the collapse of devolved government there.
Richi Sunak while grappling to mitigate soaring energy prices has left bloated company profits untouched. He’s also given the green light for more oil, gas and coal extraction rather than investing in home insulation to cut the need to burn more fossil fuels. The cost of living crisis, growing strike action to defend public services and massive energy price rises are all creating real hardship for many people.
What lessons can we learn from the year?
The war in Ukraine served as a stark reminder of the human cost of war, the practical help we can all offer to those directly affected and extent to which we are all still far too dependent of Russian oil and gas supplies.
The record summer heat wave also brought home to us how urgently we need to act to slow climate change but also to adapt to the more extreme weather patterns we can expect.
Our local climate change strategy does require us to ‘scale up’ building more energy efficient new homes, but also reducing the heat loss from our existing homes, as is now planned as part of the maintenance programme for council housing. This is a massive challenge.
Do you feel optimistic for the year ahead?
It is hard to be optimistic with an ongoing war in Ukraine and Governments that put populist short term issues ahead of the climate change and cost of living crisis. However the strong public support for a fair deal for our NHS workers, teachers, rail workers, postal workers in the current disputes gives me hope that public services are valued and seen as essential elements of a caring civilised country. As we saw during the early stages of covid and more recently with Ukranian refugees arriving in the city, we have literally thousands of residents who will go out of their way to help others less fortunate than themselves in their communities and newly arrived in York.
What do you hope for as we look ahead to 2023 – again, both locally and nationally (including the local elections!)?
Nationally I hope that Greens continue to win seats from other parties as they have done so successfully in 2022 in Tory seats whose Government has completely failed to take climate change sufficiently seriously. In York the May elections present an opportunity for residents to elect a larger Green group that would give us stronger influence over whichever party forms the largest group and see more wards with Green councillors. We have shown that even with a few councillors we can secure strong policies and actions on climate change. I also hope to see a public park at Castle Car Park come closer to reality, twenty years after I was first elected with this as an alternative to a shopping centre on our election pledge.
A shortened version of this article appeared in the York Press on 30th December 2022
