City of York Council's 'Access to Services', (ATS), project is one of a small number of partnerships chosen for Pathfinder status by the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), giving the project support equivalent to £100,000 a year.

The ATS project is made up of a partnership of nine North Yorkshire councils, who are working together to improve access to council services for residents across the county and to achieve effective e-government by 2005. The project are in the process of procuring a solution to deliver these improvements.

The DTLR launched the Pathfinder initiative for strategic service delivery partnerships last year. They have set up a taskforce which brings together expertise in specialist fields, such as legal advice and financial services, and this group's expertise will now be made available to the North Yorkshire partnership.

Dave Shaw, project leader for access to services, said: "North Yorkshire's bid was one of 115 submissions in the first round, and short-listed with 29 others. As one of the few partnerships to receive support, we will now benefit from the taskforce's specialised skills for services which would normally cost around £1,000 a day - thus the partnership stands to receive support of up to £100,000 a year.

He continued: "This is a tremendous vote of support for the partnership, and it makes it much simpler for us to get the support needed to deliver a complex procurement such as this."

The ATS project outlined a future vision which was for all council customers to be able to access services quickly, simply, and effectively. Access would be focussed around customer needs and give choices of the most suitable access method and place for each customer and different type of service and transaction.

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