How we operate
We were very pleased to gain re-accreditation from the Good Business Charter in June 2025. To receive Good Business Charter accreditation, organisations must meet the requirements for all 10 components (9 for public or third sector) which collectively cover care for employees, suppliers, customers and the environment whilst paying your fair share of tax.
The Council has responded to the Fair Funding Review consultation on the reform of local government funding. We are updating our medium-term financial forecast to reflect the estimated impact of the Fair Funding Review. Work with Chief Officers to pull together options for efficiencies, income generation and budget reductions is ongoing.
Open and honest
We were delighted to welcome our new Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion earlier this year and they have wasted no time in getting a new strategy for development in this area off the ground. We now have a cross-organisational network of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Champions who will help to ensure that everybody in our organisation is valued, supported and included.
We continue our support for important events in the city such as York Pride and Armed Forces Week.
We've been a Dementia Friendly Employer since 2017. Refreshed communications and training information has been communicated to the workforce and an informal target of 300 employees to be signed up as Dementia Friends by March 2025 has been set.
We continue to highlight progress regularly through our snapshot reports.
Building relationships
A key relationship is with the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority. This relationship will enhance York’s role at a national level and has already seen funding amounting to over £34 million committed for all projects within York at time of writing.
A regular calendar of partnership meetings takes place where we are the lead organisation, or a key member. These support the wider ambitions of the city in addition to delivering the Council Plan. These partnership meetings include, but are not limited to, City Leaders, Place Partnership, Health and Wellbeing Board, Financial Inclusion Steering Group, Economic Partnership, Skills Board and the Schools Forum.
We believe that international partnership work is of great importance. We are supporting a new Humanitarian Network for those people in York who are offering ongoing support to the people of Ukraine and we are undertaking work with the Mayor of Lviv, Ukraine to provide practical support around resilience and rail tech. We have welcomed visitors from our two twin cities, Dijon and Münster, this year too.
We’ve implemented new approaches that have increased resident engagement with the content on our ‘owned’ digital channels, as part of our work to ensure people have key information about us and our services. Our suite of e-newsletters remains the most effective way for us to reach a significant number of residents. We’re now developing an updated communications strategy to ensure we can support and reach everyone in the city, regardless of access to digital channels.
Supporting our staff
In Spring 2025 we completed our new Managing Customer Relations Policy, which sets out clear guidelines and expectations for customers and staff, using the Poverty Truth Commission and trauma-informed approaches.
Our ongoing programme of transformation work aims to improve efficiency and innovation within the organisation to ensure it is fit for the future. Staff support and resilience is key to how we function as a Council and there is an ongoing programme of development and support detailed in the Workforce Development Strategy and action plan.
What we plan to do over the next three months
- As part of York Cares’ ‘Project Dare’, we plan to welcome students from Millthorpe School to learn more about the work of our Active Travel team, challenging pupils to think about how more people might be persuaded to choose active travel to and from school in future.
- In September, jointly with LNER, we welcomed a cohort of interns for supported work placements. This scheme is specifically for young people aged between 16 and 24 who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The placements are designed to assist the interns to gain skills through on-the-job training with the support of a job coach to transition into paid employment.
- Work also continued on promoting work placements for care-experienced young people alongside the core offer of work experience within our directorates. The 2025 summer work experience programme was the largest to date and deemed a success by students, schools and managers who participated.
Making a positive difference
The percentage of Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Requests responded to 'in time' was 96.5% in August 2025 (latest data). This figure remains high.
In March 2025 we completed our annual staff survey. The results show that 73% of respondents would recommend us as a good place to work and 80% are aware of our four core commitments and values. In line with previous surveys, employees feel very supported by their line managers with 87% saying their manager is approachable and easy to talk to. 80% feel their work gives them a feeling or sense of personal achievement.