CITY of York Council’s Labour leader has announced a “gender balanced” new shadow executive.

Cllr Dafydd Williams said that while the new Tory/Lib Dem coalition’s executive was dominated by men, four out of the shadow’s eight members were women.

They are new councillors Fiona Derbyshire, who covers environment, and Mary Cannon, who takes on adult social care and health, while longer serving Julie Gunnell and Barbara Boyce take on the leisure, culture and tourism, and housing and safer neighbourhoods shadow briefs respectively.

Recently elected Labour group deputy leader Stuart Barnes will take responsibility for education, children and young people, Neil Barnes will shadow the council leader’s finance and performance portfolio, David Levene will shadow economic development and community engagement and Cllr Williams will shadow the transport and planning portfolio.

Cllr Williams said there would be “active, rigorous and robust opposition” from Labour which would hold the executive to account.

He raised a series of questions about how the executive would handle matters, including how would it tackle York’s housing crisis.

Tory council leader Chris Steward said the coalition would continue to pay the living wage, and would focus on frontline services, and there would be a special budget this summer.