City of York Council does not hold investments or contracts with any Russian companies – but firms from the country could bid on council contracts.
The authority is not one of the several UK councils which has energy supplied by Russian energy giant Gazprom, chief finance officer Debbie Mitchell told councillors.
Last week, the council said it was examining all investments, contracts and procurement arrangements “to ensure we are not trading with Russian companies, and will take immediate action to end contracts if necessary”, following the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Ms Mitchell said: “We don’t have any investments with Russia or Belarus. It’s not one of the countries on our approved list of countries. We only invest in sterling anyway, we don’t invest in foreign currency.
“We’ve reviewed our contract register and supply list and we don’t hold any contracts either with any Russian or Belarusian companies – we’re not one of the councils that buys our energy from Gazprom.”
But there are some businesses registered on the YORtender procurement portal, which provides access to local authority tender opportunities within the Yorkshire and Humber region.
Ms Mitchell added: “There are those companies that potentially could bid for council contracts, but actually anybody can register – it doesn’t mean to say that they’re necessarily going to bid.
“It’s a national and regional portal so they may well bid on other councils’ contracts. We certainly haven’t had any bids on our contracts.”
It has already been revealed that around 0.1 per cent of the North Yorkshire Pension Fund, of which York council is a part, is related to Russian “indirect holdings”.
Ms Mitchell said: “The pension fund doesn’t have any direct investments in Russia or Belarus. They think they have potentially less than 0.1 per cent of funds that may have some exposure to Russia through fund managers and so they’re doing a bit of a deep dive into exactly whether that is the case.
“So it might be exposed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean to say it’s invested, but they are very small.”
The Russian stock exchange is currently not trading, making it difficult to offload any holdings.
A number of councils have said they want to end contracts with Gazprom and are considering their links to other Russian suppliers.
More than a dozen NHS trusts are thought to be supplied by Gazprom.
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