Any county
councillor may, by giving notice to the Proper Officer by 9 am two working days
before the meeting, ask a question on any matter in respect of the Cabinet
Member’s delegated powers.
The number
of questions which may be asked by any councillor at any one meeting is limited
to two (or one question with notice and a supplementary question at the
meeting) and the time for questions will be limited to 30 minutes in total. As
with questions at Council, any questions which remain unanswered at the end of
this item will receive a written response.
Questions
submitted prior to the agenda being despatched are shown below and will be the
subject of a response from the appropriate Cabinet Member or such other
councillor or officer as is determined by the Cabinet Member, and shall not be
the subject of further debate at this meeting. Questions received after the
despatch of the agenda, but before the deadline, will be shown on the Schedule
of Addenda circulated at the meeting, together with any written response which
is available at that time.
Minutes:
Councillor Nick Hards had given notice of the following questions:
“Would the Cabinet Member for
the Environment please supply an update on the progress with regard to the
civil enforcement of parking across the county? I am particularly
interested in South Oxfordshire but would also appreciate having this
information for Cherwell, Vale of White Horse and West Oxfordshire Districts.”
The Cabinet Member for Environment replied:
“West
Oxfordshire adopted Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) in 2010. CPE requires both
on street and off street parking to be included and therefore the County are
required to work with the District Councils to implement a solution. South
Oxfordshire have recently expressed a strong interest in also adopting Civil
Parking Enforcement and Vale of White Horse and Cherwell District councils have
subsequently expressed an informal interest in pursuing CPE depending on a
proposal demonstrating that there is a business case to do so. The Council’s
previous modelling of CPE has demonstrated that it would make a significant
loss. WODC currently report a loss of approximately £250k per year which would
substantiate the accuracy of previous modelling. There would be a significant
saving in implementing and operating CPE across all 3 districts at the same
time and therefore the Council officers from each authority are working closely
to develop a proposal to bring to each authorities respective Cabinets later
this year. The process for implementing CPE is quite lengthy and as such would
take approximately 9-12 months following endorsement from each authority to
formally introduce enforcement.”
Councillor Hards
“Is Oxfordshire County Council
willing to consider residents’ parking schemes in South Oxfordshire? In the
absence of a scheme, my predecessor arranged for a section of Station Road Didcot to be made No Entry Except for Access, but this
arrangement is proving ineffective and is causing conflict, with residents
being abused by people who flout the restriction and insist on parking all day
while they go to work.”
The Cabinet Member for Environment replied:
“The
County has previously stated that it would not seek to extend residents’
parking schemes to areas without Civil Parking Enforcement as without regular
enforcement they typically prove to be ineffective and do not met the
expectations of householders. Parking Enforcement is understandably not a high
priority for the police who currently enforce within South Oxfordshire.
The
exception has been areas close to Town Centres where very small schemes have
been implemented to manage on street, limited time, pay & display parking
to support the retail centres for which residents can purchase a permit. The
Council has adopted limited powers to enforce these pay & display zones.
Such schemes tend to only be effective where a turnover of parking takes place
to balance the needs of residents and other parking and is therefore unlikely
to be suited to the situation that Cllr Hards refers.
The
County would therefore consider residents’ parking zones following
implementation of CPE, but as is the case in Oxford would expect such schemes
to be self-financing.”
The Cabinet Member asked
officers to respond to Councillor Hards to confirm whether
or not an undertaking
which some local residents had said had been given by Thames Valley to monitor
this issue had in fact been given.