Any county councillor may, by giving notice to the Proper Officer by 9 am on the working day 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 Jean Fooks
“I am very disturbed to see that the two long-awaited amendments to North Oxford and Summertown CPZs have been delayed until February, despite having been in the Forward plan for November 25th for some time. Please would you explain why and whether they can be brought forward to deal with the very real problems they are intended to address? “
Reply from Councillor Rodney Rose, Cabinet Member for Transport
“The Councillor will be aware from my responses to her questions at the September 2010 meeting that, given the current budgetary pressures, minor amendments to CPZs are low on my list of priorities. Indeed this position is being reflected in the proposals for savings and reorganisation within the Highways & Transport section of the Environment & Economy Directorate
Indeed, the consultation on changes in the Summertown and North Summertown CPZs are only able to be dealt with in February 2011 because there is external funding from developers for elements of the proposals and officers have been able to ‘piggy-back’ other known concerns onto the back of these, thus reducing the impact on OCC budgets.”
Supplementary
Councillor Fooks asked whether or not private funding would enable some schemes to be brought forward.
Reply
Councillor Rose replied that the problem lay with reductions in staffing levels and confirmed that the earliest likely date for these to come forward for decision would be February 2011.
Councillor John Tanner
“Given the shortfall in the Residents’ Parking account in 2009/10 was £22K and a 25% increase in charges in 2011/12 is likely to bring in around £93K, what is the extra £70K to be spent on. Could Councillor Rose explain what the ‘Other’ category includes? In these austere times, has the Cabinet Member considered reducing costs in line with income?”
Reply from Councillor Rodney Rose, Cabinet Member for Transport
“As set out in the report costs associated with enforcement of resident parking zones are in two parts: resident parking bays, as identified showed a loss of £22k and the yellow lines (of which approximately 75% were within resident parking zones) showed a total loss of £170k of which approximately £85k was attributable to resident parking zones. In total therefore the shortfall for operating the zones was approximately £117k not £22k.
The 'Other' category in the financial information were a variety of costs including payments to contractors for implementing essential changes and maintenance in the zones, payments to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal service, payments for the provision of credit card payment services, membership of the British Parking Association and other small ad-hoc items such as training, printing, postage and stationary.
The County had already made significant savings (approximately £250,000 per year) and would seek to make further savings to balance the current deficit of £117k with the anticipated additional income of £93k. Additional savings in costs to meet the entire £117k shortfall would have to begin to target patrol levels and as such might only serve to reduce income through PCN's.”
Supplementary
Councillor Tanner thanked the Cabinet Member for excluding the Blackbird Leys and Minchery Farm areas from the proposals and asked him to consider changes to shift patterns in order to achieve improved enforcement and increased income rather than look to increase charges by 25%.
Reply
Councillor Rose replied that existing shift patterns had been set in order to show a presence across the City to provide an equality of service across the region. Costs for management and processing were pretty much fixed with very little more that could be cut. It would not be in anyone’s best interest least of all residents to further reduce levels of enforcement.