Any County Councillor may, by giving notice
to the Proper Officer by 9.00 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 meeting is limited to two or one question with notice
and a supplementary question at the meeting. The time for questions will be
limited to 30 minutes. As with Questions at Full 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 other councillor or officer determined by the Cabinet Member. Such Questions shall not be the subject of debate at this meeting. Questions received after the despatch of the agenda, but before the deadline for the receipt of Questions, will be shown on the Schedule of Addenda circulated at the meeting, together with the written response if one is available.
Minutes:
Councillor Dan Levy
Question
Oxfordshire County Council is considering the termination of its
contract with West Oxfordshire District Council for on-street parking
enforcement in West Oxfordshire. Can
Cllr Bearder please detail when this notice is likely to be given and when it
will come into force, outline how it will ensure that on-street enforcement in
the future is much better than it currently is in places where it is required
like Eynsham and Woodstock, and confirm that WODC will continue to control
pricing and enforcement in its off-street car parks, such as the ones in
Witney.
Response from Cabinet Member for Highway
Management
A decision to end the agency
arrangement with West Oxfordshire will be made by Cabinet in March 2022. If
approved, notice will be given to West Oxfordshire District Council providing
the 12 months’ notice required by the agency agreement. Oxfordshire County
Council would then take over the enforcement of on-street parking on 1 April
2023.
Members may recall that the
County Council successfully applied to the Department for Transport to extend
the existing civil parking enforcement arrangements to encompass Cherwell,
South and Vale District Councils in 2021, and this came into operation on 1
November 2021. As a result, we have civil parking enforcement powers across the
whole of the County together with a single service provider, Conduent Public
Sector Services Limited, providing feet on the ground enforcement in all areas
except West Oxfordshire. Officers consider the benefits of ending the agency
agreement to be:
· Clarity and single
organisation for members of the public and users of the network to contact
about on-street parking within Oxfordshire.
· Consistency of
approach, resilience, and coverage in terms of enforcement levels and
deployment.
· A single back-office
system serving all areas of the county providing economies of scale and
resilience to deal with varying workload demands.
· Implement intelligent
deployment via data driven deployment plans and introduce new technologies to
enhance the on-street and back-office service.
· An additional benefit
would be the alignment and operation as a single enforcement service, if the
application to enforce moving traffic offences is approved.
I can confirm that these changes
only effect on-street (highway) parking and do not affect off-street parking or
pricing of public car parks operated by West Oxfordshire District Council (or
any of the public car parks in any of the other district areas).
Cllr Levy mentions Woodstock and
Eynsham in particular. I can confirm that Officers have been working with
Woodstock Town Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, Councillor Andy
Graham, and other interested parties to bring in a scheme to better manage the
parking situation in Woodstock. This scheme involves introducing controlled
parking zones (resident parking) combined with joint usage for on-street
visitor parking and resident parking in the centre of the town together with an
element of on-street pay and display parking to support the turnover of parking
spaces which supports the local economy. Informal consultation on the scheme
has proved positive and the scheme will go forward for full public consultation
in the near future.
Should Cabinet approve the ending of the agency agreement
with WODC, Officers will use the 12-month notice period to prepare intelligent
data led deployment plans with Conduent to ensure that parking enforcement
continues to support the overall objectives of the County Council both in terms
of thriving communities and managing the network, creating the correct balance
of resident, visitor, and commercial parking to maximise the benefits to local
communities and the travelling public.
Supplementary Question
In response to a supplementary
question about suggestions that the proposal to terminate the on-street parking
enforcement contract with West Oxford District Council was an attack on the
free parking in car parks in Witney and other locations in West Oxfordshire,
Councillor Bearder stated that he was aware that there was a petition relating
to this proposal which, given that there were local elections pending, he
believed politically motivated and an attempt to deflect attention from the
poor performance in relation to parking enforcement.
Councillor Bearder went on to say that he had no power to
change the rules relating to car parks in West Oxfordshire and any decision to
end the current on-street car parking enforcement contract would only be taken
with the consent of the local community.