Sir – In October 2011, Oxford City Council introduced parking charges in Cutteslowe Park. I spoke at the scrutiny committee examining this, to explain that park-goers would simply park free in unregulated adjacent side roads and, not only would this cause problems for residents, it would also reduce parking charges’ revenue.

Councillor Colin Cook replied that people would understand the council needed money and would use the car park — not how I think most of us see it!

Ten months later and we have the entirely predictable problems caused by park-goers parking in the side roads (particularly Harbord Road) causing real problems of access to local residents many of whom are elderly. An opportunity you may think for the county council to rush to our rescue. But no — they have put forward proposals banning all parking in Harbord Road between 9am-5pm daily, to include all residents/visitors/disabled visitors/carers/tradesmen!

They also plan to introduce much-needed two-hour limits in Five Mile Drive to stop commuter parking.

Why can’t they predict what everyone can see immediately — that this will simply displace the park-goers and the commuters into side roads causing a different set of problems.

The county council says there is no money for a residents’ parking scheme in this area. This is unacceptable considering the scale of their budget and the way it is spent — expenditure on the now defunct Cogges Link Road comes to mind.

Once again we find ourselves caught between the city and county councils; one is making money while the other needs to spend money (but won’t) to sort out the resultant problems. Can someone please apply some common sense and a relatively small amount of money to this problem and sort it out?

Suzanne McIvor , Oxford