Lack of coherence (From The Oxford Times)

Lack of coherence

6:50am Thursday 9th July 2009 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

Sir – A packed meeting of the Iffley Field residents’ association exposed the limits of local democracy in our city.

The issue was the planned controlled parking zone (CPZ) and specifically the 11th- hour introduction of pavement parking and a reduction of 40 parking places.

County councillors and officials out-sourced their accountability by sending along their consultants.

It was pointed out that the proposed CPZ scheme risks serious environmental, economic and social spill-overs.

First, people visiting businesses, places of worship and schools in our community will be unable to park.

Second, pavement parking will exacerbate the dominance of cars in our neighbourhood and people pushing buggies, in wheelchairs, or the visually impaired will struggle to use our footways.

Third, eliminating 40 parking spaces will create difficulties for people with young children, the disabled and those returning home late. The problem in Iffley Fields is availability of overnight, not day-time parking. Other justifications for the CPZ design exposed a frightening lack of policy coherence. These included the hypothetical risk of cars displaced from the Magdalen CPZ parking in Iffley Fields, plans to issue every house with two parking permits when there is barely one parking space per house.

Perhaps most worryingly was the tactic of evoking the argument that the fire service had demanded wider carriageway access. Unfortunately, it was made clear that serious flaws or not the scheme would go ahead.

The point of this letter is to appeal to county councillors to scrutinise policies so as to minimise injustices and unnecessary social costs, to ask our chief fire officer to publicly state his position on pushing cars on to residential pavements, and to ask our council officers not to hide behind their consultants. Citizens of Oxford deserve better.

Paul Jepson, Oxford