A 'SOFTWARE issue' has been blamed for annoying motorists at one of Oxford's park and ride sites.

Oxfordshire County Council installed a new high tech board on West Way a few weeks ago, ahead of the Westgate Centre's reopening on October 24 and anticipated increased traffic.

But drivers using Seacourt Park and Ride have complained that at times the sign advertises spaces are available – only for them to get into the car park and find there are none left.

Due to the IT problem, it can take the park and ride's system up to half an hour to update to the correct number of spaces available.

The sign is also failing to work with another sign on the A420 near Cumnor.

The council confirmed it had received a 'small number of complaints' but said it has engineers working on the problem because it 'understands the importance' of the sign working correctly.

All other county council signs for the four other park and ride sites – at Peartree, Redbridge, Thornhill and Water Eaton – are working properly.

Twitter user Glenn Patrick wrote to the council yesterday: "Electronic signs on A420 nr Cumnor said Seacourt P&R full at 16:40 on Thurs. Seacourt sign on Botley Rd said 195 spaces.Why @OxfordshireCC (Oxfordshire County Council)?"

Another Twitter user Lara Flynn protested: "Just spent 30 minutes driving round Seacourt park and ride, just ridiculous that traffic for the new Westgate is directed to an already full car park.

"Having to spend extra miles and time going to Peartree. Disappointing."

Oxfordshire County Council spokesman Martin Crabtree said: "There is a software issue and we are working hard to keep it up to date by manually correcting as much and as often as we can while the engineers work to fix the software issue permanently.

"The signs at all other four sites are working perfectly and are showing live information of the number of available spaces very accurately."

He added: "We have had a small number of complaints, but we understand the importance of the sign to people and are working hard to get it working correctly."

The county council installed the sign as Oxfordshire's transport authority but Seacourt Park and Ride is owned by Oxford City Council.

On Tuesday the Oxford Mail revealed how the Co-Operative had submitted an objection to plans for Oxford City Council's plans to expanded the Seacourt Park and Ride car park.

The supermarket chain said the council should abandon plans to expand onto fields to the east of the car park and rent another field to the west — which it owns.

Councillors had hoped the expansion of 650 new spaces – in addition to about 800 already there – would be approved at the end of October.

The decision has been delayed from March after environmental concerns and worries the expansion could cause flooding.

Expansion opponents include the Oxfordshire Badger Group. It presented a 1,500-signature petition to city council leader Bob Price last month.