Delighted as I am that the residents of Marston will now get their public consultation on a local parking scheme (April 15), I am appalled at the length of time it has taken the Oxfordshire County Council to move from initial promise to actual survey: nine months.

This does not bode well for our local consultation on a parking scheme for the Lye Valley area and Wood Farm.

Having done such consultations before, the county council must have standard covering letters and survey forms. These only need adapting to the specific locality. Even with double checking by a superior, the whole thing could surely be done easily within a working week?

If issuing a simple consultation exercise takes nine months, I dread to think how long it will take to process the results and come up with a viable parking scheme.

We in the Lye Valley had our consultation meeting in late October 2014. At the time we were told that the consultation could happen by January 2015. Now it looks as though we may have to wait until July if Marston’s experience is typical.

In the meantime we already have some pressure on parking by commuters working at the hospital’s site, for example in the Peat Moors area of Lye Valley. We are now expecting another 2,000 jobs when the Big Data Institute is built. We don’t want to wait until our roads are clogged with extra commuters’ cars. We want a parking scheme now.

HAZEL DAWE
Bulan Road
Oxford