A GOOD gauge of when you’ve discovered a financial nugget a council would like to keep hidden is the explosion coming from the councillor in charge.

“Monumental drivel,” thundered Rodney Rose, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for transport, when we asked why charging people to park outside their own homes is turning a £110,000 profit, according to the authority’s own papers.

Spin-mode was rapidly engaged as the council tried to argue this wasn’t profit at all. No, no: it had to be offset against the loss of running and patrolling other on-street parking.

Nonsense.

The county has said previously that controlled parking zones in Oxford were not designed to be profit-making.

Yet the black-and-white facts in its own papers state the cost of resident parking zones (CPZ) was £768,009.68 in 2010-11. The income was £878,452.44. That leaves a surplus of £110,442.76, leaving residents who have seen their permit costs rise by 25 per cent recently asking if CPZ might stand for Council Profit Zone.

Cllr Rose is correct that there was a £288,662.05 loss for the rest of the city’s on-street parking system, but it is a separate scheme.

On-street parking enforcement would still be needed if there was no residents’ scheme.

And if Cllr Rose wants to drag in other parking schemes, let’s cut to the rather fat final profit column.

Overall, all of the parking schemes shown in the council’s own papers earned a profit of £1.138m, meaning in reality residents could be given free permits and the council would still be in the black.

If the county council is going to take money from people, then it should be open to honest scrutiny.

Anything else would be, to borrow Cllr Rose’s own word, drivel.