Sir – Anthony Cheke’s steadfast defence of the county’s consultations on the East Oxford controlled parking zones (CPZ) (Letters, February 16) manages somehow to overlook the key point I was making — the fact that after 61 per cent of respondents requested that the scheme be changed or scrapped last time round. Two years later we are being presented with an unchanged proposal.
Is this the “extensive modification and improvement over time” that he refers to and so warmly applauds? One is bound to ask whether Mr Cheke’s readiness to defend the council’s conduct extends to support for their proposed extension of pavement parking into streets where it is not currently a problem (even for the emergency services), or the cap on visitor permits at 50 per annum which effectively means that individual residents are allowed less than one car-borne visitor per week, whether that visitor is a ‘pop-in’ carer, tradesman or family visitor.
Throw one dinner party and you’ve used up a quarter of your yearly ‘visitor’ allowance!
Does he dispute that this represents a seriously denudation of quality of life? Finally, is Mr Cheke going to defend the council’s policy of making this controversial decision the responsibility of a single councillor (sitting alone, in a laughingly-titled ‘committee’), who lives in a village on the other side of the county and who continues to refuse to come and listen to what residents have to say?
If Mr Cheke feels that this is localism in action, or that it qualifies as democracy in any sense, it is he, I am afraid, who is living on another planet.
Dominic Woodfield, Oxford
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