The transport secretary has attacked Oxford’s traffic plans as an attempt to “decide how often you go to the shops.”
Mark Harper used his Conservative Party Conference speech to announce he was “calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities.”
He specified today (Thursday, October 5) that his speech referred specifically to Oxfordshire County Council.
The council's highways chief Andrew Gant said Mr Harper was “wrong” and “needs to do his homework."
In his speech, Mr Harper said: “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and they police it all with CCTV.”
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He told Times Radio this morning: “If you go on Oxfordshire County Council’s website, you’ll see they have got proposals to have a permit being issued to residents allowing them only to go down certain roads at certain times of the year, and using CCTV enforcement cameras to enforce it, and if you breach it, you’ll get a fine.
“It does (limit the number of times you can go to the shops) if you want to use a car.
“It’s perfectly sensible for councils to do traditional town planning to arrange to have local facilities near where people live. That’s very sensible
“But for councillors to tell people that you can only use your cars to drive down certain roads a certain number of times a year or you’ll be fined – I don’t think it’s appropriate and I don’t think most people support it.
“That’s what I was talking about in my speech as a very specific example of something we don’t support and we’re going to look at how we can tighten guidance and rules so that councils aren’t able to do that.”
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Traffic filters will be trialled on six streets in Oxford after Network Rail finishes work to improve Oxford rail station - expected to be in autumn 2024.
Mr Gant said: "Mr Harper is wrong.
"There is nowhere in Oxfordshire which you can currently access by car which you will not be able to access by car under our scheme.
“The traffic filter scheme does not limit the number of times you can go to the shops if you want to use a car: if Mr Harper thinks it says that, he needs to do his homework.
“Mr Harper is also wrong to state that the scheme uses CCTV: it does not. It is monitored using ANPR, which records only car registration and is therefore completely different from CCTV, a difference Mr Harper appears not to understand.
“The scheme addresses a real problem: nobody goes anywhere if current levels of congestion are allowed to continue. Is that better?
"Mr Harper and his colleagues offer no alternative ideas to deal with the underlying issue.
"If he would like to come to Oxford so I can explain to him what our proposals actually say and what they are trying to do, he would be very welcome."
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