Sir – In another sign of governing indifference to democracy, the county council seems poised to impose a controlled parking zone on the Magdalen Road area of East Oxford despite an expressed majority of opposition to the scheme.
No one would deny that there are issues with car parking in this part of Oxford, where the volume of residents’ cars is at the limit of available spaces.
What is disheartening is that the scheme was proposed and defeated two years ago; and rather than revising the scheme to take into account the objections of residents — to the scheme’s expansion of existing pavement parking and to its unrealistic limitations on residents’ guest parking, for example — it has been resurrected as it was.
Unsurprisingly, it is no more persuasive now than it was then. The idiocy of the situation is that with some careful thought about what exactly the problems of the area are and how best these might be addressed, it would be possible to propose a scheme that would win strong popular support. Everyone wants an improvement in the status quo.
Rather than do that, the county council wants to unroll its one-size-fits-all scheme which will charge residents for a situation that is materially worse than what they have at present. Why not act with a popular mandate if it is possible to do so?
Dr David Maw, Oxford
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