Due to popular requests (yes! we pushed for this on behalf of residents) the City Council has asked County Highways to make a presentation to City Councillors about the role of Highways in planning. Here are some of the questions we have tabled in advance. Some may not be answerable in this forum, but we are pushing to get answers on all of them while we have the opportunity…..
1. What is the protocol for informing Oxford City Councillors about County planning applications affecting property in their ward, and what is the protocol for informing Oxfordshire County Councillors about planning applications affecting property in their division? Can this be improved? There are often highways and access issues in these that councillors want to know about and challenge.
2. What is the County Highways policy on retrospectively supporting the inclusion of properties for residents’ permits when a condition has been placed on planning permissions by City Council planning committees to deliberately exclude them from the RPZ?
3. What is the County Highways policy on retrospectively supporting the issue of visitors permits to properties given planning permission conditional upon them being car-free? Is the County Highways department aware that if permission is given for the issue of unlimited visitor permits to car-free properties, the residents of those properties will use them themselves, negating the whole point of conditioning a development to be car-free in areas with parking pressure?
4. In a current case, the County acting as statutory consultee has supported a development conditionally upon parking spaces being moved elsewhere down the road, without any reference to wider public consultation and initially without informing ward councillors directly either. Does that conform to County policy?
5. What is the County’s policy for designating some areas of the City eligible for one permit per household only? Which areas of the City does this apply to, and what are the County’s criteria for this, as there are some parts of Headington where parking availability has reached a critical state
6. Re s106 and major developments: in the recent and on-going project at Barton West, the County Highways officer alluded to a total amount of developer money going to County Highways which could not be clearly defined at this stage as there was a ‘shopping list’ of projects on which money could be spent. How can ward councillors and county councillors with knowledge of the area and its problems input to this list and influence the way in which spending on essential potential projects can be prioritised?
7. How much consideration is given to the needs of pedestrians and cyclists in district centres in the City as opposed to the interests of those travelling by bus, coach, taxi and car? What is the pecking order in priority of highway use?
8. Why are cycle lanes allowed to continue through areas where bus passengers alight from buses, leading to greater risk of collisions between pedestrians and cyclists? How can City and County Councillors get this policy changed so that cycle lane markings on shared space are always diverted behind shelters on high volume roads?
9. What are the criteria for installing box junctions as part of ongoing Highways planning improvement work? There is a great need for box junctions in Headington to improve road safety of cyclists and pedestrians but there is great antipathy from the County Council about putting these in as it will spoil the aesthetic look of the London Road.
10. How can the ward and county councillors get more involved in setting the specification for public transport contracts which are subsidised with s106 contributions? Narrow residential streets are being used by bigger and more frequent bus services which are causing congestion and near misses.
11. Why is the County Council Highways Planning Team so wedded to raised road surfaces at junctions between residential streets and major roads where there are dropped kerbs on corners? This encourages traffic to mount pavements causing near misses with pedestrians. What is the Highways Authority’s input into:
- selection of sites for this purpose
- specification of the installation, including criteria for materials used
- selection of contractor
- contracts for the contractor and the conditions the contractors were to adhere to
- quality assurance of the work carried out
- rectification of deficiencies
The meeting will be held on 15 October so the County officers will have lots of time to research the answers to these questions.