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Rutland County Council scrutiny committee ‘too busy’ to look at restructure of car parking charges




A restructure of car parking charges will not be taken on by a council's scrutiny committee who have refused the request due to workload.

Rutland County Council's cabinet member for transport Christine Wise (Lib Dem) had asked the authority’s scrutiny committee, chaired by Labour councillor Ramsay Ross, to look at a restructure of fees across the council’s various town centre car parks in Oakham and Uppingham.

Parking charges are going up
Parking charges are going up

But at the meeting last night the committee voted against the proposal.

Coun Ross said: “One of the problems we have got is that we are coming to the end of the municipal year and we have got quite a few other commitments and as we have seen from the discussions, we have fairly limited resources, so my suggestion is that as a committee we must ensure our work plan remains manageable and I’m not convinced this can be managed in this year.”

Before the vote, Coun Ross had suggested the car parking charges review could coincide with the high street rejuvenation project but director for place Penny Sharp said the car parking matter could take up the entirety of the high street consideration.

The authority owns seven car parks in Oakham and three in Uppingham. Currently all car parks can be used free of charge for 30 minutes, with a £1.20 fee for one hour parking. Coun Wise has said she does not want to impose a blanket percentage rise across the car parks, as this could impact on businesses.

It is unclear now how the parking restructure plans will now be developed but will likely come down to officers and the cabinet to devise.

The authority also refused a request by the county’s director of public health Mike Sandys to attend an upcoming meeting to make a presentation about the work of the public health team.

Coun Lucy Stephenson (Con) had said it appeared more ‘show and tell’ rather than a job for scrutiny and the committee decided a briefing to the entire council would be more appropriate.

It will however take on a request to set up a working group to look at possible communications issues of its new waste strategy and prepare a plan. From March next year the authority will change its current waste collection service to a weekly food waste collection and a change to its black bin waste collections. A working group will be made up of members of the whole council.

The scrutiny committee is also looking at how housing associations perform in Rutland with a dedicated working group.

Coun Raymond Payne (Lib Dem) said the hesitancy of scrutiny committee members to get involved in working groups ‘underlines how few of us there are on this council to cover an awful lot of ground'.

The cabinet is made up of six councillors from the Liberal Democrat party and there are 26 elected councillors in total.



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