Highway Enquiry Problems

Several residents have complained to me that they have sent their highway enquiries into the County Council email address at  highwayenquiries@oxfordshire.gov.uk and despite receiving an automated response promising a reply within 10 working days, they have been waiting weeks to no avail.

I took the matter up at the Cabinet meeting in July where I was also taking issue with the Customer Services Centre because residents who had applied for their primary school places by email were not getting a reply.  I was told that this was due to the service being outsourced to Capita and it was their failure to send out confirmation emails to about 6,500 families.  My supplementary question was to ask about similar problems with the highway enquiries email where  I have personally experienced problems despite being told I would have a reply within 10 working days.  In one particular case it was over 2 months before I got a response.  It was minuted at the meeting that the Cabinet members responsible would respond to me on the issue.  Sadly, to date there has been no response at all.

The matter has recently been compounded by the fact that we were all told that as councillors we would now be given a dedicated email address to which a priority would be given to our highways enquiries.  However, on using this address, there is no automated response, and no way of telling if the email has been received, or if it will be attended to.  To date, no reply on this one either.

The Deputy Leader of the Council has now assured me that he is looking into these problems.  I await further news.

Meanwhile if any residents are continuing to have problems reporting highways matters to the County Council please let me know.   I do have a small amount of money still available through the Area Stewardship Funding which might be available to tackle some issues.