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Three bidding for parking deal ‘worth millions’
Westminster contract up for grabs
TWO firms are in the running to wrestle the council’s lucrative parking contract away from its current holders.
The contract for what is considered the most prized local authority parking operation in the country, held by NSL Services for the past seven years, will come up for grabs in April next year.
A Westminster City Council spokeswoman confirmed that Apcoa (formerly the Airport Parking Company of America) and engineering consultancy firm Mouchel, have thrown their hats in the ring and are expected to make the formal shortlist of bidders when it is drawn up in mid-January.
In recent months NSL Services has come under the spotlight following a series of high-profile media reports suggesting its staff are put under pressure to generate parking tickets.
This came to a head in the wake of a Channel 4 documentary, Confessions of a Traffic Warden, after the show’s producer spoke of an “ingrained culture” within City Hall’s parking operation in which wardens believed they would be rewarded with extra overtime for issuing high numbers of tickets.
The council is not legally allowed to make a profit from enforcement, but last year eight and half square miles of pavement space in the borough generated a “surplus income” of £35million.
NSL has always denied there is any pressure, incentives or targets for their 200 Westminster wardens. For the firm that wins the enforcement deal, the contract is a potential goldmine, worth around £12million a year.
Apcoa is a seasoned campaigner in the parking business, holding contracts for more than a dozen local authorities, many of them in the capital, as well as managing “off-street” operations at railway stations, airports and shopping centres.
But Mouchel, on the other hand, is relatively new on the scene, recently securing contracts in Newham and Hillingdon.
NSL confirmed it will be bidding to keep the contract.
Labour group leader Paul Dimoldenberg last week called for an inquiry into the way the council’s parking operation is run.
He said: “Residents need to be assured that parking wardens are simply enforcing the parking regulations and not acting as council tax collectors with incentives to issue as many tickets as possible.”
Last week Tim Cowen, from NSL, said: “We wrote to Cllr Dimoldenberg with more detail of this after the West End Extra quoted him on this subject some weeks ago and will be delighted to discuss it with him in detail if wishes to contact us directly.”
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