From the 4th to the 6th of January 2012 Nutsville attended the London Employment Tribunal hearing of the case of Hakim Berkani
Hakim Berkani
versus his former employers NSL Services.
Hakim was employed by NSL Services as a Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO) patrolling the streets of Kensington and Chelsea, who had outsourced their parking enforcement contract to NSL Services.
Nutsville has written about the practices of NSL before, most memorably when Channel 4 commissioned a documentary called ‘Confessions of a traffic warden’. Neighbouring borough Westminster City Council who also uses NSL Services granted access to TV production company Betsy to make a documentary describing what it was like for newly arrived immigrants to work on the streets of London who obtained their first job with NSL Services.
At the time a number of CEO’s approached Nutsville to tell their side of the story. We catalogued tails of ticket targets, bullying, substandard working conditions, and examples of any CEO who complained being ‘managed out’ from the company. At the time our interviews were dismissed by both Westminster council and NSL as simply stories from disgruntled troublemaking CEO’s.
Now today we have obtained a damming judgement from the London Employment Tribunal (download here) where three Judges Mr Jeremy Burns, Mr T Robinson and Ms N Foster condem NSL Services managers for conducting a sham disciplinary hearing attempting to ‘manage out’ another honest CEO.
The unanimous verdict lists a catalogue of events and exposes claims that obtaining the maximum number of parking tickets is really what local councils and their subcontractors are all about, and at whatever cost:
NSL knew that their CEOs were regularly issuing PCNs unlawfully for taking longer than 5 minutes for loading until Hakim Berkani studied the rules and told his colleagues it was wrong.
He was sacked allegedly because he gestured from a distance a reminder to a driver whom he knew not to overstay his parking time. This was noticed by a supervisor hiding in waiting together with a CEO (who issues more tickets than any other) ready to ticket this car the moment the time expired (if the driver did not return in time). The preposterous allegation was that he had “endangered her safety and wellbeing”! This allegation wasn’t made known to Mr Berkani until more than two years after the event!
This allegation reveals the misconduct of the other CEO and her supervisor who were hiding for the sole purpose of issuing every PCN possible, this being a common practice in Kensington & Chelsea.
It was customary practice known to NSL management to start the PCN issuing process before a contravention had occurred. Visible CEO presence on the street is an objective of proper enforcement procedure.
Some NSL management statements made to the Employment Tribunal flatly contradicted earlier statements of the management presented in evidence.
CEO witnesses who gave statements to the Tribunal also contradicted evidence and statements made by the NSL management. Derogatory allegations made against Mr Berkani by the NSL management were not supported by evidence from his CEO colleagues.
Contrary to NSL Management allegations against Mr Berkani, one Manager told the Tribunal that he had never had any complaint about Mr Berkani’s conduct.
In the course of an earlier contrived and biased management investigation into Mr Berkani’s alleged behaviour the manger involved had been leading CEO witnesses in their statements and he failed to interview any of Mr Berkani’s colleagues who would have spoken strongly in his favour.
One NSL manager categorically denied that there was any performance quota for the issuing of PCNs yet Judges accepted evidence that the managers clearly wanted more rather than less PCNs to be issued. This is corroborated not only by an email from Emma Collins, Regional manager within NSL to Jeff Miles and Andrew Davison (then contract manager) dated 9 November 2009 which reads as follows “there are still significant numbers of people issuing at a rate of below .9 per hour …. we should not feel uncomfortable to use the disciplinary process … etc”.
A member of the NSL management (Mr Paul Boxall) actually told the Tribunal that “the Press are to blame for us not being able to have ticket targets” ! ! !
It was also shown that Kensington & Chelsea Council is fully aware of the unlawful PCN targets and also that they are necessary to achieve the terms of their contract with NSL.
NSL management denied that there were any financial rewards but it was shown that there are bonuses and overtime opportunities for those who issue large numbers of PCN and also the giving of Argos Rewards.
Mr Berkani became a representative of the GMB union because of the deplorable working conditions at the Fulham CEO operating base. He dealt with several working condition grievances from his colleagues which annoyed his supervisor.
NSL’s management style
Management disregarded Mr Berkani’s complaints about the water at the CEO’s NSL Fulham office which is fed from a roof tank. It was not safe for drinking and was contrary to health and safety regulations but NSL management refused to provide bottled drinking water. NSL’s base manager Mr Andrew Dunbar
NSL Base manager Andrew Dunbar
is alleged to have told Berkani that he “had a fucking big mouth and was a troublemaker“.
A few days later the Berkani found a large live cockroach in the kitchen and complained to a supervisor who went to report to Dunbar, who responded by suggesting to Berkani that “he was playing games … that the cockroach had come from Berkani’s own home … and that the workplace was like a ‘5 star deluxe’ for the other employees as where they come from they live with worse conditions on a daily basis etc … ”
Because of the grievances of the CEOs against their NSL management several joined the GMB union to have proper representation. This angered the NSL management, leading to one occasion where Berkani found that during his absence all his union application forms had been thrown in the bin. On another occasion he found that his locker at work had been forced and that his union diary was missing. When he went to see Dunbar about the binning of the application forms Dunbar refused to speak to him.
The tribunal heard how Dunbar tried to bribe Mr Berkani by offering him the opportunity of a favourable transfer to the NSL vehicle pound (which was highly sought-after position) on the condition that he ceased his union activities, stating “but that if he wanted the job he should immediately stop all his union activities“.
At about this time Dunbar was resistant to providing Berkani (who is a diabetic) with new shoes, requiring him to first to obtain a GPs letter at the cost to Berkani of £25 (to prove the already well known fact that diabetes involves a heightened risk to the health of the sufferers feet), and then telling Berkani that “he does not deserve a pair of shoes because he is a union representative, a lazy fuck, and because he did not issue enough PCNs to justify a new pair”
The tribunal Judge’s thought it was clear that by October 2010 relations between Mr Berkani on the one hand and NSL’s immediate managers, namely Messrs Rowland, Dunbar and Davison had reached a very low ebb. They saw the Berkani as a trouble maker in several respects, principally because he had refused to comply with and had sought to expose publicly the NSL’s clandestine PCN quota system, and because Berkani had become a union activist, and had taken a leading role in organising an increase in union membership, in representing members in grievance and disciplinary hearings against the self same managers, and in raising legitimate health and safety issues.
The Judge’s state “These Managers decided to get rid of the Claimant and schemed to do so by trumping up various alleged disciplinary charges against him.”
NSL contract manager Paul Boxall
Mr Boxall another NSL manager became involved in the process when he started visiting the NLS Fulham base from October 2010 onwards as part of his familiarisation process before taking over as contract manager in November 2010. The Judge’s thought that Boxall must have been told by Davison, Dunbar or Rowland and probably by all three that the Mr Berkani should be got rid of and that the place would be much happier if he went. Boxall accepted this argument and in fact told the tribunal that he thought that the base was a better place now without Berkani there (even though he had no first-hand experience of Mr Berkani during normal work conditions).
The plot thickens
One step in the plot against Berkani was to get a Ms Cangy a fellow CEO, to write a complaint about Mr Berkani. The Judges said it was a strange document in several respects. Its purported date (possibly 14 September 2010) was doubtful, particularly as it appeared to describe events over a previous period during much of which Berkani had been absent from work on unpaid leave. It was subsequently used by NSL as a complaint about Berkani’s personal conduct, but about that it was very vague. In fact the initial statement by Ms Cangy raises as its main issue Berkani not issuing PCNs, which, if it was a real issue, was a performance issue which NSL had decided not to deal with through any proper channel.
Cangy was interviewed by NSL base manager Steve Rowlands in October 2010 where he pressed her to come up with something more specific against Berkani. The best she was able to come up with was a reference to an incident in the past when Berkani had tipped off a motorist that he was about to get a PCN. It transpired that this incident had in fact taken place in 2008 but had not been complained about by Cangy at the time.
NSL Base manager Steve Rowlands
The Judges concluded that Cangy had been placed under some pressure by the conspiring NSL managers to come up with this material. What she produced was not a genuine complaint which warranted investigation or disciplinary charges.
The Judges said that the same applies to the so-called complaint produced later against the Berkani from a fellow CEO, Mr Khatri who did not speak or understand English very well or even at all.
According to the Khatri complaint, Berkani had been pressurising him to join the union, and had racially abused him calling him “that bloody asian“. The latter allegation was not corroborated by any other witnesses.
Rowlands helped create a petition to attack Berkani personally and as a union rep. Although Rowlands initially denied this he subsequently gave inconsistent accounts in different statements to the tribunal about this. The Judges said that Rowlands together with “other managers and seniors which he was not at liberty to identify” had drafted documentation, and caused it to be spread around Berkani’s workplace and placed on the public notice board during his absence.
Rowlands said his only motivation in drawing up these documents was to ensure that the GMB rep was democratically elected, and that he was entirely neutral as to who the rep should be. But the Judge’s thought that was wholly disingenuous as Rowlands eventually admitted having drafting a petition which contained a direct personal attack on Mr Berkani.
Mr Berkani also learnt from fellow CEO’s (which the judges found truthful), that during his absence Rowlands was trying to get CEOs to sign the petition and along with Dunbar was canvassing various employees trying to get them to make statements against Berkani.
Hakim Berkani was suspended on 2th October 2010 and interviewed by a Mr Samsay Samatrai on 29th October. Berkani gave an account of events which Judge’s found to be consistent with his subsequent versions. Berkani complained that he was being made the subject of a propaganda campaign by the two NSL base managers, Rowlands and Dunbar.
Mr Boxall an NSL contract manager later invited Berkani to a so called grievance hearing followed by a disciplinary hearing on 2nd December 2010. However Boxall decided to deal with Berkani’s complaints as a grievance separately from the disciplinary charges.
Judges said that Boxall’s actions were highly artificial and failed to place the Berkani case in its proper context. They went on to say that the fact that Boxall was intent on pressing on with the disciplinary hearing regardless of whether the grievance was well founded or not. By that stage Boxall had been persuaded by the NSL base managers at Fulham Rd that getting rid of Mr Berkani was desirable and Judges said that Boxall was just going through the motions with the sole intention of achieving that objective.
Mr Berkani learnt that the NSL managers (including Boxall) were contacting other CEOs trying to get them to make statements against him. Mr Boxall in evidence admitted making a call to a potential witness but denied that he did so with any improper motive. Mr Berkani said that by then he’d lost faith in NSL’s disciplinary process.
Boxall sacked Mr Berkani by letter dated the 11th February 2011.
Mr Berkani appealed against his dismissal with help from his union rep a Mr Abid. Even Mr Abid had to submit a written complaint after NSL base manager Rowlands bullied and harassed him in an effort to deter him from helping Berkani.
NSL’s shame continues upwards
NSL regional manager John Storey
Mr Berkani’s appeal was finally heard by NSL Services regional manager Mr Storey on 10th March 2011 where he was represented by another union rep, Mr Carter.
After the hearing Mr Carter was handed a letter dated 19th January 2011 which neither Mr Carter or Mr Berkani had seen before – it was Boxalls rejection of Berkani’s grievance regarding NSL’s propaganda campaign. Boxall wrote “I cannot conclusively prove that Steve Rowlands produced the documentation that is the foundation of the grievance claim“. Judges branded Boxall’s findings perverse and plainly wrong. They went on to say “In dealing with the appeal against dismissal Mr Storey appears to have accepted or followed Mr Boxall’s highly questionable conclusions about the Claimant’s grievance. Mr Storey also went off and asked witnesses highly leading questions designed to elicit answers unfavourable to the Claimant. He then dismissed the appeal without giving reasons”
The Judges concluded by saying:
The Respondent has not shown that the real reason for dismissal was misconduct or any other potentially fair reason.
The real reasons for the Claimant’s dismissal were (i) his opposition to the Respondent’s clandestine quota system relating to the issuing of parking contravention notices, and (ii) his trade union activities, neither of which were potentially fair reasons for dismissal within section 98(2) or some other substantial reason of a kind such as to justify dismissal.
Messrs Davison, Dunbar and Rowlands were a party to a campaign against the Claimant designed to frame him on trumped-up charges.
Mr Boxall and Mr Storey did not have a genuine belief based on reasonable grounds that the Claimant had perpetrated the alleged misconduct. There was substantial evidence on which they should have concluded that the Claimant was being victimised and that the original complaints against the claimant were simply an expression of this.
The so called misconduct – consisting in the Claimant not issuing PCNs because he was scared and unsupported, trying to persuade CEOs to join his union, and taking issue when he was on the receiving end of serious provocation from Messrs Dunbar and Rowlands would- not have justified dismissal in any event, even if these matters had been the genuine reason.
The disciplinary process was a sham designed to get rid of the claimant while skating over or ignoring the genuine serious counter-complaints which he had raised.
In final submissions Mr Preston suggested that the Claimant was guilty of contributory fault consisting in firstly his not attending the disciplinary hearings before Mr Boxall after 2nd December 2010. However, with good reason, he had lost faith in the process. He asked for a new process in front of an independent decision maker, but was refused.
Secondly it was suggested that he had refused to see matters from his “employers point of view”. However the main areas of disagreement were (i) that the Claimant objected to being forced to issue PCNs under a quota system, whereas the Respondents managers were seeking to advance such a system on a clandestine basis; and (ii) that the Claimant wanted to be able to pursue legitimate union activities on behalf of his union members in the face of severe illegitimate opposition to this from managers. We do not think that the Claimant refusal to share his managers’ views on either of these subjects can be justly described as contributory fault on his part.
There is also no basis for making a finding that had matters been dealt with fairly and properly, that the Claimant would have been dismissed anyway (ie under the Polkey principle).
NSL managers Boxall and Story arguing outside the tribunal
NSL managers Boxall and Story arguing outside the tribunal
NSL managers Boxall and Story arguing outside the tribunal
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There’s an old joke we couldn’t resist using when we learnt the latest news about resigning Westminster City Council leader Colin Barrow. He used to be indecisive but now he’s not so sure.
Last Saturday (14th Jan 2012) the BBC’s Political Editor Tim Donovan published his story that:
“Colin Barrow will resign as leader of Westminster Council and stand down as a councillor.” (view source)
As the days passed more journalists contacted the rather extravagantly funded Westminster Council press office to also have it confirmed that Colin Barrow was indeed resigning from both the leadership of the council and his role of councillor.
The significance of Barrow resigning as a councillor is because it would cause a by-election in Barrows ward, Hyde Park. The council’s standing orders state that the election must be called within 35 days of a councillor declaring his/her intention to leave.
Several journalists were led to believe by the council’s PR department that Cllr Barrow would be departing in March, staying just long enough to see this year’s council budget through.
Barrow himself was saying his resignation was something he had planned for a long time, as at 60 he wanted to use his time to concentrate on writing and lecturing. In all the TV and radio sound bites since last Friday Barrow never once said he was stepping down as a councillor, but perhaps tellingly he never once denied the official story being spread by his councils own PR department either.
With a number of journalists confirming to Nutsville that Westminster Council’s press office was telling them all, even after last weekend, there would be a by-election as a result of Barrow’s resignation, it creates a big question of who is running Westminster City Council.
By last Thursday the published press release on the councils’ website was quietly altered with the addition of this sentence tagged on at the end:
“Cllr Colin Barrow is stepping down as Leader but is yet to decide on his future as a Westminster councillor.”
A cached version of the original council press release can be viewed here whilst today’s press release is here.
We have spoken to a handful of Westminster Conservative councillors’ who have all said that Colin Barrow is giving the ‘impression’ that he is staying on as a councillor but all wanted Barrow to clear up what is happening. Some Tory councillors did say it was still a grey area which needs a clear statement from Colin as to whether he has resigned as leader and as a councillor.
With Barrow claiming his resignation decision was something he intended to do for months; it is odd for him not to be clear about his intentions at this late stage.
Could it be that once again council officers have attempted to lead councillors by the noses so to speak and jumped the gun by dictating policy or did Downing Street intervene? After all, the election for London Mayor falls on the 3rd May. So if there is a local by-election just before this date, it may help Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign. Most polls show Johnson and Livingstone just a few points apart, and the thought of Livingstone becoming London mayor is so abhorrent to Conservative’s it is bound to lead to speculation as to who is pulling Barrow’s strings because of the uncertainty over his resignation.
Colin Barrow might just be hoping to stay as a Westminster councillor for as long as possible? History does show Barrow as having the desire to ‘hang on’ to council jobs, as shown when he first went for the Hyde Park ward councillor’s job in 2002. At the time he was a lot clearer about his intentions than he appears to be now. He refused to step down from Suffolk County council, claiming he could be a councillor for both Westminster Council and Suffolk saying “I qualify to stand as a councillor in both Westminster and Suffolk and there are many examples of people who work on more than one council”.
Perhaps Colin Barrow might take the opportunity of tomorrows’ public council meeting to explain why his press office were saying one thing and he was not publicly disputing their statements.
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Tom Edwards the BBC’s Transport & Environment Correspondent broke the news last night that Westminster City Council were going to do something they said they would never do, that was to scrap plans to bring in Sunday and weekday evening parking charges.
The way that news came out last night is characteristic of the way Westminster City Council have handled what in time maybe seen as the largest council PR gaff since the Shirley Porter ‘home for votes’ scandal.
By 9pm last night Tom Edwards was able to state that Westminster Council had confirmed that the parking charges are to be scrapped. Meanwhile at 9:15pm the councils chief executive, Mike More, said he had been ‘instructed’ to prepare a report for the councils cabinet. It wasn’t until 9:20pm that the council chief of PR Alex Aiken was able to send out the following statement;
WESTMINSTER ANNOUNCES WEST END COMMISSION AND AN END TO LATE NIGHT AND WEEKEND PARKING CHARGES PROPOSALS
Cllr Colin Barrow, Leader of Westminster Council tonight asked the Chief Executive of Westminster Council to prepare a report to rescind the proposed evening and weekend parking charges.
Westminster’s Cabinet will also ask the Chief Executive to bring forward proposals to establish a Commission to consider the most effective way that the Council can support business, lessen congestion and improve the quality of life of residents living in the West End.
Cllr Barrow said tonight: “We have listened to Londoners in the interests of the wider economy and will scrap the charging plans. We need to think long and hard about how we manage traffic in the West End to allow people to go about their business, but it’s clear that these specific proposals did not command public support. I also felt after reflecting on this issue, that it was right to act swiftly rather than wait for the election of a new Council Leader in order to provide clarity for the future.
Cllr Lee Rowley, Cabinet Member for Transportation and Parking added: “We will think radically about how we manage traffic in the West End in the future. Our Commission will consider all credible strategies for managing traffic and we’ll reset our parking policies to focus on common sense measures that are fair but encourage people to keep to the rules.”
“The report will rescind the proposed evening and weekend parking charges that were agreed in August. We will ask for further work to be done on actions that have public support such as the protection of resident parking bays and measures that are necessary for the successful delivery of the Olympic Games such as effective enforcement of the Olympic Route Network.”
Cllr Rowley concluded: “This decision marks the end of the charging proposals we agreed in 2011 and the start of a fresh approach to parking in Westminster. We will continue to manage traffic in the city and will develop operational policies to do that, building on successful initiatives like Pay by Phone
Colin Barrow
The outgoing leader of the council Colin Barrow was pushed in front of the news cameras to make the announcement in an exquisite act of public humiliation. Until that point the most Barrow had said about his despised parking tax was that only minor tweaks would ever be considered, but come what may Barrow’s nightlife parking tax was permanent.
This clearly shows us that with Barrow being forced to publically eat his words, someone higher up the political food chain is now not just pulling but yanking Barrow’s puppet strings with both hands. It’s not often you get to see an ex Wall Street Banker now hedge fund manger being forced to dance to his masters tune on television. The only things missing from this tableau was some village stocks and a plentiful supply of rotten vegetables to go with some pitchfork welding residents.
Alex Aiken’s press release is very sad and in many ways quite condescending. The public are asked to believe that Barrow has been reflecting and was now prepared to listen to Londoners. Why would Barrow decide to listen after he has gone through his pantomime resignation? But what Aiken’s statement screams out for is the word ‘sorry’. If just for once the council could put out a genuine honest statement that acknowledges the many people who deserve a loud grovelling public apology, not the insult of tepid face saving council PR spin.
Even this morning the council are still persisting with their PR spin now pushing a claim that the majority of residents were in favour of the nightlife tax, and stating that they have conducted a survey of residents parking permit holders to back up these falsehoods. We know these are lies, as neither Nutsville nor anyone else that we know who is a permit holder in the affected zones has ever been surveyed by the council. Another dodgy council claim easily blown out of the water.
Peter Wetherell, Richard Caring and the other businessman who backed the High Court action against Westminster Council became the subject of grubby threats from the councils legal department attempting to seek compensation for any lost parking revenue if they dared to take legal action against the mighty Westminster Council. Luckily for the public the council threats were dismissed and the case continued to the High Court which successfully blocked the councils plans. If they had not been successful Barrow’s desperate revenue raising cash grab would already be operating on the streets of Westminster.
If those businessmen agree to halt their legal challenge after the council have put right the miles of unnecessary double yellow lines that the council sneaked in the day before Christmas, Colin Barrow should waste no time and immediately make a grovelling public apology along with an offer to pay all of the campaigner’s legal expenses.
Westminster Labour Councillors say that the Council has run up a £1 million bill, including £300,000 for the cost of hundreds of new street signs which were ordered in August 2011 following the Council’s original decision to introduce the new £4.80p an hour parking charges and scrap 8,400 free single yellow line parking spaces. In addition, the Council has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on its botched consultation exercise, including the employment of traffic and research consultants, and on the legal costs of defending the Judicial Review brought by Peter Wetherell and Richard Caring. On top of this, the Council has spent tens of thousands of pounds on laying down double yellow lines on 5 miles of West End roads over the past two weeks in defiance of the High Court order.
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group, said;
“This parking charge U-turn is great news for West End residents, businesses, churches and people working in the West End’s night time economy. It is unbelievable that the Council took so long to listen to the overwhelming opposition to the charges and admit that they got it so very badly wrong. The Council’s arrogance and belief that it could do just as it pleases has finally been exposed and defeated. There needs to be a full enquiry in to why the Council ignored everybody until today and why it acted in such a high-handed and irresponsible way. This whole fiasco has cost Westminster Council Tax payers at least £1 million at a time when huge cuts are being made to front line services to children, the elderly. Colin Barrow has already resigned as Leader and now Parking chief Councillor Lee Rowley must admit his part in this sorry affair and resign, too. “
Lee Rowley
As for Lee Rowley Cabinet member for spin, illusion, misdirection and all other parking related headaches who was the other half of Westminster Councils Laurel and Hardy act, his position is considered untenable, and he needs to admit to himself that he threw his morals out the window to back the wrong horse. The legacy he alone created for himself must mean he is dead in the political sea, and ironically the ‘game’ for him is over. We doubt Rowley has the backbone to do the right thing even now and perhaps his puppet strings will need a firm yank from above.
The Westminster nightlife parking tax story is not over yet, and campaigners’ are cautiously welcoming the news, but are now aware of the underhand tactics the council have used in the lead up to last nights decision.
Nickie Aiken
Further apologies are due especially to the Churches who after all were the instigators of the whole campaign. Members of the Salvation Army deserve a special public apology from Councillor Nickie Aiken who responded angrily to Church members when questioned about how parking charges might affect third sector services in the West End.
She chose not to launch her tirade until almost everyone had left the room, having ducked the question when asked openly durning the fringe meeting.
She accused churches of failing to respond having been consulted, and coldly told Church members they would just have to walk further.
Attitudes like Aiken’s highlight the council’s unwillingness to understand the roll of the Churches in the West End community or how much of an effect the council’s extortion of the motoring public would have had on the Churches. Major Ray Brown of the Salvation Army said today that the parking charges would have been devastating for the Church and would have impacted on their voluntary work effecting the vulnerable.
Michael Beckett, Church Warden of St George’s Church Hanover Square although welcoming the decision to scrap the parking tax said “It’s a shame this sensible decision was not taken when we started the campaign against these charges last June. The open meeting in St George’s on the 9th July 2011 attended by Cllr Lee Rowley provided all the evidence then to indicate that the proposals “did not command public support”: the position that Cllr Colin Barrow finally admitted in his statement last night.”
“A lot of time, money and effort have been expended by churches, businesses and residents over the six months, and the Evening Standard’s campaign has finally got Westminster Council to listen and see sense. It’s disappointing that our locally elected representatives seem to have got so out of touch with their local communities.”
The July 2011 unanimous public vote at St George’s Church Hanover Square in front of Lee Rowley showing the opposition to his parking tax.
Should we be surprised by the council’s deaf ears and arrogant stance when they were willing to encourage lone women to walk miles back to their cars or face dubious under staffed car parks in the small hours of the morning?
Thanks to all the people who got behind this, two very special female croupiers for their stupendous efforts, Church members musicians, theatre staff, chefs, PR professionals, celebrities, local Labour politicians’ one Conservative Councillor, residents, shopkeepers, business people, top flight legal teams and a stunning effort from the Evening Standard journalists who were all proved right in the end.
LBC Nick Ferrari talks to Cllr Lee Rowley and the editor of the Evening Standard Geordie Greig 19-Jan-2012 (MP3 download) (LBC website)
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Under the leadership of Councillor Colin Barrow and his mate the council’s chief executive Mike More there is a story of miss-management, incompetence, lies and cover-ups which dwarf even the recent parking fiasco.
But what do you expect from a man like Colin Barrow, who has trouble even remembering that he has a free parking space under city hall, not to mention his borough wide free parking permit. Oh dear we just mentioned it again, ops.
On Tuesday 20th December 2011 Nutsville had an appointment at MillBank House with four senior District Auditors. At that two hour meeting we presented our objections to Westminster City Council’s behaviour regarding its handling of taxpayers money.
This is the third year Nutsville has been forced to make objections to Westminster City Council’s accounts, and as a result the District Auditor refuses to sign off on Westminster Council’s accounts.
Below are the objections we made to the Westminster City Council accounts for the years 2008-2009, 2009- 2010 and 2010-2011 on that cold December afternoon.
Nutsville has reserved the right to bring further objections that we are currently investigating to the District Auditors attention in the near future relating to more suspect items in the Westminster City Council’s accounts.
Certain items are currently being considered for possible criminal prosecution for offences against the Fraud Act 2006 and with regard to section 14 sub-section 3 of the Audit Commission act 1998.
WestCo trading is the brainchild of soon to be ex council leader Colin Barrow, who set up the company to trade for profit out of reach of public inspection. This was to be a private money making arm of Westminster Council’s bloated PR department with an incentive scheme of 25% of before tax profits handed out by Alex Aiken head of Westminster’s PR department as bonus payments out of sight of public scrutiny.
Don’t let the hype being spread about Barrow’s reasons for departing the top council job in the country fool you. Do you really think that Barrow would give up his position just before the Olympics and miss out on the chance to hobnob with all the Olympic parasites who will be living it up in Park Lane?
We requested the following in respect of Barrow’s Westco Trading Ltd company and relating to the years 08/09, 09/10 and 10/11;
a) We submitted email evidence ( we supplied emails from WCC Head of legal services dated 9th August 2011) from Westminster City Council refusing access to inspect the accounts and contracts as a material breach of the Accounts and Audit regulations 2011 part 4 made in the exercise of the powers conferred by section 27 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 and we requested that a public notice be issued by the Audit Commission in relation to this breach as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 and that public notice should be an immediate report as per section 8 sub-section b.
We gave notice to Westminster City Council that papers are being compiled to place before the MET police for consideration for a criminal prosecution pursuant to section 14 sub-section 3 of the Audit Commission act 1998.
b) We requested for an application to the courts declaring all income derived through Westco Trading Ltd unlawful and furthermore that Westminster City Council has acted unlawfully by using Westco Trading Ltd for the purposes of gaining profit, expressly a breach of the Local government Act 2000 sub-section 3 limits on powers of well-being and we cited the case of RMP v LAML http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/490.html We submitted the invoices from Westminster City Council to Westco Trading Ltd and the invoices from Westco Trading Ltd to other Local authorities as evidence of this.
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to Westco Trading Ltd being used unlawfully by Westminster City Council for the purpose of gaining profit expressly a breach of the Local government Act 2000 sub-section 3 limits on powers of well-being and we cited the case of RMP v LAML http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/490.html and that public notice should be an immediate report as per section 8 sub-section b of the Audit Commission act 1998.
c) We requested the District Auditor to investigate where the incentive/contribution scheme payments in the Westco Trading Ltd published accounts have been paid as per the incentive scheme supplied under Freedom of Information request (we provided the District Auditor the Westco incentive scheme document) and pursuant to section 17 sub-section b requested that an application is made to the courts declaring these payments unlawful.
We also requested a public notice in accordance with Accounts and Audit regulations 2011 part 4 made in the exercise of the powers conferred by section 27 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 that a public notice be issued by the Audit Commission in relation to this as a breach of the local government act 2000 section 3 sub-section 2 and as such a public interest notice is issued as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 and that public notice should be an immediate report as per section 8 sub-section b.
d) We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to Westco Trading Ltd being included in Westminster city councils procurement code as in that procurement code it states,
“4.0 THE CITY COUNCIL AS A BIDDER
4.1 Where the City Council is putting forward a bid to provide services to either another public sector organisation or a commercial entity then this activity must be subject to the same process, governance and approvals, defined by value threshold, for procurement exercises as described in this Code.
4.2 Where the City Council is putting forward a bid to provide services which meets any of the following criteria the Contracting entity must be Westco Trading Limited, the City Council’s trading vehicle:
• the bid is to provide services which will generate a profit
• the bid is to provide services it a commercial entity
• turnover is greater than 50% of the delivery units budget
We believe this inclusion in Westminster City Council procurement code is a clear breach of the Local Government Act 2000 section 3 sub-section 2.
Agenda item 2 Partnerships In Parking (PIP)08/09,09/10 AND 10/11
Arrogant finger wager Lee Rowley
Now here comes Barrow’s mate Councillor Lee Rowley Cabinet member for spin, illusion, misdirection and all other parking related headaches department into the mix. Rowley fails to turn up to a single PiP board meeting, perhaps he was too busy managing the nightlife parking tax.
Nutsville has learnt that the next PiP board meeting will take place on February the 29th we wonder if councillor Lee Rowley will attend this meeting, as we understand this meeting is to have one agenda item that being a five year review report that is confidential and the public are to be excluded from this meeting. The reason we have been given for keeping this away from public scrutiny is to allow the authorities and their officers to be honest in the declarations about the report.
a) Partnership agreement
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in respect of Westminster City Council as the lead authority in respect of the PIP partnership agreement that this agreement is in breach of the local government act 2000 section 3 sub-section 2 in that there is provision in this agreement for commission payments with respect to members who are not the original seven members in that if they joined in year one to pay 1% per annum of any framework contract utilised and that if they joined in year two or later they must pay 2% per annum of any framework contract utilised that was procured on behalf of PIP..
b) Partnership commission payments/profits
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in respect of Westminster City Council as the lead authority of PIP in that Westminster City Council sent invoices for commission payments for a contract for pay and display machines to London Borough of Enfield, London Borough of Richmond, London Borough of Havering, London Borough of Hackney, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, expressly in breach of the Local Government act 2000 section 3 sub section 2 (see invoices supplied as evidence of this).
We also requested an application to the courts that said income be declared illegally derived income in breach of the local government act 2000 section 3 sub-section 2.
c) Confidential advice to Verrus from PIP management committee in contradiction to WCC response to EU Commission via UK Government.
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in respect of Westminster City Council as the lead authority for PIP in that in a PIP a management committee briefing note of 21st January 2010 confidential advice was given to Verrus in direct contradiction of the statement to the EU Commission via the UK Government the then Office of Government Commerce in answer to questions raised by the EU Commission investigating the Verrus PIP framework contract in that the contract would be terminated a year early on 29th January 2012.
This was clearly done to;
i) avoid expenditure for a new procurement
ii) avoid incurring a fine from the European Court of Justice.
d) PIP accounts year 2009-10.
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in respect of the PIP accounts published for 2009-10 in that the accounts supplied show two sets of accounts in an xls. document supplied in that they show Inc & Exp analysis and a second set entitled Taylor made Inc & Exp which show two differing sets of figures.
Agenda item 3 Pay By Phone contract 08/09,09/10 and 10/11
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to invoices supplied under the inspection of accounts 2009/10 .
We also requested a public interest notice with respect to invoices supplied under the inspection of accounts 2010/10. We cannot confirm whether these duplicate invoices for 2009/10 or 2010/11 have been paid or if any of the invoices for the years concerned have been paid as no notation is on these invoices stating if they have. We can only come to the conclusion that since invoices have been supplied under the inspection of accounts that they must have been paid. We asked the District Auditor to investigate this matter and if duplicate payments have been made that the District Auditor request Westminster City Council to redress this.
b) Call centre/service charges
Leith Penny
Welcome aboard Leith Penny, Westminster Councils Strategic Director for City Management who has denied the council has paid for other boroughs call centre charges.
c) Other local authority call centre/service charges
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 that WCC has been paying the call centre/handling/service charges with respect to the Pay by Phone contract with Verrus for other local authorities. Evidence for this is in the invoices from Verrus in that WCC is paying for the phone number 02070050055 which is mistakenly quoted on the invoices as 02077005005 as this number does not exist and that the 02070050055 number appears on the local authority parking signs in Islington and Tower hamlets and Spelthorne as well as Westminster City Council.
For further evidence of this we provided email responses from Islington and Tower Hamlets that they are not paying any call centre charges or service charges at all for the pay by phone contract with Verrus.
We requested an application to the courts that the amounts paid by Westminster for call handling/centre/service charges for other local authorities be declared unlawful expenditure.
d) Duration of contract
We requested that in the absence of any new tendering process for a pay by phone contract that a public interest notice is issued as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 against WCC as WCC stated in their response to the EU Commission investigation into the award of this contract that the contract would terminate a year early on 29th January 2012 and that WCC has/is not party to another framework agreement or contract for pay by phone.
e) Revenue share/ response document
We requested the District Auditor investigate “in lieu of 0870 Revenue share” that appear on invoices from Verrus to WCC. The phone number referred to 0870 is most probably 08704284009 which we believe was used during the experimental scheme and if you ring this number now you get the message that it no longer works and that you must call 02070050055. We asked the District Auditor to request a copy of the “ P15 response document” referred to on the invoices from Verrus to WCC. If as implied from the invoices WCC have indeed been gaining a share of revenue from this then we will request a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in respect of this and request an application to the courts under section 17 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 that this income be declared unlawful income pursuant to the local government act 2000 section 3 sub-section 2.
f) Misinforming UK Government causing misinformation to EU Commission
Mike More
How could we leave out Westminster City Council’s chief executive and Barrows old mate, Mike More who in the past has found it easy to say one thing and do another.
We requested a public notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in that WCC misinformed the UK Government which in turn caused the UK Government to misinform the EU Commission that only WCC was utilising the PIP framework contract so that they could garner the result they got from the EU Commission and that contrary to that submission WCC are paying for the service charges for those authorities to utilise Verrus under the framework agreement.
This was clearly done to;
i) avoid expenditure for a new procurement
ii) avoid incurring a fine from the European Court of Justice.
a) Failure to supply a contract for inspection under the ACA 1998
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 that WCC failed to supply this contract for inspection during the inspection period in breach of the Audit Commission Act 1998 section 15.
b) Entitlement to invoice for contract
Philippa Roe
Surprise surprise we found thatCllr Philippa Roe, Westminster City Council’s Cabinet Member for Strategy and Finance had allowed the council’s own auditors (equivalent to the financial police) to operate and illegally invoice the council without a valid contract. How could it be that the very auditors the council used to investigate the parking re-let million pound cock up did not have any valid contract with the council? Why did it take poor old Philippa eight whole weeks to do anything about the illegal activity?
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in that RSM Tenon have been allowed by WCC to invoice for this contract thereby incurring illegal expenditure since march 2010 when this company had no rights to invoice WCC for this contract.
c) Novation of contract.
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 in that WCC failed in its novation of this contract in 2009 and that despite a statement of decision with regard to the novation of this contract in June 2011 this novation was not completed till 19th September 2011 8 weeks after it was requested under the inspection of accounts. WCC issued an ex-parte voluntary notice to the EU on 7th July 2011.
b) Award of contract in breach of EC Directive 2004 18/EC
This contract is still the subject of an EU investigation and we sent WCC head of legal services an email letter on the 31st August 2011 raising questions with regard to WCC’s response to the EU Commission via the UK Government and as such to date have not had a response despite several emails and telephone calls since.
We asked to reserve the right to return to this item with regard to the excessive fees levied by this contractor on the public exceeding those fees laid down in legislation by the secretary of State and will be contacting the District Auditor shortly when we have completed our investigation.
Now we move on to how Councillor Rowley gave away £1.95 million of taxpayers money to a private company just because they failed to live up to their promises in the contract? As you will see it’s one balls up after another with Rowley:
a) Virement for extra FTE 10/11
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to a Statement of decision made by Cllr Lee Rowley and Cllr Melvyn Caplan published 19th October 2011. In this statement was an approval for a virement for parking. According to Westminster City Council financial regulations a decision for a virement over £1M can only be made by the Leader or the Cabinet. This has been brought to the attention of Westminster City Council and no satisfactory reply has ever been made.
b) Invoicing for items not in the contract 2010/11
i) We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to invoice 007158 dated 30/09/2011 in that WCC have been invoiced for an extra 50 FTE some six weeks prior to Cllr Lee Rolwey and Cllr Melvyn Caplan making a statement of decision on 19th October 2011 which states that “this decision will not be implemented until 5 days have elapsed from it being published”
ii) We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to invoice 007158, amount 135,153.71
invoice 007294, amount 136,365.88
invoice 007675, amount 149,061.19
invoice 007952, amount 159,860.56
invoice 008154, amount 208,286.62
invoice 008452, amount 208,286.62
invoice 008702, amount 208,286.62
in that the contractor NSL has failed to deliver that which they tendered for namely the new technology ANPR and NSL should be paying for extra CEO’s not Westminster residents.
c) Parking enforcement re-let 09/10
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to the £600k paid to Mouchel for the parking re-let contract and in light of the report into the parking re-let being confidential that the authority publish this report the subject of which the residents of Westminster have paid for to the tune of £600k Publishing this report will assure the residents of Westminster that such mistakes that were made will not be repeated. If the report remains confidential then how can the residents of Westminster be assured the same mistakes will not happen again.
d) Mobile camera cars not certified from 31st March 2009 till 16th November 2010.
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 that WCC incurred illegal expenditure as they failed to apply for VCA certification for the mobile CCTV vehicles which were procured under a parking enforcement contract for parking enforcement but which could not issue a single parking ticket from 31st March 2009 till 16th November 2010 or insure the protection of the residents of Westminster from illegally/dangerously parked vehicles. These vehicles had parking enforcement written on them and the one thing they could not do was parking enforcement.
e) Extra mobile enforcement vehicles not provided for in contract 2010/11
We requested a public interest notice as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 with respect to extra mobile enforcement vehicles that were deployed on street by WCC contractor NSL. There is provision within the parking enforcement contract for 6 on street mobile enforcement vehicles in year one of the contract yet in January 2011 12 vehicles were seen patrolling the streets of Westminster City Council. This was confirmed at a meeting of 29th March 2011 by Cllr Lee Rowley at that meeting attended by members of the campaign group NoToMob (www.notomob.co.uk). On the 4th May and 17th May Cllr Rowley was asked in emails for the deed of variation for the increase in fleet size of mobile CCTV vehicles via email to which there was no reply however on the 2nd of June 2011 an email sent to Kevin Goad requesting the current mobile enforcement fleet size was also unanswered. Did WCC pay for this temporary expansion of the mobile CCTV fleet and who authorised such expansion?
Agenda item 7 Westminster Community Homes Ltd 2010/11
Inspection of accounts and contracts
We submitted email evidence from Westminster City Council’s Head of Legal refusing us access to inspect the accounts and contracts which is a material breach of the Accounts and Audit regulations 2011 part 4 made in the exercise of the powers conferred by section 27 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 and that a public notice be issued by the Audit Commission in relation to this breach as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998.
We gave notice to Westminster City Council that papers are being compiled to place before the MET police for consideration for a criminal prosecution pursuant to section 14 sub-section 3 of the Audit Commission act 1998.
We then reserved the right to place objections to the accounts of WCC in relation to the following items when our investigations are complete;
i) Award of contract to City West homes Ltd
ii) Award of contract to Global consulting Ltd
ii) Transfer of WCC property at Nil value to a registered charity in which WCC have only 33% interest.
Agenda item 8 City West Homes Ltd 2010/11
Inspection of accounts and contracts
Nutsville submitted email evidence from WCC’s Head of legal services refusing access to inspect the accounts and contracts to show a material breach of the Accounts and Audit regulations 2011 part 4 made in the exercise of the powers conferred by section 27 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 and that requested that a public notice be issued by the Audit Commission in relation to this breach as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998.
We again gave notice to Westminster City Council that papers are being compiled to place before the MET police for consideration for a criminal prosecution pursuant to section 14 sub-section 3 of the Audit Commission act 1998.
We went on to reserve the right to place objections to the accounts of WCC in relation to the following item when our investigations are complete.
i) Award of contract to City West homes Ltd from Westminster Community Homes ltd
Agenda item 9 Illegally issued PCN’S for parking via unapproved devices 2009/10 – 10/11
Then it was back to Councillor Lee Rowley’s lovely parking department.
Issue of illegal tickets via a fixed CCTV system
We requested a public interest notice is issued as per section 8 of the Audit commission act 1998 that all tickets issued for parking offences via fixed CCTV since March 2010 were issued unlawfully as WCC does not have certification and the CCTV system does not supply appropriate evidence in accordance with legislation.
We requested that an application is made to the courts pursuant to section 17 sub-section b of the Audit Commission Act 1998 declaring these payments unlawful and illegally derived income.
It’s certainly Westminster City Councils best years, with the Westminster MP Mark Field suggesting the Barrow and Rowley’s failed parking plan had an element of criminal revenue raising about it.
In fact parking has a lot to answer for down at City Hall, because most of the above would never have come to the publics notice had not Westminster City Council blindly gone ahead with the introduction of another parking revenue scheme, the motorcycle parking tax.
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Westminster City Council’s leader Colin Barrow is due to announce tomorrow he is to step down as leader of the council.
Current news reports suggest that Barrow made the decision to resign months ago, with the BBC quoting Barrow saying “I made this decision not to seek re-election for a second term last Summer but I didn’t want to announce it then and to leave my successor with the parking charges issue at the top of their inbox as they started their term”
Oh well at least he leaves appearing to be just as honest as always.
colin barrow
We hope that Cllr Lee Rolwey and Barrow’s old mate the councils chief executive Mike More will follow Barrow out the door.
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Today Westminster City Council launched what it described as a pilot flagship scheme to provide priority housing to single West End workers. They are to be offered shared accommodation with rents set a third cheaper than the private sector.
It’s a press release that must have warmed the heart of 82 year old former Westminster City Council leader Shirley Porter. In 2006 Porter moved back to the West End after Westminster Tory’s let her off £30m owed for her part in the homes-for-votes scandal during the 1980’s. After being let off the debt Porter moved back to London from exile in Israel purchasing a £1.5m flat in Curzon Square, on Park Lane in Mayfair.
The council’s latest pilot is to be called the Fair Share Housing Scheme and has received backing by Housing Minister, Grant Shapps.
The Government’s changed housing benefit rules preventing single people under 35 from receiving Housing Benefit if living in one bedroom self-contained accommodation.
Cllr Jonathan Glanz
Cllr Jonathan Glanz, Westminster Council’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Corporate Property, said:
“The aim of this innovative scheme is to highlight and address the housing needs of London’s dynamic workforce.”
“With recent changes to housing benefits for single occupants and with living and transport costs increasing, local authorities must come up with alternative ways to accommodate those on a London Living Wage who keep our local economies thriving.”
“In Westminster, we are working to provide fairer and more affordable housing options to lower-earning individuals who play a vital role in the economic life of the West End.”
But he did not say what will happen to single tenants who lose their jobs or why priority is not being given to families currently on the council’s waiting list.
Westminster Council has 800 families in temporary accommodation (often in B & B hotels with some being shipped as far out as Hackney) and 1,000 families stuffed into overcrowded accommodation (many have children sharing a room with adults and with no place to study).
Westminster Council also has 400 empty Council properties waiting for renovation.
Last June the council reduced the number of rough sleeping bed spaces by 170 following the closure of Look Ahead’s hostel on Castle Lane. Claiming that although the hostel did have considerable success in working with rough sleepers there was little prospect of finding capital funding for the scheme. However the council’s Community Services Peer Group managed to rustle up £23,847 in order to as they put it “Assist clients to move on from Look Ahead’s Castle Lane hostel following their decision to close the hostel“
At least the council’s ‘move on’ grant has enabled some of the homeless to be able to afford a parking space to sleep in at one of the council’s recently leased off car parks.
Councillor Guthrie McKie, Labour Spokesperson for Housing says,
“It is quite astonishing that the Council can come up with a scheme like this when they have nearly 2,000 families in serious need of being housed. What is even more astonishing is that a Government Minister should give such wholehearted backing to it. We know what Westminster Conservatives think about housing the poor and vulnerable and now we know what the Coalition Government thinks. The money used for this scheme should be used to build or convert more housing for families who live in Westminster. This initiative is a slap in the face of those families living in appalling housing conditions.”
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After the dissention thrown up from Westminster City Council’s proposed extended Sunday and weekday night parking enforcement hours, the council issued a press release in December 2011 titled “West End night workers can now park safely all night for 64p per hour“ (download here ) This seemed to be a bit of council spin designed to offset fears voiced by women motorists who could not afford the councils proposed new parking charges when having finished a late night shift would need to walk miles back to their cars parked in one of the boroughs free night time zones.
After the council leased off all their remaining car parks to private car park operator q-park the press release explained that the council had done a deal with the new car park operators. They were to offer a limited number of reduced rate parking spaces in the underground car parks to vulnerable night workers. Cllr Lee Rowley Cabinet member for spin, illusion, misdirection and all other parking related headaches said “Using casino workers as an example of the night workers we have been keen to engage with, they can get to a safe car park within a five minute walk of work and, if parked all night, they could do so for 64p an hour.“
Nutsville visited one of the most central car parks in Cavendish Square just off Oxford Street at lunchtime today. We were surprised that the safety of these car parks is questionable, after we spotted what at first glance looked to be a pile of old clothes.
Oxford Street underground car park whats that on the left?
On closer inspection it turned out to be a human being, probably a rough sleeper judging by the use of cardboard packaging to keep the cold from the concrete floor at bay.
Rough sleeper
We could not find any Q-park staff anywhere, we were on our own. Perhaps now that the car parks are privately run the new operators have had to make cut backs to keep a keen eye on profits.
What if this had been at 3am and we had been a single lone woman, would you be happy to trust a politician’s word that car parks he has no day to day control of are safe? Perhaps Mr Rowley can spin this to say it’s part of Westminster Councils new housing policy, and the extra bodies sleeping in the car parks are more eyes and ears to help put woman at their ease.
This is not the first time that recently leased off council car parks have become hotels for the dispossessed. As in 2010 the Clipstone Street car park which was once council run and now leased to Titan, became a free hotel to pedicab riders. A large area of that car park has been sub let to the rickshaw trade. For a while not only was it a place for the rickshaw riders to park their bikes but also a growing shanty town and cheap hotel as impoverished riders would bed down for the night on the back seat of their rickshaws.
rickshaw hotel
Don’t you just feel so safe, simply because Rowley says it is? After all before Rowley became a politician he was an estate agent, and you can’t get two more highly respected careers than that, can you.
titan car parks warning hotel notice
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Dropped kerbs in Westminster are to be painted with double yellow lines to stop motorists blocking essential access points for wheelchair users and parents with prams.
Councillor Danny Chalkley said“Painting double yellow lines across sections of lowered kerb will send a clear message to motorists that these vital access points should be kept clear at all times.”
The scheme will be rolled out across the city on a ward by ward basis with Regent’s Park Ward being the first to receive double yellow lines across 49 dropped kerb locations.
You could be forgiven for thinking the three paragraphs above were taken from this months Westminster City Council press release. The above statements are indeed from a Westminster Council press release, but the upbeat PR missive promoting ‘essential’ and ‘vital’ works to protect access for the disabled is actually over two years old, having been published in September of 2009. ( view source )
After a two year city wide roll out the council seemed to have hit the buffers as when looking around the streets of the West End today (Dec 2011) you will be hard pressed to find any dropped kerbs exhibiting that ‘clear message’ of gleaming freshly painted double yellow lines.
So why did the roll out stop rolling?
Could it be that the very real awkwardness of navigating the London streets in a wheelchair has somehow been overcome by the invention of an all terrain Mars Rover inspired mobility scooter? Perhaps a modestly priced 4×4 wheelchair, capable of mounting even the steepest of Westminster kerbs had come to the market, making the expensive chore of lowering kerb stones and sloping paving slabs now redundant? Or had Westminster Council officers discovered something about dropped kerbs that made them turn their backs on the needs of the disabled?
Unmarked dropped kerbs make lots of money.
A dropped kerb
The dropped kerb became a significant revenue earner in February 2009 when Westminster Council first began enforcing against vehicles parked adjacent to dropped kerbs. Most dropped kerbs only had a single yellow line and no warning signage, it was now illegal to park in front of one no matter what day and time it was. Some motorists were selfish, parking across the dropped kerbs ignoring the needs of others, showing a number of drivers were unaware of the new rules and some had simply not noticed the dip in the kerb stones, probably due to the lack of any special road markings or signage. At the start of the new drop kerb enforcement the city council instructed CEOs to only issue warning notices instead of the normal £120 penalty charge notices (PCNs).
Soon the council suggested that as a significant number of road users had learnt to avoid blocking dropped kerbs future offenders were to be issued with PCNs. From then the dropped kerbs marked out only with a single yellow line became a lucrative honey trap in the busy streets of the West End, which had the highest concentration of dropped kerbs in the borough.
In the first 6 months of the council enforcing the new dropped kerb rule they had issued 6,000 dropped kerb parking tickets, allowing them to trouser up to £600,000 from parking tickets. Handy though, as by the time dropped kerb money was rolling in the council was being forced by the DfT to shut down its lucrative CCTV parking enforcement network.
The council still faced accusations of revenue raising and risked getting another drubbing in the main stream media, as parking campaigners were relentlessly pointing out to Westminster City Council and the DfT how idiotic it was not to clearly mark drop kerbs with double yellow lines. The DfT were as useless as the council, claiming the reason for not having clear double yellow lines in front of dropped kerbs was because it went against their policy of de-cluttering the streets of unnecessary signs.
Disabled groups were not happy either noting that issuing £120 PCNs for blocking disabled access benefited the council but didn’t keep the dropped kerbs very much clearer. One prominent Westminster disabled group had even submitted a petition one year before the enforcement began calling for the council to mark dropped kerbs with clear double yellow lines. The council treated that petition the same way it treats every petition, landfill!
Then Westminster Council attempted to fob off campaigners, once suggesting it would be too expensive to add an extra yellow line in front of a dropped kerb as they estimated each one would cost in the region of £2000. We can only speculate the contractor was charging £60 for the tin of yellow paint a ruler and a painter diverting the remaining £1940 costs to a favoured ex council officer now turned £1940 per day consultant hired to make sure the invoices got lost.
In September 2009 Westminster City Council published what looked to be a good news story press release announcing the city wide roll out of double yellow lines to clearly mark out dropped kerbs. But so as not to kill the West End dropped kerb honey pot the roll out was to start away from the area most affected by confused or selfish motorists, in Regents Park ward.
Hopes of happier pedestrians and motorist faded as the ‘city wide roll out’ turned out to be a very slow roll out indeed. Suspiciously the roll out stopped rolling before it got to where it was in most need, the West End streets. Westminster Council were left to use the lucrative PCN stick method of trying to stop motorist parking in front of dropped kerbs, rather than a bright yellow line of paint. Still it brought in extra revenue, and the disabled groups and parents with prams PR angle could be used again in the future, should the council suddenly need to push through a yellow line painting blitz.
This week Westminster Council announced plans to replace nearly 8 kilometers of single yellow lines with double yellow lines in the West End. They revived the ‘disabled and parents with prams’ PR story to use as a Trojan horse to shield and deflect criticism of the news. It’s doubtful anyone would criticise plans to make mobility for the disabled easier and safer, especially considering the raw deal they’ve had in nearly any transport considerations so far.
What Westminster Council will be doing:
Streets in zones E, F and G are subject to conversion of 7948 metres of single yellow lines to double yellow lines
The scheme starts from the 9th January 2012 and is NOT experimental
From the 9th January – 24th January motorists who illegally park on the new double yellow lines will receive a warning notice instead of a Penalty Charge
What Westminster Council say about the extra double yellow lines:
Cllr Lee Rowley
Councillor Lee Rowley Cabinet member for spin, illusion, misdirection and all other parking related headaches said when announcing what he described as a good news parking story;
“Well at the moment people, some people, not very many are parking either close to or at junctions, which isn’t allowed in the Highway Code and they’re getting tickets and they don’t like it. Also people like [the disabled] are finding it very frustrating that they can’t get around because of the cars blocking the dropped kerb. So what we’re trying to do here is make it absolutely crystal clear for drivers and for pedestrians where you can and can’t park on bits of streets where there are problems. So actually hopefully this will reduce the number of tickets we issue for drivers, so they’ll be happy. It will stop people parking in front of junctions so people who want to get about will be happy and the council will be happy as a result.”
“Of the 180 streets that we’re doing in 175 of them we are only altering the junctions. The idea that we are withdrawing thousands of spaces is just nonsense.”
Double yellow lines to be put infront of All Souls Church
When pressed as to how many parking spaces will be lost because of these changes Rowley thought that as only 5 or 6 streets are having additional double yellow lines added that he would guess that around 100 spaces where cars could park legally out of controlled hours would now be lost.
The point he wanted to get across seemed to be that it is already illegal to park in front of a dropped kerb, irrespective of whether it has a single or a double yellow line. So those dropped kerbs which are changing from single to double lines will not affect the number of available parking spaces.
Martin Low City Commissioner of Transportation estimates that 16% of single yellow lines are being converted overall in the three zones.
Both Lee Rowley and Martin Low do not consider that the single yellow line conversions will have an impact in the number of available car spaces on single yellow lines outside of the enforcement hours. Rowley also believes that no one will be forced to use an off street car park if they don’t want to as a result of these changes.
So why isn’t everyone happy?
A lot of people have had their eyes opened having witnessed in person how Westminster Council conduct themselves. From the start some have been treated with a condescending ‘like it or lump it’ attitude by a council which has more to keep secret then it wants to reveal.
Westminster Council at times was and still is attempting to impose a transport policy which seems the polar opposite of what was coming from Whitehall and Central Government policy makers. How could the war on the motorist be over when Westminster Council wants to introduce stinging additional parking charges to solve a problem that the majority of people using the roads could see for themselves did not exist?
Normally the council could point to a number of resident groups to help back up the latest parking controls. But all that Rowley could scrape up were a couple of minor resident associations, one which didn’t know or understand what they were supporting, the other fringe group seemed only interested in keeping their residents parking bays to themselves, oblivious of the potential impact on the people who work in their own community. So desperate was Rowley to conjure up support for a policy he must bring in he resorted to claiming he was speaking for the ‘silent majority’ who he considered were in favour of his officer’s tax on night time parking. Not only was this majority silent, they were also invisible, as they never managed to produce an 8000 signature petition supporting his fantasy version of what was needed or wanted.
Rosemarie MacQueen
The other rotten plank in Rowley’s armoury was 200 pages of so called evidence, which a select team of stumbling council officers had spent a year building up. Perhaps in the hope it would reach such a critically large mass no mere member of the public would be brave enough to dare question such an authoritative magnum opus. But question it they did, and watched officers and councillors wriggle and squirm and try to shift focus away from any serious scrutiny. The supporting mini ‘facts’ hand plucked by the Strategic Director for the Built Environment, Rosemarie MacQueen from her box of ‘evidence’ has been shot down quicker than a row of tin ducks at a fairground.
On 26th September 2011, MacQueen told Councillors that 1,719 free parking spaces on single yellow lines would be lost in the West End if the evening and Sunday parking charges were introduced. At that meeting instead of supporting his officers Cllr Rowley flapped his feet, waffled about the word ‘equivalent’ then ended up telling his officers they got it wrong. Nevertheless we the public had to wait until the 23rd December 2011, for Martin Low to reveal just how spectacularly wide of the mark MacQueen was when he revealed that the figure should have been 8,463 – five times more than MacQueen’s original 1,719.
In an email to Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Mr Low says;
“This was due to an administrative error that has been confirmed from the recent work reviewing the single yellow lines and considering their conversion to double yellow lines. Buchanan SKM undertook further work after you were given that estimate earlier this year to provide a better assessment of the potential spaces available on single yellow lines and those that would be lost through conversion to double yellow lines”
By administrative error did Low mean that MacQueen tripped when she was throwing darts into the dart board for random numbers.
So here we have Westminster City Council’s Director for the Built Environment unaware she has mislaid 6744 car parking spaces available outside of enforcement hours in the West End.
This latest gaff over numbers comes after the council’s transport officers had forgotten to take into account the 100’s of free car parking spaces provided by the West End’s unprotected motorcycle parking bays.
MacQueen is passing on false information (albeit unwittingly perhaps) to both councillors and the public, and that is supposed to form part of a serious consultation? Questions still remain unanswered to the previous statistics she’s put forward as evidence, yet Councillor Rowley calls Councillor Dimoldenberg cynical.
Cllr Dimoldenberg said; “These figures are truly shocking and highlight the huge damage that the Council’s parking charges will do to the West End economy and to the jobs of thousands of West End night time economy workers. The fact that the Council could have got these figures so very wrong must surely further undermine the Council’s flimsy case. The previous figures were not even checked before they were given to Councillors and this demonstrates the very slapdash way in which the Council has conducted the parking review. The Council should scrap its parking charge plans before it further undermines confidence in the West End and in the Council itself.”
A right to be cynical
Westminster Council want to split off the decision about the yellow lines, now claiming this was a separate issue to the parking review, sticking two fingers up to the High Court Judge Mr Justice Collins who said: “The consultation [carried out by Westminster Council] was arguably far too limited”.
Is it wrong to think cynically of Westminster Council when they tried so hard to avoid it being brought to the High Court when they threatened the appellants with a compensation claim for lost parking revenue on top of legal costs if it came to court?
Westminster Council would now like you to think that introducing 8 kilometres of double yellow lines has no connection to the Sunday and weekday evening parking debate and consultation. They insist that announcing their proposals after the majority of people were off busy preparing for Christmas was purely coincidental.
Wrapping that decision up with the benefit it will bring to the disabled would be much more convincing if they were only introducing double yellow lines in front of dropped kerbs. More convincing still if they hadn’t issued a press release two years earlier for a dropped kerb initiative that would have benefited the disabled right across the borough. A two year old initiative that had quietly faded away only to be dusted off, trimmed down and now applied only to about half the dropped kerbs in the West End, if that.
Ask any disabled motorist what they think of the parking provisions in Westminster for them, you will find out how hard it is for them to find spaces, and why they feel the council has neglected their needs for years. We don’t see Westminster Council coming up with anything serious to really help this forgotten group.
Should we be cynical when Westminster Council officers placed an order worth £293,386 for signs, yellow paint and order making documents in November, when the fake consultation wasn’t even due to end until December?
Should we be cynical when written into the leases by Westminster City Council used to rent out its car parks to Qpark it shows the amount of rent payable to the council increases with revenue turnover, ie, more cars parking in the car parks, more money for the council?
Schedule 5 on page 71 of the Qpark leases says:
RENT, Part 1 The Annual Rent reserved by this Lease shall be the Turnover Rent calculated and payable in accordance with the provisions of Part 2 of this Schedule or the Minimum Rent which ever is the higher.
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg said “Westminster Council has lost the trust of residents, businesses and their staff on this West End parking fiasco and the only way to win back that trust is to scrap the parking charge plans without further delay”
It’s time Westminster City Council came clean with the public, and stopped making one stupid mistake after another. For the sake of everyone’s sanity please could Westminster Council get someone who can add up figures.
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In just one week the leader of Westminster City Council, Colin Barrow has ended his self-proclaimed “period of reflection” and decided to do away with hundreds of single yellow line parking spaces (Evening Standard source).
Westminster Council has this afternoon announced that it has decided to convert 1,191 single yellow line parking spaces in the West End to double yellow lines in January, thereby making it illegal to park at any time. The announcement, made at 3.30pm on 23rd December, comes just a week after the High Court ordered Westminster to halt plans to impose evening and Sunday parking charges in the West End on 9th January until the Judicial Review was heard in March. The High Court judgment specifically criticised the Council’s consultations and made it clear that the new parking charges would damage businesses and their employees. Westminster Council subsequently announced that it would ‘listen’ to West End residents, business and their staff and would not introduce the new charges until September 2012, after the Olympic Games. Now, those promises have turned out to be totally worthless. (Download council report here)
The permanent loss of the 1,200 West End parking spaces will force many West End evening visitors and people working in West End theatres, restaurants, clubs, casinos to pay up to £20 a night to park on a parking meter bay or car park, thereby adding to the cost of visiting or working in the West End. A research study undertaken by the Centre for Economics and Business Research concluded that the Council’s parking charges, which would raise the Council an extra £7 million a year, could cost businesses up to £800 million and threaten 5,100 jobs.
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group, said;
“This is an outrageous decision to take just hours before the Council closes for Christmas. The arrogance of Westminster’s Conservative leaders knows no bounds. They will listen to nobody and are even trying to get round a High Court judgment. This is the unwanted ‘Christmas present’ for the West End”
“The removal of so many single yellow line parking spaces in the West End will effectively force many visitors and staff working in the West End evening economy to pay up to £20 a night extra. This is a back door way of introducing the parking charges and there must be a question if the Council is in contempt of court.”
“Removing 1,200 single yellow lines is not about making it safer for pedestrians or drivers, but it is all about reducing free parking spaces and thereby raising extra money for a Council that is in deep financial difficulties“.
Colin Barrow’s decision was made after he had just won the aptly named ‘REVERSE FERRET AWARD’ in the end of the year Private Eye Magazine awards.
You just couldn’t make this stuff up!
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Westminster City council were the first and so far the only Local Authority in the United Kingdom to go completely cashless when it came to parking in the city. One of the key benefits in selling the idea to councillors and the motoring public was its cost savings. But we can reveal that Westminster City Council’s Verrus run pay-by-phone parking scheme is costing millions more to run than the old coin based parking meters.
After two years of research we have obtained all the invoices from Verrus sent to Westminster City Council, which from December 2008 – March 2010 amounted to over £2M. The latest batch of invoices covering April 2010 until March 2011 increased to a whopping £3.49M.
These figures far exceed the costs Westminster City Council were paying out to handle the cash from the now redundant parking meters, as a Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed ( view FOI ).
The contract cost of running the Westminster Bullion services, with regard to Parking Meters, annually from 2005 were as follows:
2005 -- £470,877.16
2006 -- £444,278.12
2007 -- £430,949.48
2008 -- £170,427.92
2009 -- £52,991.64
Considering that one of the main reasons for the introduction of pay-by-phone parking was to achieve cost savings. Let us look at the maths. According to the councils cabinet paper it cost £3.6M to pilot and then roll out pay-by-phone across the city. Council officers claimed that the ‘cost savings’ of going cashless would mean they could recoup the £3.6M set up costs within three years.
The cost of handling the cash from the council’s parking meters never exceeded £500k per year, yet two and a half years since going cashless we learn that Verrus are invoicing Westminster City Council £3.49M in the last year alone.
The call centre charges
A large percentage of the costs Verrus are charging Westminster Council are for call centre charges.
Call centre charges are invoiced to Westminster Council when, for example a motorist has to register to use the pay by phone system. But the charges are increasing year on year even though Westminster Council removed its last coin operated parking meter back on the 6th May 2009. It would seem reasonable to assume that the bulk of new motorists registering to use the system would be at the beginning of its introduction, so you would be correct to question why Westminster are paying out increasingly more in call centre charges as the years go by.
Nutsville has learnt that Westminster Council officers had done a back room deal with Verrus to allow other London Authorities to use Westminster Councils pay-by-phone contract with Verrus. As other Local Authorities such as Islington, Enfield, Tower Hamlets and Spelthorne started to roll out the use of pay-by-phone parking across their own boroughs it caused more motorists to register with Verrus which in turn caused the call centre charges to Westminster Council to keep on rising.
Why have call centre charges at all?
Nutsville has checked with many other LA’s who use the Verrus pay-by-phone system and found that none of them were being charged call centre charges by Verrus. Even Local Authorities which are not using the original Westminster pay-by-phone contract are not paying Verrus any call centre charges for their pay-by-phone system.
We have also checked the UK’s three leading pay-by-phone competitors to Verrus, each one of them has confirmed to us that they do not charge Local Authorities call centre charges.
So how did Westminster City Council come to be not only paying call centre charges for motorists parking in its own borough, but also for motorist parking in many other boroughs as well?
westminster pay-by-phone sign phone 0207 005 0055
islington pay-by-phone sign phone 0207 005 0055
In 2006 a pilot pay-by-phone scheme was trialled in Westminster at a cost of £408k, announced in this cabinet decision (source);
25-7-2006
Councillor Danny Chalkley, Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Transport and Councillor Colin Barrow, Cabinet Member for Finance and Support Services have made the following executive decisions on the above mentioned subject for the reasons set out below.
That the Cabinet the proposal to run a trial of Pay By Phone technology for parking payments in two pilot areas – G zone and C2 zone be approved.
That the award of a contract to Verrus (UK) Ltd for a 12-month period to cover the periods of the two pilots be approved.
That capital expenditure of £408k for two pilots be approved.
At the start of the pilot the council received opposition to the pay-by-phone system. It was often clunky and time consuming for first time uses to register. There was also opposition to not having a cash alternative when paying to park. The council needed a way to ‘sell’ this to the public; they did this through inflating figures on cost savings and using the old public persuader of fear of street crime.
There had always been a problem of thefts from the old coin operated parking meters, so it was time to bring the issue to the fore. The council laid the blame on the mysterious Albanian mafia running around the streets of Westminster pocketing £120,000 per week in £1 coins from the meters. The problem was the council had no idea of the amount of money being stolen from meters. With a bit of luck no one would ever question the figures the officers were feeding to the media, and the Councillors wouldn’t think of questioning their own officers.
So the truth behind the street crime story was that council officers had no idea how much was being taken from coin meters, and like many of the figures they come out with even to this day have little relation to fact.
An FoI request in 2010 asked the question;
How much money estimated to have been stolen by the “Albanian Mafia” annually from 2005?
The council replied with;
“It is not possible to provide you with the requested information. This is because the parking meters in use by Westminster Council do not maintain a total of how much money has been paid into them. This entails that it is not known how much money they contain at the time of any theft, and it is not possible, therefore, to calculate the amount stolen by a particular party or parties.”
But not knowing how much money was being stolen did not stop Westminster Council’s PR department from spining stories to help gain public acceptance and push the Verrus pay-by-phone parking scheme on to the streets.
“But according to Keith Banbury, chief executive of the British Parking Association, meters are vulnerable to vandalism and theft. Westminster council estimates that £50,000 a week is stolen from its machines alone.”
Westminster Councils Scrutiny Committee report May 2007 (source);
“Since 2004, the theft of cash from equipment had increased to a significant level primarily in relation to Parking Meters where the estimated weekly loss due to theft in the latter part of 2006 was over £100K per week”
The Reporter – Westminster Councils magazine April 2009 (source);
“Not having to use money for parking helps us to reduce crime and antisocial
behaviour. The reduction in theft from parking meters saves the taxpayer approximately £8 million per year.“
ConservativeHome – Cllr Chalkey April 2009 (source);
“One of the primary drivers was the estimated £120,000 per week being lost to organised crime.”
“In addition, the cost of collecting cash was £600k of council tax payers money.”
Remember through FoI we learnt that by 2009 the cost of collecting cash was just under £53,000 per year, and even at its peak never exceeded £500k per year.
“we’ve introduced cashless parking to stop the £7 million of your money that was stolen from parking meters every year”“Cashless parking = £3.806m savings’
“Replacing meters with cashless system so money isn’t stolen and doesn’t need to be collected.”
In the final 2007 report on pay-by-phone presented to cabinet everything was great with pay by phone parking, the pilot had gone ‘great’ the parking wardens thought it was ‘great’ and even those motorist who had managed to register thought it was ‘great’. It was ‘great’ that Westminster could get rid of its bullion operation; it was ‘great’ that those nasty Albanians could be stopped and it was ‘great’ that the number of issued Penalty Charge Notices had not been affected (source).
The report admitted that by changing the locks on the parking meters it had thwarted the Albanians, but councillors were warned the Albanians would be back, and perhaps just like the sand people, they would be back in greater numbers. There could be no on street alternative for motorists who wanted to pay cash such as Pay & Display machines, as the report warned the pay and display machines would simply be a bigger prize for those igneous Albanians.
There is no indication in the final report on what evidence the officers had made their assumptions, going cashless was the only way.
So the die was set, with plans to offer the Verrus pay-by-phone contract to Westminsters fledgling parking quango Partnerships in Parking (PIP).
In Febuary 2008 Verrus was awarded a framework contract procured by Westminster Council which would run for 5 years and allow an extension of a further 2 years if required. Westminster Council awarded Verrus the contract because they say it was the most economically advantageous tender, but to who? The total value of the contract was £2.5M, so you would expect, would you not, the annual invoices to Westminster to be no more than £500k per year, not £3.49M as invoiced by Verrus in the last financial year.
Leith Penny, Westminster Councils Strategic Director for City Management has in his ‘right numbers in the wrong place’ parking report spreadsheets that the pay-by-phone call handling charges for the four years thus far comes to nearly £8m. As the councils 5 year life of the Verrus pay-by-phone contract value was to be £2.5M and considering that at the most recent scrutiny committee meeting Penny confesses that their assumptions were woefully inadequate as far as parking income was concerned, it would be a shame to buck this trend on incorrect assumptions:
If the council and their officers in defiance of what the EU Commission were told by the UK Government, which was that the Verrus pay-by-phone contract would end on the 29th January 2012 and council officers still persist with this contract by extending it for a further 2 year term, (as Nutsville has recently learnt from a mole in Westminster), this contract will end up costing the residents of Westminster approximately £14M pounds.
So Verrus stand to earn £14M out of a contract estimated to only be valued at £2.5M, and those council officers had the cheek to suggest that the Albanian mafia were the highway robbers.
How did Westminster City Council officers get their sums so wrong, and is their failings connected to why they were so obstructive when we wanted to see copies of the Verrus invoices? Officers knew they were breaking criminal law by preventing Nutsville access to the invoices but continued to stubbornly refuse to cooperate. You must draw your own conclusions as to the officers’ behaviour and their abilities in predicting parking revenue and expenditure.
Perhaps one way the council officers could claw back some of the millions paid to Verrus would be to introduce some extra parking hours, say on a Sunday and perhaps even weekday evenings.
The real reason PiP was set up
Before PiP came into existence London Councils were working on a similar idea to encourage all London Authorities to join them in a purchasing group. But London Councils were taking their time setting up their group as they ran into a legal snag concerning how data could be shared across the London boroughs.
London Councils could see the sense of having one London wide phone number for pay by phone parking and motorist only having to register once when parking in different boroughs. But they wanted to explore the Data Protection Act issues of sharing that data with several pay-by-phone operators and LA’s.
It seems Westminster Councils solution was to set up their own club (PiP) get in there first and offer its members use of their contracts such as their new Verrus contract.
Without seemingly much caution Westminster Council jumped in with expensive consultants ( source ) and set up PiP, with of course themselves in control. Data Protection is really for sissy’s anyway, and no one would dare ask questions of Westminster, they ‘were’ the kings of the parking business. Who could have expected that all of their contracts would end up being brought to the attention of the EU Commissioners?
Setting up PiP cost over £1million of taxpayers money: £675k from Department of Communities & Local Government and £400k in partnership fees.
Anyone who asked about PiP was told it was set up to ‘save money’ for Local Authorities who by joining PiP could use any of the quangos’ framework contracts and avoid the expensive costs of tendering their own contracts and it had the potential to bring in an era of harmonisation between London boroughs as far as parking was concerned. We were later to discover that joining PiP wasn’t even a requirement to use their contracts, so much for the £1,168.50 per day consultant (yes you read that figure correctly, it’s not a typo) brought in by Westminster Council to set up this quango to run in a professional and legal manner. To this day it is not clear what this consultant actually achieved for the taxpayer.
We do know that PiP was intended to be big, with certain Westminster officers showing unfettered megalomaniacal behaviour set on rolling out PiP to be the UK wide parking quango of choice. This would have meant that those parking companies lucky enough to have contracts already set up with Westminster Council were in at the ground floor and about to step in the lift with Westminster to take them to huge financial gains for both parties. Yes, lovable old Westminster Council were about to make money from their own fellow local authorities tempting them with off the shelf contracts with companies chosen by Westminster Council which were subsidised by the taxpayers of Westminster. Not only that but Westminster Council were also milking those ‘fellow’ PiP members in annual subscription payments and commission payments from the contracts Westminster Council told them to use. This was in express violation of the Local Government Act 2000 section 3 subsection 2. The power under section 2(1) does not enable a Local Authority to raise money (whether by precept , borrowing or otherwise). See RMP –V- Laml.
Because of complaints to the EU Commissioners, Westminster Council were forced to stop charging fellow London boroughs’ commission, which left them now with a rather un-lucrative Verrus contract. Westminster Council are left still paying the other LA’s call centre charges but they are not able to invoice them for commission payments. That is why Westminster Council is paying out increasingly high charges to Verrus.
Promised cost savings went the same way as the old parking meters, on the scrap heap.
Dam they’ve found out about our slush fund
How could anything else go wrong, well it did when Nutsville obtained secret minutes from the PiP management board meetings. The management board of PiP consists of unelected council officers who because of their long standing friendships with members of the parking industry can set the course for PiP members to follow.
PiP an organisation which is not legally supposed to be making profits, was as this quote shows from their own minutes caught red handed doing just that. So they decide to donate the illegal profits to ‘worthy causes’;
“…boroughs were asked to note the surplus and that we should look to put forward proposals at the next Board Meeting to make effective use of the funds available. Some of the motorcycle campaigners have noticed these funds and are stating that PiP is a money making organisation. To quash this, it would also be advisable to allocate Development Fund Contribution to worthy projects.” (Source )
Not surprisingly, we have never been told what if any ‘worthy projects’ benefited from the PiP slush fund, drinks all round perhaps?
It’s every man for himself, run for it!
Other interesting points from the above minutes are that Barnet Council were on the verge of joining PiP but never did. Barnet council have since rolled out pay-by-phone parking with guess who, yes Verrus. Barnet’s contract with Verrus is about to be reported to the EU Commissioners. Hammersmith & Fulham were waiting for the outcome of the EU complaint before making a decision to join PiP, they’ve also now wisely run a mile.
Camden council, although still a member of PiP decided to buck the trend and procure their own pay-by-phone, this time with a rival provider.
In July the board of PiP were told of Richmond and Enfield’s withdrawal from PiP and now at the latest board meeting Tower Hamlets and Croydon have also left, heeding the advice of Nutsville to leave this partnership as enough public money has already been spent on it.
Last September (2011) Nutsville attended the most recent PiP board meeting, where a comedy sketch was played out before us. There were not enough PiP members to form a quorum to elect a new chairman of the board. It seemed that with so few members attending it would not be possible to elect a new board chairman, so PiP would finally cease to be. Everyone in the room knew this, but nevertheless led by the head of PiP’s programme management board, Mark Edwards, members and non members of PiP managed to elect Barry Tebbut of Havering Council as their new chairman. Despite Havering not even being members of PiP and after Barry explained at the start of the video that Havering was very likely to be leaving PiP.
PiP member Lambeth didn’t send anyone who could legally vote yet Lambeth Councillor Nigel Haselden votes anyway after declaring he does not have voting rights.
It was clear from the video we shot that the officers were very keen to keep PiP going, at whatever cost and no matter how crazy it all looked.
As for the borough who started PiP, well their board member Councillor Lee Rowley hasn’t attended a single PiP board meeting since taking over the cabinet post for parking with Westminster. It could be said of Cllr Rowley to be a dereliction of his duties, as one of his duties according to the Leader of Westminster Council, Colin Barrow is that Rowley has responsibility to attend the PiP board meetings.
Funnier still is that PiP’s head of the management board Mark Edwards had already given a months notice and promptly left PiP the day after this video was shot. Edwards never told any of the PiP board members at the meeting that it was his last day with PiP.
So why did the few remaining councillors who attended the last PiP board meeting go along with the farce? Apparently they told us it was out of a sense of loyalty and respect to the outgoing chairman, Archie Galloway representing City of London.
It must by now have dawned on these remaining PiP councillors that they have been left hung out to dry having had their purses raped by Westminster Council. It certainly has dawned on Archie Galloway who in a letter to Colin Barrow let him know in no uncertain terms what he thought of their friendship after being left holding Barrow’s PiP baby.
PiP still limps on with Lambeth Council employee Des Crehan replacing Mark Edwards as PiP’s programme manager. When Crehan learnt of our video he claimed we would not be allowed to film any of his future PiP meetings. Crehan has since ignored FoI requests and childishly refused to say who were the new Local Authorities interested in joining PiP.
Those London Authorities that Crehan doesn’t want us to know are part of the South East London Procurement Group (SELPG)
Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lewisham, Southwark
It is our civic duty to make those authorities fully aware of the antics of PiP and ensure that Lambeth and Westminster do not get their money grabbing hands on those LA’s in pursuit of flogging the PiP dead horse.
It’s perhaps a shame that Des Crehan has started off in his new job unaware that Lambeth bought pay and display machines illegally through PiP using a contract from Westminster which only Westminster Council could use. Or that Lambeth’s roll out of Verrus run pay-by-phone parking in Waterloo using Westminster’s framework contract will meet with an EU challenge.
Could Crehan not really be aware that the British Government told the EU Commissioners’ that the Verrus contract would come to an end on the 29th January 2012 a year early, when he allowed Lambeth to call off a year long contract with Verrus under Westminster’s PiP framework agreement?
So Lambeth council and Westminster council are on notice that they will have to answer further questions from the EU Commission with regard to the framework contracts they have undertaken and with regard to the running of PiP.
Nutsville understands that Westminster City Council is to change the wording on its crest to ‘Stand and deliver’.
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