A cuckoo in the nest

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Some observers have enquired as to the provenance of this quango and whilst there is a lull before more important matters on the horizon come to light we thought we would explain a little about this fruity boys club.

The quango ‘Partnerships in Parking’ (PiP) came in to existence after a plot was hatched by two members of Westminster Council, Councillor Danny Chalkley and the councils (then) Head of parking Alastair Gilchrist.

The names are familiar to keen readers so we won’t rehearse the sordid details here.

The circumstances in which Chalkley and Gilchrist spawned their PiP lovechild could only be from the pages of a script reminiscent of a warped 1970’s comedy – though without the  canned laughter.  Its like a double act without the act.

Are you going to be backdating those contracts all night Alastair?

Due to the break-up of their respective personal relationships the pair found themselves coincidentally homeless at the same time as they had both been booted onto the streets by their partners for reasons not the subject of this article.

But fate smiled on the pair when they were amazingly queue jumped and offered a flat courtesy of Westminster Council. They moved in together, peas in a pod but each with their own key.

Whilst Chalkley and Gilchrist were shacked up together, bereft of their respective wives, they spent their evenings in deep discussion over a bottle of Westminster Whine. The potion was toxic and inevitably things quickly turned into a Brothers Grimm version of Men Behaving Badly as Gilchrist (the parking expert) pushed the idea of setting up PiP.

And so it was, PIP was born into this world – the product of a bastard union of little and large over a bottle of electric soup in a council flat.

Having dreamed up the plan and passed it round like a saucy postcard, Westminster decided that they were to be the lead Local Authority in PiP. It was unthinkable that any other local authority could match Westminster’s expertise on parking.

A few other local councils and Transport for London jumped on board, sold on the idea that they could do away with complicated and expensive tendering and contract procurements put in place to safeguard the taxpayer and beguiled by the hollow promises of their membership.

As it has now been shown, joining PiP has turned out to be a Faustian bargain. PiP’s framework agreements have been exposed as dodgy because in one way or another they all breeched various EU directives.

Nutsville went into some depth about these breeches in a post at the beginning of June. 2010 (view June PiP post).

Currently there is one known complaint being considered by the EU commissioners, with two or even three more that look certain to follow.

As time progressed PiP took on more local authorities as members, luring them with ready made agreements all set up for them to use. Yet neither Chalkley nor Gilchrist thought to mention the EU investigation to the new members, who began (we hope) oblivious of the legal problems when using the services of companies such as Verrus, sweeping away their ties with existing suppliers,.

Yet PiP went on making mistake after mistake, constantly breaking EU law and failing to address any of the obvious concerns that would so easily scupper the whole affair. The mistakes are so serious that if the EU do not receive some satisfactory answers soon it will be the British Government that is taken to court, with each PiP member financially liable for every dodgy contract they’ve used.

Today sees PiP heading for the rocks, as its former chairman Chalkley has fallen foul of Westminster leader Colin Barrow, and been thrown out of all the councils cabinets.

So PiP hope at a meeting tomorrow (28^th July 2010) to elect a new chairman. However a bloody great bluebottle has landed in the PiP ointment, because the No To Bike Parking Tax (NTBPT) researchers thought it was their civic duty to not only send a report to every Westminster Councillor but also to every local authority PiP member. (download the NTBPT report)

Some of these LA representatives will be attending PiP for the first time, and the NTBPT report will be big news to them if no surprise to anyone else!

So who is going to be gullible enough to want to stand as the new chairman of PiP? The Councillor who has replaced Chalkley, Cllr Rowley has wisely said he will not be standing for election to PiP chairman. That could be prudent judgement, or more likely because he has no intention of hanging around Victoria Street too long and would be quite pleased to have a cosy push into the central government nest.

Cllr Rowley you may remember stated he was very happy with the £430,000 loss making motorcycle charging scheme (MCS). Although he has held several meetings with various stakeholders of the MCS, and on some occasions been unable to justify its existence, he has not shown any enthusiasm to go up against the Westminster mafia of Colin Barrow and Robert Davis. So for now we must presume that Cllr Rowley remains blissfully happy about the MCS. Rowley has only less than four years to remain in a state of blind euphoria as he is strongly tipped to take over from the darling of the press the flouncing Joanne Cash as the Conservatives parliamentary candidate for Westminster North at the next election.

So we can see that his future glittering career is Cllr Rowley’s biggest incentive for staying away from PiP as much as possible.

In the past few weeks researchers from the NTBPT have contacted well over half of the PiP members, but not one wanted to be Westminsters patsy and stand for election as PiP chairman.

Things have been rather strained whenever PiP is mentioned down at City Hall. With Gilchrist behaving like the man we always thought he was, running around saying ‘it wasn’t me’ and blaming junior officers for all of PiP’s woes.

To help spare Gilchrist any further blushes, if no one wants to take over the poison chalice of PiP chairman perhaps supporters of NTBPT would like to bring along a portable Hi Fi to tomorrows PiP meeting. Then just  like the childhood parlour game we would ensure there is one chair too few.

When the music stops whoever is left standing gets to play PiP chairman.

Job done.

Before anyone digs out their folk dancing tunes one long time PiP member (Archie Galloway) representing the City of London has been named as a possible candidate for Chairman of PiP. So is Galloway going into this as a fall guy for Westminsters wrong doings? This would seem unlikely, as Galloway had been serving on the City of London Council since 1981, so if anyone should know when something should be avoided it would be him.

But if Archie Galloway thinks PiP’s troubles are behind them he would be mistaken. A PiP a spokesman was surprised to learn this week that PiP member Tower Hamlets has recently awarded a juicy contract to NSL Limited for vehicle removal and pound management.

Unbeknown to PiP, Tower Hamlets have awarded NSL a £1.1 M contract. If that were not bad enough Tower Hamlets claim that:

“It is anticipated that the contract will also be used as and when required
by members of Partnership in Parking (PIP) made up of -: City of London,
London boroughs of Camden, Croydon, Enfield, Hackney, Lambeth, Richmond and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and any such entity that they may evolve into during the life of the contract.”

So like a stuck record we see another contract award violating EU directives, all supposed under the watchful eye of Westminster Council.

It should be clear to anyone that it’s time to kill off Gilchrists Frankenstiens monster known as PiP, which is something the NTBPT strongly urge in their report. But will any of the PiP members have the courage to do the right thing, or will they expose their own electorate to potentially huge costs trying to defend their own complicity in Westminster Councils contract bungling and dubious self serving legal advice.

If the PiP members ignore the warning and hope to pretend to themselves they can carry on, ironically they will have the chance to vote to use Westminster Councils own legal team at tomorrows PiP meeting. Won’t that be nice and tidy for Westminster.

Should PiP carry on it would be expected that NTBPT will be spreading their investigations to all of the other PiP members. With Camden, Islington and the City of London all showing an interest in charging bikes to park, and other legal actions we know of in the wings Nutsville will be queuing up to say to them when things get uncomfortable “we told you so”.

ps.. Nutsville is not revealing who did the washing and ironing when Danny and Allastair shared the council flat together. So don’t ask.

Meeting documents:

PiP Meeting agenda

PiP Election of Chairman

PiP really need to use Westminsters legal team

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Indeed as things stand today it is very hard to see what the council has gained by introducing the parking tax.  When the Council learnt that the NTBPT were serious in their intent to challenge the Councils parking tax in the High Court they released new figures alleging the scheme was costing the ratepayers of Westminster £430,0o0 per year in running costs. To add further spin to the Councils figures, Council officer Leith Penny put his name to  a press release claiming there were ongoing acts of mass vandalism happening all across Westminster to the parking enforcement signs. This act was now so bad that a special task force had been put together with a MET detective brought in to investigate.  Leith Penny has to date not been able to produce any evidence or even reply to any questions put to him about his accusations.

Even though the bike parking tax was sweetened at the time of its introduction with the promise of additional security devices to be installed in at least 40% of the M/C bays, these never materialised in any great numbers. First the Council claimed they were still trailing various devices (all without consulting any members of the M/C users) then the excuse became that the bikers wouldn’t use them anyway. This is something Lord Justice Pitchford mentions in his judgment, so that lets the Council off the hook on that one.

For a long time the Council would point to it’s off street car parks, holding them up as an answer to the social exclusion problems of forcing everyone who wanted to park in Westminster needing to have a mobile phone and a credit card. So the Councils answer was stop complaining you have free use of our car parks, that’s if you know they’re free, where they were, and didn’t mind a bit of a walk in all your protective bike gear to your destination. If you ever telephoned the Council for help trying to pay, you would never be told about the free car park option.

But as Nutsville posted in its last post, the Council had finally admitted, just after the court case, that the car parks were all to be sold off,on 20 year leases. So in the near future the Council will have no car parks, and therefore no excuse for introducing a ‘no cash’ parking regime, which was only ever designed for use by car drivers.

Even though the Council had been working on its car park sell off plan for years, they knew they had to hold off on announcing the decision to get rid of them all.  You can see by the number of references that Lord Justice Pitchford makes to bikers having that wonderful free option of the car parks why the Council delayed their announcement of the sell off.

Here’s what Pitchford says in paragraph 60 “The judgment which objections have failed to undermine is that the volume of traffic using the roads in the City of Westminster requires management by the selective introduction of charging for on-street parking contemporaneously with the provision of free off-street parking.”

When the Council initially consulted with representatives of the motorcycle industry they were very keen to say that charging was nothing whatsoever to do with restraint. But how things change, as according to the Council the parking tax has everything to do with restraint. Unfortunately now in Lord Justice Pitchford judgment he gives them his endorsement that people should not switch to congestion busting forms of transport, as he agrees they must be restrained.

“Contrary to the claimant’s argument that there was no justification for imposing and maintaining a charging policy for motorcycles, the steady increased demand by contrast with experience before the congestion charge in February 2003 demonstrates the continuing need for measures of “restraint” which was the basis for the Authority’s policy in the first place.”

Please, no one tell Pitchford that the Council added to that demand by clearing all scooters and motorcycles from using out of the way pavement parking. Or that the Council also helped stoke up the demand by not increasing M/C parking spaces for five years prior to introducing the tax.

In fact Lord Justice Pitchford goes along with every argument put forward by the Council, and says “there was a need to strike an equitable balance between vehicle users, seems to me to be entirely unexceptional” Can you perhaps see how prophetic the NTBPT campaign slogan ‘if you treat us like cars, we’ll behave like cars’ is now.

Lord Justice Pitchford goes even further in his judgement when saying this:

.

“44, Motor-cyclists needed more space. That space would be provided partly by re-assigning bays formerly used by motor cars and partly by extending them. While there were traffic management and environmental arguments for and against treating motorcycles as a special case it does not seem to me reasonably arguable that the Authority acted outside its statutory powers by resolving that all road users should pay their fair share for on-street provision of spaces.”

Amazingly Lord Justice Pitchford goes against every recent policy for encouraging the use of scooters and motorcycles, and now gives a clear signal that it’s perfectly OK to charge cyclists as well. He positively encourages it, everyone should pay up. Everyone except the Westminster Councillors who voted in the bike parking tax, as they gave themselves a free borough wide parking permit for their own cars.

After this ground breaking ruling you might think well what was the point of trying to do anything to relieve congestion or go green. Whatever form of transport you choose you will now be punished.

Well the fat lady hasn’t sung yet, and the NTBPT group are made of much harder stuff, and the signs are already showing after Pitchford’s judgement that important people are waking up to the significance of his ruling. Because of Westminsters long standing anti bike policy (they lobbied for PTW’s to be included in the congestion tax remember), they will see a new type of protest, as riders will go all out to show them exactly what it means if bikers are to be treated the same as cars. Protestors have now announced they will step up their campaign, and central London will be brought to a halt. So unless you’re protesting you might as well forget trying to come in to Central London for the foreseeable future.

Well Westminster Council clearly wants more people in cars, as there is no benefit to switching to two wheels.

Click here to download the full judgement

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Council leader Colin Barrow

Yesterday (6^th July 2010) Westminster City Councillor Lee Rowley & Councillor Melvyn Caplan, issued a statement of decision to sell off the remaining 12 operational car parks plus Broadley and Church Street car parks as outlined in a confidential report sent out to Councillors on the 30^th June 2010 (view here). The report has been kept confidential as the Council says it “concerns information relating to the financial or business affairs of the authority”

Nutsville wrote a post in September 2009 explaining that the Council has leased off its Chiltern Street and Leicester Square car parks. Fears were voiced back then that the free parking for motorcycles would not stay free for long. It seemed illogical to many that the Council were offering free parking in its CCTV monitored and manned car parks, yet still insisted on making a charge for the exposed cramped on-street parking bays. Many thought that by offering free parking in the car parks the council would still keep the lucrative on street enforcement and at the same time mitigate against claims that the whole motorcycle charging scheme was socially exclusive.

Through a Freedom of information request the Council were asked if they could assure those concerned that despite the sell off, M/C parking would remain free.

The Council replied “This will be entirely up to the new operator – Titan parking.”

Even as recently as last months High Court case Westminster Councils barrister tried to draw attention to the free parking in the remaining Council run car parks. It was also mentioned that the Council would not be providing any further on-street bays whilst there was still plenty of spaces left unused in its car parks.  However, it’s quite bewildering how a PTW rider would even know of the alternative free option when they arrived at any one of the Councils on-street M/C bays.

At the Councils Scrutiny Committee meeting in March 2009 it was recommended by the committee that the Council actually put up signs on the bays advising motorcyclists of the alternative free option. But just like the security devices, nothing ever happened. Perhaps now we can see why the Council would not want to put up signs if they knew they would not be managing the car parks for much longer. Plus they would lose the revenue from the parking tax and the fines.

You might be thinking that a Council which was once held in such high respect simply did not know that it would be selling off its car parks back in 2009. Even if that were true, surely the Council knew by the time it got to the High Court didn’t they? But did the Council know about the plan at the time of the sham Scrutiny Committee meeting in March 2009. Well not according to this Freedom of Information request answered in November 2009. Where we see the Council asked a very simple question:

“Are there any more plans to move Westminster Council owned properties (parking or otherwise) to private companies and could you provide the plan?”

The Council replied:

“At present, I can confirm that there are no plans for transferring the ownership of any other City Council car parks to private hands.” (View source)

Nutsville believes that the sell off of the car parks has been planned for years, in fact we will prove it. We also think that even from the first day the Council suggested offering free parking in its car parks, it knew all along of the plans for the sell off. This was one of the most cynical and deceitful examples of Westminster Council spin, which was often swallowed up and regurgitated by some of the more lazy members of the media. The Council had little honesty when they attempted to portray themselves as the Council which tried to bend over backwards to please those greedy over  inquisitive bikers.

So here’s why the Council simply lied in its November 2009 Freedom of Information answer, as we see in Item 2 of the Work Programme-5 document dated 29th june 2009 at para. 3.4.1 presented before the Councils Audit and Performance Committee we see the Council say:

“The working group also received an update on the Cark Park portfolio with clarification that individual car parks were being leased to maximise income over the coming months, pending the agreement of a formal strategy for the portfolio.” (view source)

But talk of selling off the car parks goes back even further, with a mention in this draft January 2008 document ‘ASSET MANAGEMENT PLAN AND PROPERTY STRATEGY” where it says:

“The City Council has a policy of developing above-ground car parks which have become unviable as a result of Congestion Charging. This applies to car parks at Rochester Row and Chiltern Street which are being sold. Other under-performing car parks are being let to commercial operators.”

“Chiltern Street Car Park has been marketed and is expected to be sold during 2008.  Church Street, Bell Street and Cleveland Street have been let to private operators.“ (view source)

So if Westminster Council cannot tell the truth even when the law demands it, why would Westminster City Council expect the public, which the Council are supposed to be serving, to blindly accept whatever they say without scrutinising and demanding to see solid evidence first.

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But were the Audit & Performance Committee members being told the true facts.

How to reach the targets

Document 1

Document 1 shows what some CEO’s are having to do on the streets of Westminster to reach their targets. It’s from March 2010. The CEO has entered into his ticket machine (DAPS) this sentence “I issued PCN to keep my performance on reasonable level regardless of that it will get spoil as soon as challenge.” The CEO has issued a ticket illegally just to reach his/her targets because he/she hates onstantly being moaned at by NSL management at the end of the shift. But if the motorist challenges the ticket it will be ‘spoilt’.

Both NSl and Westminster know that not many motorist will challenge a ticket, so thousands of pounds end up in the pockets of WCC & NSL. The NSL employee who checked the ticket even wrote “This information is made available to the customer at appeal stage and if requested through the DSAR system. This type of note is becoming common place; can this be ceased please?” Acknowledging this practice is widespread through Westminster and other boroughs.

The Gang Masters

Document 2

Document 2 shows the people who are actually responsible for the terror being forced on the CEOs. They are the Gang-masters. Sumati Sharma who was the NSL Base Manager at Westminsters Conduit Place Branch when she wrote this, one of her monthly reports. As you can see she was ably assisted by the Senior Supervisor, Paul Awosika. They have both since moved to Lambeth.

Under the heading:

1 PCN

1.1 Productivity: it clearly states, “The base volume of PCNS was 10918, against an expected CONTRACTUAL TARGET of 11937 which equates to 91.46% of the CONTRACTUAL STANDARDS.” This was for the total Number of Tickets issued as opposed to the total Number of Tickets they were contractually obliged to issue.

1.2 Issue Rate: The base ACHIEVED 1.45 PCN/Hr compared to last month’s figure of 1.52 PCN/Hr, this equates to 102.105 of the CONTRACTUAL TARGET.

NSL’s contract is with, yes you’ve guessed it Westminster City Council, the very same Council that have continually denied the setting of any targets. The same Council that refuse to release un-redacted copies of their contract with NSL Services.

Targets, targets everywhere

Document 3

Document 3 shows the totals of the various beats which CEOs have to cover.

Monthly Totals: FTE means Full Time Equivalent; the hours NSL are obliged to put CEOs on the street.

PCN/Hr: is the rate that the CEOs issue, tickets per hour. As you can see the TARGET set for the CEOs by Sumati and her bosses was 1.42 pcns per hour, but they actually came back to base with 1.45 per hour. And still, every morning both she and her senior supervisor would chastise staff for not working hard enough and for not issuing enough tickets. When CEOs complain to the press they are being bullied they are not lying, they do have targets to meet.

More mention of targets

Document 4

Document 4, from the bottom of page four to the end of page 5 you can read the PCN TARGETS Conduit branch achieved for every beat they cover. As you can see each beat was down. Yet amusingly Sumati Sharma wrote ‘the staff morale is high’, high with indignation perhaps. If the moral was high why were the CEO’s forever complaining to the media and the WCC? Why does every CEO that Nutsville as interviewed tell us the same story. Above all, why is NSL always the preferred bidder, and why have they retained the contract?

The Bradford Factor.

When Emma Collins sent her infamous email entitled Royalty Performance it was nothing new to NCP/NSL staff, the’ve had to do it for years. (see Nutsville post)

Westminster Council will moan at NCP/NSL for not meeting their contractual targets; NSL moans at the Westminster area manager who in turn moans at his base managers. These Base Managers moan at the Senior Supervisors who in turn moan at the ordinary supervisors who in turn berate their CEOs. So the WHOLE of Westminster Council KNOWS that targets are being set, the ONLY person who doesn’t know it seems is Una McCarthy.

Document 5

Paul Awosika sent a message to his supervisors entitled POOR PERFORMANCE IN CONDUIT PLACE. The list is of Parking Attendants working on the street who were not bringing in enough tickets, along with the numbers of their supervisors. You will notice the supervisors were to set them achievable targets (expectations) for the next two weeks.

If at the end of one month these particular PAs had not increased the number of tickets they were dishing out, Paul Awosika had already decided the punishment to give them.

1. Transfer these ‘rubbish’ PAs to another branch within the Westminster Contract. Why would he wish to ‘punish’ other bases with these PAs, surely he is paid, it’s his job, to train them up.

2. Again, if they did not improve the number of parking tickets they were issuing he would sack them from off the Westminster Contract and transfer them to other contracts, maybe Islington, Edmonton or some other.

3. His final piece of glory however, was to sack them completely – all for not bringing enough tickets. He told the Supervisors at that time he would monitor the sickness level of these people and eventually get them out.

Paul Awosika and Sumati Sharma, his manager, never got on well together; he blamed her for the poor performance at Conduit Place. His reason she was so bad was that she had only spent three months on the street and did not really know or understand what it really was like. Paul Awosika said she used to come back crying because she was fearful of not passing her probation; but after only three months she was promoted.

A dodgy ticket is an illegal one.

Document 6

Nigel Reid was the ‘Customer Services Officer’ based at the Lexington branch and this was the email he sent sent to all branches. Look at all the people he copied this email to, all the Base Managers in Westminster, both night and day and their senior supervisors and his superiors. ALL these people KNOW their staff on the street are issuing illegal tickets and yet do nothing about it because they accept these bad practices bring in more revenue and profit. “Cash is King.” Drivers will never know!

Look where it says ‘Night Enforcement’. This is from the Lexington base.

WM39980901; Belgium not UK – WILL BE cancelled if it reaches VQ4 Stage.

This ticket was issued by a night enforcer. Instead of saying that the vehicle came from Belgium he said it either came from, or was registered in, the UK.

Nigel Reid should have/could have cancelled the PCN because he knew that if the driver appealed the ticket and the ticket itself was actually examined it would be cancelled.

But in Westminster it’s profits above honesty.

WM39980901 was ‘Instant to commercial vehicle. WILL BE cancelled if challenged.’

Notice that if it is NOT challenged it will NOT be cancelled.

This is a favourite trick of the CEOs. Because they need the overtime, because they need weekend working, because they need to please their GANG-MASTERS they issue dodgy and illegal tickets knowing full well they will not be punished.

If a CEO sees a large a commercial vehicle on the street they have to give it time to unload the goods. It may be delivering goods to McDonalds. It may be delivering supplies to Tesco for its customers, YOU and ME. It may be delivering drinks to a popular night club. All these vehicles are allowed time to unload as they keep London turning.

However, if CEOs see a commercial vehicle on the street and they call it a PRIVATE vehicle they can issue an instant ticket, pleasing the company and Westminster City Council. All they have to do is place a PCN on the windscreen and take photos of where it is parked etc. However they DON’T take photos of the vehicle with its back doors open and the drivers loading/unloading as this will give the game away.

MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE!

What does the Westminster Council say of this practice? They love it. There was a meeting held in NSL’s Vauxhall Bridge Road Branch at which all the managers of NSL had to attend and all the Supervisors as well. At one point they were all addressed by Bob Poston. He said “I know you all do dodgy tickets. I used to do it myself when I was on the street.” So there you have it. An ex-Parking Attendant admitting he was a crook, admitting he used to rob the public; now in a high position of trust and admitting the Council knew about it all the time. He said all this in front of many witnesses.

WM52442096: No photos – WILL BE cancelled if challenged. You notice Parking Companies do NOT cancel tickets they know to be dodgy, they need the money, instead they wait for the drivers to contest them all the time hoping they do not.

This next one is a beauty!

WM52398755 No photo of time plate – WILL BE cancelled if challenged.

Notice that on these notes there is no MAY BE CANCELLED but WILL BE CANCELLED.

Sadly neither the Westminster Council nor NSL cancelled this dodgy ticket, and the driver did not appeal. He did not know that the PCN he had just been issued with was a dodgy one and that if he had appealed he would have won – “WILL BE CANCELLED IF CHALLENGED.”

What did the council do?

Below was copied from Westminster Council’s Website yesterday morning, (01/07/2010).

Parking Ticket Details:

Ticket Number: WM52398755

This matter has been placed with the City Council’s bailiffs and you should contact them to arrange payment.

For more information please call us on (020) 7823 4567 – open 24hrs/365 days.
Perhaps as Westminster Council are avid readers of this blog you might want to call off your bailiffs for ticket WM52398755

We think Mrs McCarthy must be completely ignorant of what’s been going on between NSL and Westminster Council for the last five years of her job, otherwise she wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the MailOnline’s claims, would she. Or perhaps she just didn’t want to alarm anyone on the audit committee, after all the council would not only lose more parking revenue, but also it’s reputation would fall even further, oh dear we think it just has.

You will see this information has come from within the industry, so when you hear from Westminster Council that their parking attendants do a difficult and demanding job it’s true, but most of those difficulties and demands are coming from NSL and Westminster Council.

What the documents we’ve published in this post show is there is a serious fraud against the public going on. What is worrying about Mrs McCarthy’s answers is that Westminster Council seem not capapable, interested, independent or trustworthy enough to investigate these illegal activities.

It’s really time that the METs Serious Fraud Office stopped conveniently losing files and got stuck in to investigating a fraud costing the public enormous amounts of money. Lets not forget Westminster Councils strategic director of city management, Leith Penny words: “We will not hesitate to prosecute any individuals found to be carrying out action that is tantamount to stealing from the public purse.”

Are we to assume those fine words from Mr Penny are only meant for anyone other than the Council stealing from the public? So Mr Penny if Nutsville can find out what’s going on, why do you think after all these years Westminster Council can’t?

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Penny’s press release gave every impression that the vandalism was still current, and journalists calling Westminster’s press office were egged on with claims that in Golden Square signs had been replaced over 40 times, just in case Penny’s press release wasn’t spicy enough for them. Westminster even claimed that a police detective had been called in to track down the city wide gang, who it was claimed were most active between 9am and 10am on Wednesday and Friday mornings. Ahh so you can’t easily miss them on your way into work.

Leith Penny’s press release hugely exaggerated the number of motorcycle parking bays which overnight seems to have jumped from 496 to over 7000, and implied that the No To Bike Parking Tax campaign group were encouraging or even behind the vandalism. Vandalism on such a huge scale, yet no one could actually see any evidence of it in the streets of Westminster.

Copyright Nutsville

Westminster press office refused to answer questions about the press release from ordinary members of the public, rather they directed people towards the councils Freedom of Information team. Leith Penny himself so far refuses to back up any of his wild fantasy claims with any evidence of a sudden increase in M/C sign vandalism or answer the accusations of copyright theft. Perhaps Leith Penny needs to have a chat with Westminster Councils Martin Low, as in April 2008 he said “Westminster City Council will crack down on copyright infringements of its world-famous street signs” “In buying the copyright, we felt we needed to retain an element of control over the signs to maintain Westminster’s image as a world class tourist destination”. Will Leith Penny please turn himself in to the nearest police station for stealing from the public, and for joining the Councils dirty tricks bandwagon.

It's only a pound

Angered by the lack of response from Council hypocrite Leith Penny they paid a visit to City Hall last Wednesday morning to try to offer Penny one last chance to come clean and produce the evidence. Bikers blocked both the front and rear entrances of city hall, where many Council workers defied their own chief executives advice and scrambled over bikes to squeeze into work. As they struggled through the maze of bikes workers were jokingly asked if they would pay a pound to get into city hall. Bikers reminded council workers that ‘it was only a pound’ and ‘cash would be accepted’. Well who could blame them, after all a pound is just a nominal fee, and workers were advised that it wasn’t a tax.

Nutsville wonders what they offered Leith Penny to make himself look such a chump, as we doubt anyone would be able to trust whatever he says in future without first seeing some very good evidence to back up whatever he says. Which will bring us on to our next post. We’re sure it will interest Leith Penny very much, as it will show how the councils parking enforcement operator NSL Services likes to steal from the public purse.

Oh dear Leith, what a mess you’ve dug not only for yourself but Westminster Councils reputation is about to take yet another nose dive.

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Hold on a minute, this isn’t Westminster Councils new ‘get tough’ parking policy, but perhaps the reality of what’s to come will shock motorists entering the borough.  This parking warden was spotted in an Edgeware Road petrol station last week and isn’t actually issuing the motorists with parking tickets on the petrol stations forecourt. But parking wardens are supposed to patrol their beats and ‘come across’ contraventions, not keep their distance entering vehicle numbers out of sight from their prey. This ‘hiding’ behaviour seems to be favoured by a minority of parking wardens, a practice made all the more easier with their modern data recorders. We think that more Westminster Parking wardens will soon be under huge pressure to bring in extra parking tickets based on documents recently passed to Nutsville.

Financial trouble

In a committee report due to be presented on the 30 June 2010 for the Audit and performance committee it’s revealed just how bad the Councils finances have become, with the problems largely blamed on the parking department. The report states there is a “reduced general fund balance of £28.1m, leaving a closing position for reserves of £32m at the end of the year (down from £51m at the start of the year). The overspend of £20.6m against the agreed budget in City Management, £19m of which is attributable to the parking service, is the single biggest cause.”

Worryingly for motorist Westminster Council plan to use their shiny new parking enforcement contract with NSL Services to start issuing a lot more parking tickets.

In Appendix D of the Live contracts 2009/10 Performance monitoring spreadsheet the Councils plans are revealed where they state “PCN issue volumes were lower than expected during this period so less than expected were progressed through the process to Philips.  However because CCTV PCNs are being issued again and also considering the expected volume increase as a result of the on street enforcement contract due to start in July volumes will significantly increase.”

The £1.1m costs of awarding the parking enforcement contract, after the Council made a series of legal blunders, was brushed aside by Westminster’s Kevin Goad. He believes all the taxpayers money lost in the procurement cock up can be recouped with the greater efficiencies the new contract will bring. Phew that’s a relief, as we wouldn’t want that lost money clawed back the old Westminster way, by issuing an avalanche of parking tickets. People might think the Council were using parking tickets to revenue raise.

Kevin Goad was in the High Court this week, helping to defend the Council against charges of well err ‘revenue raising’ from the No To Bike Parking Tax group. He was spotted from the public gallery nervously doodling two large black rain clouds with thunderbolts coming down. Perhaps he’s just heard what Nutsville has heard, that APCOA are still working on their legal case to take Westminster Council to court to fight for compensation after losing out on the parking enforcement contract.

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Anti parking tax campaigners paid another visit to Westminsters City Hall this morning, despite the No To Bike Parking Tax (NTBPT ) group receiving a warning email. Campaigners were advised in the email that Westminster City Council ( WCC ) had spent more taxpayers money erecting barriers and bringing in more security staff to defend City Hall against what has always been an entirely peaceful protest.

Initially police and security staff were agitated at the riders arrival until they caught sight of one of the campaigners pushing his wheelchair bound elderly mother towards City Halls entrance. Things became decidedly politically correct and less aggressive towards the riders as the ‘Hells Granny’ made her way to the front desk.

The pensioner ‘Frances’ had come to make an appointment with the new Councillor in charge of parking Lee Rowley, as he had recently said he was happy to talk to anyone about WCC’s parking policies. Frances explained at City Halls reception that as her bike riding son was being taxed by the council, she was concerned that WCC might be looking at charging mobility scooters to park in their borough.

After a short wait the delightful Alex came down to take down the pensioners details, and promised to contact her later today regarding an appointment.

Since the introduction of WCC’s cashless parking tax on PTW’s the Council have constantly ignored claims that the system is socially exclusive, as it prevents anyone without a credit card and mobile phone from parking in the borough. People with disabilities and the elderly are also put off from parking PTW’s in the borough as the Council require them to read their credit card details out loud in the street. Campaigners have already been told that the Councils parking wardens allow no leeway to find a safe place to make a telephone call. This forces all riders who unexpectedly come across the Councils pay by phone system to stand out in the street for up to 20 minutes to pay for parking.

Many residents of Westminster are wondering why the Council are so stubborn in keeping a parking tax which the Council claims is costing £430,000 to manage per year. A resident’s petition has been started to hold the Councillors and their officers who are behind the loss making scheme accountable.

But only today WCC issued a press release stating they are to throw even more taxpayers money away by introducing a special on street ‘task force’ to police what they claim is continued vandalism to parking enforcement signs. WCC claim that in one Square alone they have had to replace all the signs over 40 times this year. Many residents are bewildered as to how the Council can find extra taxpayers money for this when the Councils City Guardians are to be reduced in numbers, and crimes such as bicycle theft and muggings are not being adequately controlled.

Could this new initiative be another cynical piece of spin with less than a week from the High Court case against the Council which has been brought by the NTBPT campaigners?

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The petition lists the following Councillors and Officers:

Colin Barrow -- Leader
Robert Davis -- Deputy Leader
Danny Chalkley -- Cabinet Member responsible
Angela Harvey -- Built Environment Policy & Scrutiny Leader

Alastair Gilchrist -- Head of Parking
Kevin Goad -- Assistant Head of Parking
Martin Low -- Director of Transportation
Peter Large -- Head of Legal Services

The residents are seeking to hold all of the above personally liable for all resultant costs, stemming from the recent announcement by the council that the motorcycle parking stealth tax is to cost ratepayers £430,000 per year. In addition the council faces a High Court challenge next week which could add a further £200,000 to the taxpayers bill.

In a meeting of the City Management and Transport Policy and Scrutiny Committee last week Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg said:

“Parking has been at the centre of a storm in Westminster for 18 months. Whether it be the parking enforcement contract relet, which has been a complete disaster, in every sense possible, particularly financial. But there has been a whole string of them of course, including the motorcycle parking debacle. Which has really tarnished this council’s reputation and will continue to do so if something is not done to deal with the underlying issues.”

“I would like to ask you whether coming into this as a new face and a new brain on this matter, will you undertake to at least review where we are rather than simply say business as usual full steam ahead?”

“It is clear that there is a problem in the acceptance of motorbike parking charges by the people they are directed at and a tax or a charge which is so seriously hated by those which it is imposed upon really cannot be a sustainable charge. I would ask you perhaps to take this opportunity of a new face, a new broom, to look at it again to see if it is actually in the interests of Westminster  transport policy generally and the motorbike commuters and residents who are clearly not happy with this.”

The Councillor now in charge of parking Cllr Lee Rowley replied:

“It won’t come as any surprise to you Paul to hear I don’t accept the premise of some of your arguments. I don’t accept that there is a disaster in the department. I accept that as a new cabinet member I will want to come in and look at how processes are working within the department and to ensure that the working of the department and the policies we have in the department are appropriate for the city. I would just like to point out, although I know that officers have been pointing this out in public for a number of weeks, we are in a position where the awarding of contracts has become increasing litigious irrespective of whether it is a parking contract or another aspect which the council out sources. That is a function of the commercial world which we’re in and I absolutely accept the processes in the last few months have not been ideal and we will move forward and seek to learn from those. I don’t accept the process has been a disaster and neither do I accept it’s been a disaster financially. As officers have indicated already there will be a net benefit to the council for this relet of the contract. That doesn’t mean that I wish we hadn’t got it all sorted initially, but it does mean that occasionally unintended benefits can result from these things occurring.”

“On the motorcycle charge I am very happy and I look forward to discussions and debates and meetings with anybody who would like to discuss and debate and meet with me. I would be very happy to do so and I extend an invitation to everybody who is involved within the motorcycle discussion over the past to come and meet me, my door is open. And I will be having one of those first meetings with a representative of a motorcycle group next week. “

“I will state now that my default position is that this has been discussed extensively, this has been debated massively and I am of the position that our policy, happy to talk it through, happy to debate it, but I’m not of the view that I’m intending to change the policy as it stands. But I’m happy to talk to people about that, I’m happy for people to provide rationales about why they don’t think that’s correct.”

Residents and stakeholders tried to put Mr Rowels words to the test twice last week as this video demonstrates.

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After yesterday mornings blockade of Westminster City Hall the council has put up the barricades in anticipation of another assault from residents and stakeholders annoyed about the councils parking polices. Extra security staff became twitchy when one of our readers arrived on a motorbike to take a photo of the new taxpayer funded defences.

Man the barricades the peasants are coming back

Yesterday afternoon the council’s chief executive, Mike More, sent out a memo (download here) to all staff advising them not to try to enter the building the next time they are under siege. Council staff were also asked not to talk to any of the protesting residents or stakeholders. More said “please do not enter into discussions with demonstrators”.

Perhaps Mr More doesn’t want the demonstrators to learn just how much support there is for a real change at the top of Westminster Council.

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