It makes perfect sense now why Chalkley (“so kindly”) granted free parking to motorcyclists in car parks, as a result of the pressure raised by the No To Bike Parking Tax campaign. That’s because he knew he was going to get rid of these 2 car parks within 6 months, so it didn’t matter to him that 170 bike parking spaces were given free of charge at the time. So what about the other car parks, is he going to transfer ownership to a third party as well?

We want FREE MOTORCYCLE PARKING on street, how long is this man going to take to understand this? We will not go away until we obtain what we want.

2 new companies are formed in February, six months later they lease two car parks from Westminster Council, they haven’t traded anything else, they have no directors or company secretary and no-one can find out if the companies have due diligence, cash to back up the maintenance on the lease, designated culpable people?

Is it just me or does this stink to high heaven?

I think the public needs to know who owns these two quick set up companies because what if they are bought out by NCP or someone in the next six months, who will profit? The public needs to know.

Did they do a credit check on Overix? How do we (the public) know we got the best deal, Chalkley, Caplan and Large have proved they can’t be trusted to handle the public’s money.

FOI requests regarding these 2 companies and the decision made to transfer ownership of the 2 car parks to them on their way…

And I thought it was Cllr Barrow, Chalkley and Caplan that are “surplus to operational requirements”.

So, any council can just lease out public buildings (it is us that owns the car parks isn’t it?) to anyone they see fit and keep all those details secret?

The company they choose can be less than a year old, thereby not even have any accounts filed, nor any named directors or company secretary.

I’m re-reading what I just wrote and it still doesn’t read right… What the fuck are they playing at?

Oh wait, hang on… They sell the lease to Overix, then when it’s in profit they let Westminster’s own company Westco Trading take it over, not overtly you understand, and charge even more money than they can wheedle out of people with council parking. Then, of course, this Overix Company takes the profits of the buy out and shares it amongst the directors and yet again the public loses.

Yeah ok, I know it’s stupid but then so was the Dame Shirley Porter thing.

“the Council will generate significantly more net income whilst not impacting on general parking provision”

I just cannot understand how the City of Westminster came to that conclusion. They must all be completely thick. Do they really think that the company that takes over the car parks is going to subsidise parking? No, of course not! The only thing that will happen is the car parks will become even more expensive to park in as this Overix ‘company’ will need to generate more income than the car parks currently generate, just to pay Westminster for their lease, and that’s before they even make a profit. Who are you kidding Chalkley? It is NOT possible to generate “significantly more net income whilst not impacting on general parking provision”. The public are going to lose out here as they will end up paying more for parking, just so WCC and ‘Overix’ can make more money. Chalkley is just full of rubbish and he is a compulsive liar!

I’m disappointed that the message doesn’t seem to have got through to these abysmally amateurish local councillors yet. After all of the chaos caused by the MP’s expenses revalations, I would like to see my local councillors behaving with much more transparency than this.

It could be that this lease arraignment is financially beneficial to the council, but then why the secrecy, we need transparency here. The secrecy and the fact that both businesses are relatively new, makes the whole affair look rather sordid.

Didn’t Chalkley not create any new parking spaces for bikes in the 3 or 4 years prior to introducing his tax. Then cleared all bikes from parking in unused bits of land.

So leasing off the car parks to private companies follows his usual pattern.

Sue Long, I was under the impression that Westminster were actually REDUCING motorcycle bays all over the borough, until they brought in the bike parking charge, then they created a few more bays to try to justify the charge, but as you say we lost all those spaces where we could park out the way on unused land and alleyways. And now it looks like we’re going do lose all those bike spaces in the car parks. So, motorcycle parking is worse than it has been for years, even though there are more bikes than ever, and now we are expected to pay for it? Think again Chalkley!

Hey… So Chalkley gets the commuters that park in Wastemonster to pay for all these nice bays to be created in the car parks and then leases them out to private companies!

Duh! We’ve just paid so the council and some made up company can earn some more money from us. How far are they gonna twist the sponge?

I may be wrone but looking at this from a bikers stanpoint I think the bike bays where introduced to make the car parks seem to be ’surplus to operational requirements’. After all if you add up all the BAYS that are not being used (including un publicised bike bays) then the car park seem to be empty. I would not be supprised to find that they justified getting rid of the car parks by saying a percentage of BAYS are empty which others will thik means a percentage of the car parks are a empty.

I would not be supprised if they introduced bike charging just to do this.

I also think it should be illegal for a council to sell the lease on a building to a company without a registerd company secretary or directors.