The City of Westminster is the biggest public parking operation in Europe. The city operates a large proportion of the capital's parking meters and residents' only bays and also runs 12 car parks in the Borough. On street it has about 35,000 bays and a further 3,600 spaces off street. This is big business and a large part of the service is outsourced to contractors. This is not like Chicago where the City effectively ceded control of the street parking operation in a long-term cash deal. Westminster has kept control but delivers the service through contractors in a series of 3-5 year contracts. The last round of tendering has just been completed but it has now been revealed that Scotland Yard, conveniently next door to City Hall, has been called in to investigate alleged irregularities in how the previous contracts were awarded.
It seems that the allegation stems from the breakup of the then incumbent contractor NCP in 2007 following a change of owner. NCP, who was then UK's biggest parking company, split into NCP who handled off-street parking and a new company NSL who did the streets. Westminster's £13m a year contract was then handed over to NSL without a tender. However EU law requires that public contract over about £150,000 must go through a well defined and rigorous public tender and it has been alleged that Westminster acted improperly in not-retendering the contract when NCP changed.
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