Pay-by-Phone - an obvious flaw - easily fixed

An evidently persistent lady, probably one of his readers, has kindly emailed Mr Mustard to tell of her success in recently obtaining a refund of £30 that she paid in April 2013 in respect of a PCN which was issued because she had paid £1.10 for the wrong car. She had spoken to an operator and added her new vehicle and logic dictates that 99% of the time most people will have sold the old one. Why then, when you are transferred back to the automated payment system to finish your transaction and it defaults to the last car you paid for which will of course be the one you just sold.

Wouldn't it be better if adding a new vehicle wiped the default option and if the operator also asked you if you had sold a car.

That way the available cars for you to pay for is kept to the minimum as is the possibility for error.

If the council are committed to truly helping residents they will ask Verrus PayByPhone to implement such a simple software change.

If however, they want to revenue raise from your unforced error, they won't.

Let's see whay they do? (the council do read this blog & my tweets @_MrMustard)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

(Mr Mustard recommends going on-line if you have access and doing the change yourself. He has actually registered 3 vehicles himself but he hasn't paid any money ever; it's just in case one day he has no other choice; for now, he will continue to park on the edge of a CPZ and walk).

p.s. If you ahve paid for the wrong car in the past and  ended up paying the PCn you might as well ask for a refund of the parking charge. You haven't, after all, had any consideration for it. Send your request to barnet@nslservices.co.uk

New mobile comes with a car - thanks Verrus!

a car phone

Just in case you are getting a shiny new phone with a shiny new number or a shiny used car, you need to read the below decision from an adjudicator at PATAS so you can clean up any record of a car linked to your phone, or vice versa, of which you are unaware.

There is no dispute as to the whereabouts of vehicle xxxxxxx, at the time, on the material date; namely at a location requiring the purchase of time to park. The Enforcement Authority  assert the absence of payment/display in respect of the said vehicle.
The Appellant denies liability for the ensuing Penalty Charge Notice on the basis of the prevailing circumstances as clearly stated in her written representations (supported by copy corroborating screen-shots of her mobile telephone), which she reiterated and comprehensively detailed at the Hearing.
The Enforcement Authority who assert that the said vehicle was so parked contrary to, and during the operative period of, a restriction are obliged to adduce evidence to the requisite standard to substantiate that assertion.
 
The evidence upon which the Enforcement Authority rely substantiate the assertion comprises the certified copy Penalty Charge Notice, copy provisions of governing Traffic Management Orders, and computer-generated made by the Civil Enforcement Officer together with photographic evidence: still frames revealing the said vehicle in situ, and the applicable signage notifying motorists of the restriction.
Upon examination of the contemporaneous evidence I note that the civil enforcement officer records the abbreviation 'VC' at 10.24 a.m. on the date in question: I interpret this to mean that a check was made with the Verrus system at that time, yet the Penalty Charge Notice was issued at 10.22.a.m. and indicates that the said vehicle was viewed from 10.17 a.m.

The Enforcement Authority also adduce a copy of a 55 page 'PaybyPhone' user guide and computer-screen images of the Verrus Parking History in relation to the said vehicle. Why the council (NSL on their behalf) insist on adding to their evidence a 55 page use guide which is not available to the person standing in a High Street or a car park and waste 55 pages of copier paper which add nothing to the argument is beyond Mr Mustard.

The Appellant described the sequence of events, stating the time at which she positioned the said vehicle, her immediate attempts to comply, from within the said vehicle, with the instructions on the nearby sign. The Appellant also detailed the difficulties encountered with the system which caused the Appellant to be delayed for an appointment, so she vacated the said vehicle and made her way to the venue of the appointment, whilst continually trying to execute the parking payment transaction. The mobile device screen-shots corroborate this continuous activity and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the same.
The sign at the location does not instruct motorists to remain with vehicles to make payment.
The Appellant, who was eventually put through to a customer services operative, repeated the information given to her: that a different mobile telephone number, registered in 2006, was linked to the vehicle registration mark and prevented the transaction going through. The Appellant had been below the driving age in 2006, and had never registered her own or any other mobile device to any vehicle registration mark. There is an obvious flaw in the system.
Where an enforcement authority implement a particular parking regime, a motorist must be afforded sufficient reasonable time to comply with the requirements of such regime, whether that be attending at a voucher-dispensing machine or obtaining and completing a visitor's permit, or effecting a transaction to purchase parking time by telephone or text methods. A motorist should not be prejudiced by an inability to effect such a transaction through the fault of the scheme.
I found the Appellant's oral evidence to be cogent and credible and I accepted it in its entirety, making a finding hat the Appellant was in the process of effecting compliance with the parking regime at the time of issue of the Penalty Charge Notice.
Evidentially therefore I am not satisfied that this contravention occurred, accordingly I allow this Appeal.

The question that Mr Mustard asks, given that the council had the same information, is why they wasted the time of the lady by refusing her appeal and making her travel to PATAS (nr Angel tube) and back again.

Is the council so desperate for money that they have to refuse blindingly obvious bona fide appeals in order to try and snatch a few quid from an innocent party.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Verify Verrus

Mr Mustard receives the Barnet Times through his letterbox each Friday morning (but sadly not the Barnet Press). He finds the letters page a source of amusement, joy and information (an excellent letter from Green Party Poppy about recycling is worth your attention) and this one on parking charges

So what did Mr Mustard do next? He looked on google streetview to find a PayByPhone sign and came up with a location adjacent to the park of 5895. He then started to make a payment for a 90 minute stay at that location and here is the screenshot from his phone

Let's put aside for the moment that £3 (and 10p for a reminder that your time is running out, a service which probably costs Verrus less than 1p) to feed the ducks and have a little stroll is a bit rich and note the absence of any opportunity to pay for more than 1 session of parking (it isn't on the options tab either)

Mr Mustard didn't confirm but went back to the start and tried to pay for 10,080 minutes. The system wouldn't let him pay for more than the maximum daily chargeable amount of 630 minutes so how the letter writer managed to pay for seven days is a complete mystery, he certainly wasn't using the app (unless it has since been fixed), perhaps there is a hole in the text system?

Mr Mustard then tried at 6.06pm to pay for 120 minutes and the system correctly refused payment and would only charge for 30 minutes and told him the expiry time was 8am the next morning so at least that is correct.

The point of this blog posting is for you to go away now and check your charges. You can do it online here and if you have been overcharged you can sort that out by phoning or emailing based upon these contact details.

Do put a comment at the bottom if you too have been overcharged and how, if you can work that out.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Verrus - PayByPhone - Not a bargain

You go abroad for a few days and you come home to an unexpectantly high bill or you let your child have your iPad and suddenly you owe £thousands; that is just like getting Verrus to supply a cash free service for parking (cash free not cost free).

Let us wind back to Cllr Brian Coleman's delegated powers report of August 2011, DPR 1375, entitled "Cashless Parking July 2011" which is reproduced for you here in all of its glory (gory?)

1375 - Cashless Parking July 2011 by MisterMustard

What gems did this DPR contain?

para 3.2 - ‘Pay by Phone’ or ‘Cashless’ technology is inexpensive to set up and administer.

para 5.1 - Estimated costs for the necessary signage work would be approximately £160,000

para 5.2 - In addition, the removal of machines including making good the footway would entail civil works estimated in the region of £80,000

para 5.4 Savings

	(£) Cost / (Savings ) Full Year
Pay by Phone fees (additional cost)	£80,000
Pay and display maintenance costs	-£200,000
Pay and display running costs	-£20,000
Cash collection costs	-£220,000
Staffing costs (E&O)	-£100,000
Totals	-£460,000

So moving to PayByPhone was meant to save bundles.

Para 8.10 - To date pay by phone transactions account for nearly 50% of all pay-at-time-of-parking transactions (Mr Mustard might just have to check this statement for veracity).

Let us see what we saved. Here are the PayByPhone costs for the year to March 13

Date	Invoice	Month	PbP on £	PbP off £	Paypoint £
11/07/2012	12958	May	26,504.52
09/08/2012	13325	June		2,706.74
09/08/2012	13326	June	21,114.32
09/08/2012	13327	July	23,146.21
09/08/2012	13328	July		2,926.98
17/09/2012	13755	Aug	20,094.95	2,623.79
30/09/2012	14046	Sept	22,671.82
30/09/2012	14047	Sept		3,013.97
08/11/2012	14521	June			188.15
08/11/2012	14521	Sept			302.36
08/11/2012	14521	July			305.60
08/11/2012	14521	Aug			308.60
13/11/2012	14572	Oct	24,178.39	3,426.97	358.76
10/12/2012	14917	Nov	24,847.25	3,406.22	448.66
11/01/2013	15314	Dec	22,295.72	3,273.92	337.83
12/02/2013	15759	Jan	23,666.62	3,127.11	108.81
13/03/2013	16255	Feb	23,420.68	3,086.34	491.98
29/03/2013	16598	Mar	24,902.20	3,274.27
		Totals	256,842.68	30,866.31	2,850.75

which gives a total paid to Verrus/Paypoint via NSL of £290,559.

Amounts paid to park in the year were £2,945,682 so after allowing for a few sales of vouchers by shops we are looking at 10% of all parking income going to Verrus/Paypoint. It seems a lot for simply accepting money that people willingly want to pay. Mr Mustard is a debt collector and doesn't usually earn more than 10% of sums paid by debtors who don't want to pay willingly! Did Barnet Council negotiate fees hard enough? Do they even understand commerce?

The Verrus payments in the year ended March 2011, before parking meters were removed, was £58,221 and so the extra amount has not gone up by £80,000 but by £222,000 which wipes out all of the saving of the cash collection team.

It cost £240,000 to change the signs, remove the meters and repair the pavements afterwards so that means the net saving from this change for a whole year was a mere £80,000.

Now the businesses Mr Mustard has spoken to have suffered a drop in trade of a conservative 30%. We have 20 or so centres of shopping all with 50 to 100 shops. Let us suppose a typical shop has a turnover of £100,000 (again there will be many which were much higher). So the value of trade lost to the High Street by the bonkers policy of not having cash parking meters (and do see my post of yesterday about the prevalence of cash as a medium of payment) is

20 * 75 * £100,000 * 30% = £4,500,000 which is probably a massive under estimate.
Barnet Council exists in order to serve its residents and businesses. It is serving only itself by the policy of cashless parking.

By worrying about the cost of the service and not taking sufficient account of the value of the service the council have saved a small amount of money and badly hampered many businesses.

Much as Mr Mustard would be delighted to see the signatory of this DPR, Cllr Brian Coleman, leave the council and take up a post in the real world, Mr Mustard can't bring himself to write a reference that would help. Brian isn't solely to blame as no officer appears to have stood up and said what a bonkers policy it was and the "leader" of the council, Richard Cornelius didn't step in and stop the obvious madness.

If only traders had been consulted. Oh, they have been in North Finchley, Chipping Barnet, Edgware and East Finchley and all have asked for cash parking meters and the council are deaf to their pleas.

Cllr (Dean) Cohen rules out the return of cash machines

The time has come to listen.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Festive refunds - thank you Mr Reasonable

Barnet Council once again excelled themselves in December when the awfully mean 2 hour free parking that was offered during the weekend of 22/23 December (and the 23rd was a Sunday when parking charges are rarely due) was not sufficiently advertised and motorists stumped up £9,000 in error.

This problem was picked up by the ever vigilante Mr Reasonable who cleverly asked a Freedom of Information question ( the same question would have been deemed vexatious if Mr Mustard had asked it ) to find out the extent of the fiasco which you can read about here.

In the local Barnet Times newspaper today, on page 2, you can read an article headed "Refunds over festive parking confusion" where confusion means "complete and utter shambles" and we are asked to believe that the council spotted this problem on the day and ordered immediate refunds. What they didn't order was Verrus, who run the hated pay-by-phone system, to stop taking money in and so now we have the council making 5,200 refunds when they could have stopped the payments coming in at all.

If you paid for parking on 22 or 23 December and have not been automatically refunded for the first 2 hours which were free, send an email to parking.clientteam@barnet.gov.uk and get your money back. 

If you received a parking ticket and had parked for less than 2 hours (which the council can't prove one way or the other as they only observe for a minute or two) then you are equally due a refund if you have paid. Apply for one, or for unpaid parking tickets send in an appeal, at barnet@nslservices.co.uk and send a copy to parking.clientteam@barnet.gov.uk to make sure the message gets through. Give them the parking ticket number (usually starts with AG) your vehicle registration and your name and address and the amount you would like to be refunded.

Have fun.

Please let Mr Mustard know (mrmustard@zoho.com ) if you hadn't been automatically refunded or if you encounter any problems with the council.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard 

Westminster wheel wobble

Is this a car or a motorbike? in Westminster they are all the same

Mr Mustard has some friends, yes he really does, who live in the Home Counties, who occasionally go up to London, either the man on his own, often on his high-powered motorcycle or together as a family in the family car. Mr Mustard has known these friends for coming up to 30 years when he met the man who worked for some big city lawyers and Mr Mustard was a credit manager for an equally large firm. A common interest in motorcycles was the initial bond.

The man uses Westminster's pay-by-phone system and has registered both the family car and the motorbike.

Back in March 2012 there was a family visit to town and it being late afternoon it was fairly easy to find a parking space, pay £12, go off for the evening's entertainment and come back to the car to find a parking ticket affixed to the windscreen. Very odd, the £12 has been paid as the credit card statement shows (you can often see your most recent payments on-line) and there is a text message confirming payment. 

Telephone calls ensued to Westmister City Council and/or NSL who issued the ticket, and/or Vertex who deal with back office ticket processing (Westminster Council themselves are legally obliged to deal with formal representations) and/or Verrus who provide the pay-by-phone system and it turns out that £12 was paid and the motorcycle registration number was the one entered into the system as being what the payment was for. Now whereas here in Barnet it is free to park your motorcyle in Westminster, because lots of people now commute in, to park on the road costs £1 for all day (in Westminster's car parks in marked out bike bays it is free and you are in the dry to get out of your kit). It is blindingly obvious therefore that a simple administrative error has been made. The driver knew he had the family with him and was in a car, he must have told the pay-by-phone operative this because £12 was taken, and so someone somewhere made a mistake. Will anybody deal with this problem and quash the ticket? No.

Many local authorities bleat on that charging for parking isn't to make money, honest guv, it is purely to ration the space, to keep the traffic moving, to make sure the emergency services can get through etc etc although they don't complain about the side effect of making millions which helps to keep council tax down, oh no.  

Barnet Council aims to keep the borough’s roads and pavements safe for pedestrians and drivers. and make a few £million at the same time.

After all the arguing a deadline for an appeal got missed and so a decision was taken. To pay the ticket under protest and then sue in the County Court for a refund. This has now taken place and Westminster have agreed to refund the £130 and the £35 court fee.

Here is the message from Mr Mustard's friend:

"What a lot of bother over nothing in particular. They said it should have been sorted out a long time ago!!! Hey ho."

A number of interesting questions are raised.

Why did commonsense not prevail?

Why wasn't it sorted out a long time ago?

Did outsourcing to 3 different companies cause a problem?

If Westminster ran everything in-house would communications be better?

Is the Verrus pay-by-phone system fit for purpose?

Has it happened to you? (If so, issue in the County Court, it is easy)

 

Mr Mustard thinks that the problem is that as soon as a ticket is issued the mindset in every council is that they are right and the cancellation of any ticket is a let-off and they put the revenue loss before the motorist. In fact, Mr Mustard has obtained some exclusive footage of a small section of a video that is played at all parking enforcement training courses at Westminster Council to condition new appeal officers in the proper behaviour to adopt when hitting the cancel button.

Councils everywhere, stop being juvenile and start using some commonsense when appeals are received. Grow up and take the adult decisions.

Update of interest to people with more than one registered vehicle.

The only thing I have learnt is that even when you speak to a real person and give them the reg. number you want to use the system then goes back to the first one registered, so you have to listen closely and change the reg. before you confirm payment. That was never explained to us, and where the error occurred.

If the above happened to you, take your appeal all the way to PATAS.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Questions about the award of the parking contract to NSL

Mr John Burgess, the very hard working branch secretary of Unison, who has the dubious pleasure of dealing with the One Barnet management, has been very busy and sent the following questions a few days ago to Mr Jeff Lustig who is the monitoring officer for the council (you have a very tough job Mr Lustig - I suppose the £132,480 a year helps - I can't see why you are only paid the same as Craig Cooper the hapless Commercial Director, who is always having to explain to committees what has gone wrong, again, in procurement, Mr Mustard has not seen you having to talk your way embarrassingly out of a tight corner like that) 

---

Hi Jeff

I am writing to you in your role as the Monitoring Officer for London Borough of Barnet.

Following the receipt of independent advice UNISON is concerned that aspects of the relationship with the company now known as PaybyPhone may create a reputational and possibly legal risk for the Council. UNISON believes that it has a legitimate interest in this because of the impact that a challenge to a Council procurement process could have on its members. Clearly any damage to the reputation of the Council also impinges on our members. Beyond this, many UNISON members are also Barnet residents with a direct interest in the effective administration of the Council.

The following questions are designed to explore these concerns and hopefully assist the Council’s monitoring officer to comply with their own wider public duties with regard to safeguarding the legal integrity of the Council’s procurement practices.

We are of the view that the current tender process could not be safely concluded without consideration of the issues raised and would therefore not envisage any significant difficulty in responding to the questions in a timely manner.

1. Can you confirm that Verrus UK was appointed to the pay by phone contract without formal competition following a competitive trial involving it and one other supplier of pay by phone parking services?

2. What process was followed to select the companies which participated in the trial?

3. How many companies are you aware of that provide pay by phone services in relation to car parking in the UK and/or other European states?

4. Was a contract award Notice published in relation to the trial?

5. Was a contract award Notice published in relation to the contract with Verrus?

6. Is the contract with Verrus within the scope of the European public procurement regime as incorporated into UK law by the Public Contracts Regulations 2006?

7. If so do you consider it to be a Part A or a Part B contract?

8. Can you confirm that the letting of the contract was not compliant with the requirements for Part A or Part B contracts?

9. If the contract is not considered to be caught by the competition regulations can you explain why not?

10. Do you agree that all public contracts, including those out of the formal scope of the regulations, are subject to general treaty obligations around equality of treatment, transparency, proportionality and mutual recognition.

11. Are you satisfied that the way in which the contract was let i.e. without any form of formal competition, was compliant with competition law and/or consistent with the treaty requirements referred to above?

12. Are you satisfied that the Council could be reasonably sure that the deal it struck with Verrus represented Best Value?

13. If the answer to the above is yes could you explain how the Council established that the contract price offered by Verrus was competitive?

14. Can you confirm that the contract with Verrus was extended without competition?

15. Was an extension expressly authorised under the terms of the original contract with Verrus?

16. What is the total expected value of the contract – including the extension?

17. Are you satisfied that the extension is compliant with European and/or domestic legal requirements?

18. Can you confirm that Verrus UK is now owned by PayPoint Plc and has been rebadged as PaybyPhone?

19. Can you confirm that PaybyPhone is a named sub-contractor of NSL, the preferred bidder for the Parking Services Contract?

20. If this is not the case can you describe the relationship between NSL and PaybyPhone?

21. How many other bids named PaybyPhone as a sub-contractor or provider of pay by phone parking services within their bids?

22. Did the composition of any of the bidding consortia change during the tender process?

23. Did any of the bidders propose using a supplier of pay by phone parking other than PaybyPhone?

24. Did the Council do anything that could reasonably be construed as identifying PaybyPhone as a ‘preferred provider’ to bidders during the tender process?

25. If PaybyPhone was involved with more than one bid did the Council identify this as a risk to the integrity of the tender process and if so what steps were taken to mitigate the risk?

26. Was the tender price for the PaybyPhone element the same for each of the bids that PaybyPhone was involved with?

27. Are you satisfied that competition for the pay by phone element of the parking service contract has not been restricted or distorted and that other potential providers have had an opportunity to communicate their offers through the process followed?

28. What relationship will the Council have with PaybyPhone under the NSL contract?

29. How does the Council intend to apply the principle established in the Contract Notice that ‘the Council will require that each consortium member has a joint and several liability’?

30. Are you able to advise the Council that its dealings with Verrus/PaybyPhone create no risk of legitimate legal challenge and do not otherwise pose a reputational risk.

Given that the tender process is expected to be concluded at next week’s Cabinet Resources Meeting (14 December 2011) a response to these questions is required urgently as it will (or should) have a direct bearing on the decision process.

Best wishes

John Burgess

Branch Secretary.

Barnet UNISON

---

Mr Mustard would not be surprised if one of the losing bidders were to lodge an appeal. It is rare for Barnet Council to exactly follow a set of rules, they had to re-issue the parking prices increase for example in the Spring of 2011, so Mr Mustard doubts they will have got a tender correct, they will just bluff it out ( if they can ).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Cabinet Resources Committee 14 Dec 2011 - essential reading

It is to be hoped that there is some free time between now and tomorrow evening at 7pm ( Hendon Town Hall ) as there is quite a wadge of paper to read that the council have published here and the report submitted by Unison ( with some difficult questions in Appendix A) in the box below or downloadable from scribd itself

13 Dec 2011 Unison Parking Response to Crc

Mr Mustard will see you there.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Guest blog from Nutsville.com

It seems that other blogs have an even better handle on Barnet Council than Mr Mustyard who is such a slacker that he took 5 days off and all hell broke loose and so he can do no better than reprodocue the blog from nutsville.com who feature as one of Mr Mustard's favourite blogs.

Barnet Council told to withdraw parking services tender or face EU Commission investigation

Brian Coleman

Shameless expense claimant Barnet’s very own Brian Coleman, who became infamous for boasting that his council never knowingly undercharges for parking has been caught by Nutsville investigators illegally pushing through a lucrative contract deal.

In a forced through decision Brian Coleman has managed to breach Barnet Councils Constitution, break the Public Contract Regulations 2006 directly violate EU public procurement law leaving Barnet taxpayers facing having to pay more for their services than they do now.

Coleman was branded a bully boy by his own Tory backbenchers when last August he used delegated powers to continue using Paypoint’s Verrus subsidiary to provide a borough wide Pay-by-Phone service. (Download delegated powers report here) Concerns were raised by fellow Councillors that with all of the boroughs pay and display machines being ripped out there would be no adequate alternative for motorists who either could not or would not pay using a mobile phone and credit card.

But Coleman had never made a secret of his intention to follow Westminster Council’s lead by going down the cashless parking road when in October 2010 he said “We are going completely cashless. It’s a common sense modern approach to parking. It works perfectly well in Westminster”. Coleman is in such admiration of Westminster Council’s pay-by-phone cashless parking model that he’s even forced his council to use the same contractor as Westminster, Verrus.

Great fanfare was made about how going cashless would save Barnet taxpayers money. But by not seeking the best fees for its outsourced services it will end up costing taxpayers more, a lot more. Alarm bells sounded when Coleman sneaked the contract award through when many of Barnet’s councillors were on holiday.

In 2008 Barnet Council undertook a trial between two pay-by-phone companies just in their car parks. The costs involved were of minimal value so did not exceed the EU threshold to trigger a tendering exercise.  In 2009 Barnet decided they were going to go with Verrus and awarded them a low value contract in accordance with their procurement code. That contract was for two years, supposedly ending in March 2011. 

In June 2010 Barnet had rolled out pay-by-phone on to the streets of Barnet, making the contract more lucrative to Verrus.  But from around March this year payments from Barnet to Verrus really shot up as the Council took out more of its pay and display machines, leaving Verrus as the only game in town for motorists.

From March until August this year Barnet Council have paid Verrus more than £86,000, which would put their projected spend at over £200,000 expressly in violation of EU legislation and the EU threshold limit of £156,000. Brian Coleman must have been aware he was acting illegally as he even went against Barnet’s own Contract Procedure Rules (page 129 Table 5-2 Acceptance thresholds for contract extensions and variations Greater than £156,422 Authority must be sought).

You would have though that over two years would have been long enough for  Barnet Council to have done a proper legal fair tendering process for the Pay-by-Phone contract, unless they didn’t want to for some reason. Coleman even allowed Verrus to operate in Barnet without any contract in place as their original contract expired in March of this year (2011).

Now Coleman is tendering for a consortium to outsource the whole of the parking service, in the meantime allowing Verrus to continue invoicing Barnet until Coleman’s new super contract worth upwards of £25M is awarded. The new super contract described as a framework contract is asking for a group of up to five operators to form a consortium with one operator acting as lead operator dealing directly with Barnet Council.

The problem with tendering for a consortium instead of say putting out individual services as lots, is that it favours just one economic operator, Verrus. Other pay-by-phone providers don’t have relationships with parking enforcement contractors such as NSL for example, who just happen to provide parking enforcement for Westminster Council, along side Verrus.

Questions need to be asked as to why Brian Coleman is favouring this particular provider. Nutsville understands this matter is to be brought to the attention of the District Auditor and the Efficiency Reform Group of the Cabinet Office formerly the Office of Government Commerce.

The OJEU tender notice 2011/S 67-109281 published on 4th April 2011 for the outsourced parking services is in direct violation of EU public procurement law and Nutsville understands if this notice is not cancelled a complaint will be lodged with the EU Commission.

What Coleman should have done to avoid being caught with his pants round his ankles is to have tendered for a pay-by-phone provider under the normal EU process and then done a separate tendering exercise for the parking enforcement contract.