CROYDON IN CRISIS: After the council bought number-plate recognition cameras that did not work, it managed to get a refund – after losing an estimated £16m income. By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE
Switched off: the council signed a deal for 100 ANPR cameras that never worked properly
Failures in Croydon Council’s procurement processes have been exposed yet again – but this time the local authority has at least managed to claw back some of the money it was losing over its school street motorist fines.
Conduent Public Sector UK Ltd is reported to have repaid £3.25million to Croydon Council over a failed parking enforcement scheme
As Inside Croydon reported in 2023, the council discovered that its officials had bought ANPR equipment – Automatic Number Plate Recognition – which turned out to be incompatible with British car number plates – and therefore completely useless when used to police the borough’s “school streets”.
“Healthy School Streets” are where unauthorised vehicles are supposed to be banned from the roads outside schools at dropping off and picking up times during term.
But official council reports in May 2023 admitted that nine such streets, affecting 10 schools, which were supposed to be running a legally required six-month trial from the beginning of last year, were doing so with no data collection or enforcement from number-plate recognition cameras.
Another nine trial school streets introduced in March last year were also thought to be without any enforcement from ANPR cameras, bringing the total to 18 streets without any camera enforcement.
Croydon had signed a contract with Conduent in March 2022 to provide 100 ANPR cameras specifically to monitor traffic around schools.
Budget issues: the report to cabinet from May 2023 confirmed issues around ANPR cameras for council car parks and school streets
By May 2023, someone at the council twigged that the ANPR cameras were not generating the revenues from fines that had been predicted by the then £150,000 per year “director of sustainable communities”, Steve Iles.
Council reports at the time suggested that the council was losing about £500,000 per month because of “the roll-out of new ANPR cameras”, with equipment that was “not compliant with the relevant UK standards”.
The council budget also had to be adjusted because of the short-fall in predicted income from fines on motorists because of the absence of functioning cameras in the council’s car parks.
The council reckoned it lost a total of around £16million as a consequence of the failings in the Conduent deal.
The BBC has reported that according to Conduent’s UK accounts filed at Companies House, the firm made a loss in 2022-2023, “due to several unexpected events”. These included “exiting a contract” with a local council.
“A £3.25million payment was made to the local council in August 2023,” the accounts state. Conduent told the BBC that it had sold the part of its business that operated “curbside management and public safety business”.
In June 2023, it was announced that Iles, a Croydon Council employee for more than 30 years, was to take early retirement. Iles today holds the senior position of “interim director of operations” at Swindon Borough Council.
‘Early retirement’: Steve Iles now works for Swindon council
According to sources at Fisher’s Folly, “this particular cock-up was mostly down to Iles, not because he awarded the contract but because he restructured the service and deleted all the integral staff required to implement and deliver”.
In councilspeak at Croydon Council, “restructured” usually translates to meaning reduced the number of staff, and “deleted” means made redundant. “Implement and deliver” means capable of actually doing the job…
The council source says that when it came to setting budget predictions, Iles “over-egged the deliverable income to fill the budget gaps, and kick the can down the road”. Notoriously, in the council’s March 2022 budget – the last to be passed by a Labour administration before the election of Tory Jason Perry as Mayor – income from parking and fines was predicted to reach £1million per month.
These figures were swiftly discredited when Perry’s Tories started poring over the cash-strapped council’s books.
Said the source at Fisher’s Folly, “The ANPR cameras contract was implemented during the Section 114 when they were all running around like headless chickens looking for scapegoats and pointing fingers and supposedly ‘saving money’.”
This is also the period under new-broom chief exec Katherine Kerswell, and when the government-appointed “Improvement Panel” was supposedly overseeing all council spending, to ensure “best value” for the public.
Of the cameras, the source said: “It’s technology, so if it’s not set up properly, it won’t work. There were faults on both sides, council and supplier.”
Thing is, Conduent still works for Croydon Council, albeit under a different company name.
Trellint (the trading name of Modaxo Traffic Management UK Ltd), as they are now called, supply the parking back office’s system for processing Penalty Charge Notices permits and other aspects of that work. They are currently in a 10-year contract with Croydon Council.
Read more: Council’s healthy school streets have no ANPR protections
Read more: Council boss admits road fine ANPR cameras not switched on
Read more: Director admits £12m sums on ANPR fines don’t add up
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Is this an example of the “War on Motorists” not actually being real?
Under Croydon Labour, our council paid for cameras that didn’t work, did a deal for digital bus shelters with a company that was a sham and set up a housing company that couldn’t sell, legally or practically, the shoddy homes it built.
The people responsible for this omnishambles have never been held to account by anyone. They got paid off, left of their own accord and went into retirement or, incredibly, found employment elsewhere
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The local government gravy train continues on its journey……..
a) Conduent’s reward for the failure of the ANPR contract was another cosy 10-year contract from Croydon Council.
b) Steve Iles’ reward for being so useless that even Croydon Council forced him to take early retirement (probably on an eye-watering council pension that means that Croydon council tax payers will be continuing to pay him for many more years?) is to take the infamous LG gravy train to Swindon and start to fleece them for more money to supplement his Croydon pension.
Twas ever thus…………!