Evenin’ all: Kingdom staff pose with Sutton CEO Helen Bailey (second left). Sutton has been collecting 10% of fines issued by Kingdom since April last year
INSIDE SUTTON: Discussion about the private ‘bounty hunters’ patrolling the borough’s streets has been blocked, while evidence has been discovered that council staff may have misled opposition councillors over Kingdom’s latest contract. EXCLUSIVE by DAVE BURTON
Sutton Council has been making money from the High Street fines being issued by controversial “bounty hunters” working for a private security firm – and senior council staff misled councillors over the arrangements.
A council committee meeting earlier this month descended into farce when Christopher Woolmer, the Liberal Democrat councillor chairing the meeting, refused to allow any discussion about the deal with Kingdom LA Services.
Inside Sutton reported earlier this month serious allegations of misconduct by staff from Kingdom, the private security company which provides “environmental protection officers” who hand out fines for often petty littering offences on Sutton High Street.
Kingdom staff, dressed in police-style uniforms, patrol the borough’s high streets and shopping areas, and have been given powers by the council to issue fines of up to £150 via Fixed Penalty Notices.
But Sutton residents have complained of being stalked, subjected to racial profiling or age profiling, and even accused of criminal offences they claim they did not commit.
No discussion: LibDem councillor Christopher Woolmer
Further accusations have emerged of officers unlawfully demanding to search people’s bags, and following people to their homes to try to issue fines.
Sutton’s environment and sustainable travel committee met 10 days ago, when Councillor Woolmer repeatedly dismissed attempts by opposition councillors to discuss Kingdom, their staff’s conduct and the financial arrangements with the council.
Woolmer was backed up by senior council staffer Spencer Palmer, the council’s “strategic director of environment, housing and neighbourhoods”, so effectively the council executive responsible for welcoming Kingdom on to the streets of Sutton.
“At times, it seemed as if Palmer, the council official, was chairing the committee,” one observer noted.
Woolmer and Palmer had already denied requests from opposition councillors for an urgent agenda item about Kingdom. Instead, Woolmer started the meeting by making his own statement.
In the hotseat: although only a member of council staff, it seemed at times that Spencer Palmer was running the committee meeting
Woolmer explained that he had refused a request from Councillor James McDermott-Hill, the Conservatives’ lead on environment, to make a statement because, “I do not believe it is necessary or appropriate”.
Woolmer told the meeting: “It would not be appropriate for a council committee to be involved in investigating matters concerning individual officers’ behaviour.”
Which does sort of prompt the question: so when would it be “appropriate”?
According to McDermott-Hill, he had in any case not wanted to raise the troubling matter of Kingdom staff’s behaviour and their dodgy fines, but wanted to discuss the council’s contract with the firm and to propose an investigation outside the committee.
The three Tory councillors on the committee, McDermott-Hill, Tony Shields and Steve Alvarez, together with independent councillor Nick Mattey, made their disquiet with Woolmer and Palmer quite clear. McDermott-Hill said he would be complaining about the meeting being “unconstitutional”.
It appears that Palmer and council staff are increasingly concerned about a council service going badly wrong, and how a new revenue-sharing contract proposal was approved by the same committee last July.
Since 2021, Kingdom had had a pilot contract with Sutton on a “cost neutral” basis, where the private security firm kept all the money from fines issued, with no cost to the council.
That contract ended last month. But Kingdom had already negotiated a new three-year, revenue-sharing agreement with Sutton. The council now receives a percentage of all fines issued, so profiting from littering and fly-tipping fines.
Bounty hunters: Sutton had claimed there is no incentives for issuing fines
That deal was passed by the environment committee last July. But it has now emerged that Sutton had already agreed a 10% revenue share deal with Kingdom three months earlier, in March 2024, despite the existing contract not requiring Kingdom to surrender any of their revenue to the council.
Kingdom inadvertently revealed this important detail to Councillor Alvarez when he was helping a resident who claimed he was unfairly fined.
The pre-existing deal with Kingdom was not mentioned in any of the committee papers in July, nor mentioned at the meeting.
While the facts seem to have been withheld from councillors, council staff have since claimed that the contract variation was “detailed” – they mean written – in a single line in a huge report to the budget council last March.
That line read: “Environment: Waste and street cleansing – review current contract arrangement and introduce further environmental enforcement (35)”.
There’s no mention of Kingdom, of the fines, dodgy or otherwise, or revenue sharing. Besides, Kingdom does not operate under the waste and street cleansing portfolio. The indication was that £35,000 would be saved as a result.
It’s a bit of a stretch to claim this single, opaque line buried deep in the council’s 2024-2025 budget was in any way informing councillors of the proposed contract change. It also suggests the committee’s July decision to agree the procurement of a “new” revenue-sharing agreement was based on incomplete and inaccurate information.
They were warned: a report to the committee admitted that sending bounty hunters on to the streets would create problems
The email to members of the environment committee also threw up other very serious problems. Officials claimed that the new arrangement ran for just nine months, from April to December 2024. Predicted income of £35,000 was now baked-in to the council’s budgets for this financial year.
Inside Sutton can now reveal, based on the council’s own figures, that that revenue target was missed by 70%.
Just £9,686 was received by Sutton for the first eight months (April to November).
This serious shortfall in income will have been noticeable by the time the committee met in July – but council officials compounded their errors by now presenting figures to committee members to justify the new contract with Kingdom which were demonstrable nonsense.
The concealment of the “secret” deal with Kingdom by council officials also took place in March and again in October – further meetings of the environment committee when Palmer and his staff failed to raise the matter of the failing revenue-sharing deal.
To make matters even worse, the council’s figures just don’t add up.
Only 70% of fines issued by Kingdom ever get paid. If the Council expected a revenue of £35,000 in nine months, this would indicate an annual income of around £47,000. At 10% of fines issued by Kingdom, this suggests that they might expect total annual fines of £470,000.
The hard facts show a significantly different picture. Over the last financial year, Kingdom has issued around 2,100 fines – less than half the number of fines needed to generate the kind of income Palmer and his council staff had promised.
The committee papers in July also noted that the revenue-sharing proposal “may result in increased scrutiny regarding incentivisation for the council and its contractor to issue more and higher fines in order to maximise income.
“More fines will need to be issued to generate sufficient income.”
Recommendation: revenue-sharing was recommended by council staff in July – when they had already been doing revenue-sharing for more than three months
So the council realised it was unleashing private bounty hunters on the unsuspecting public of Sutton.
“It looks as if Kingdom gave up 10% of its revenue for no reason,” one committee member told Inside Sutton.
“Kingdom would have known the contract was due for reconsideration, so this information should have been provided to committee members. The perception now is that the council accepted income from Kingdom, who may then have had a distinct advantage when the council asked it to quote for a new contract.
“To put the elected members of the committee in this position when voting was totally unacceptable.”
Another councillor said: “The committee now needs to ask serious questions about why we were not told of the income-sharing arrangement, or why its underperformance wasn’t flagged up.”
There is no suggestion that Kingdom have acted improperly in their dealings with Sutton Council. The simple fact is that the committee members cast votes without knowledge that the existing contract had changed.
Sutton Council was expecting a revenue share of around 15% from the new contractor.
But, according to the council’s own figures, with the number of fines issued falling rather than rising, the financial sustainability of the contract looks shot to pieces. Kingdom is a commercial operation, in it for the money, and Sutton wants a cut.
Meanwhile, Woolmer, the committee chair, has promised a “deep dive” into the operation of the Kingdom contract before the March meeting of his environment committee.
Fortunately for people of Sutton, this should be held in public.
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