Council pays firm £600,000 after parking contract U-turn

A Tory council has been forced to pay £600,000 compensation to a firm it axed as its parking contractor after only a few days.

Westminster had to fork out to stave off a costly court action after it awarded a £46 million contract to Mouchel and then swiftly scrapped it.

The fall-out happened after Westminster realised it had failed to follow its own rules when awarding the UK's biggest parking contract to Mouchel last March.

It restarted the process and then decided to reappoint incumbent firm NSL, at a cost of £37.3 million over four years - £9 million less than Mouchel.

Critics said the council had been forced to cut hundreds of jobs after failing to safeguard its "golden egg" parking income, which dropped by almost half over three years to
£30 million.

Opposition Labour leader Paul Dimoldenberg said: "It's the latest in a long catalogue of parking blunders."

The council said taxpayers benefited from a £10 million saving on the previous NSL contract, and that it faced the possibility of a £4 million payout if Mouchel had won in court.