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.
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.
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.
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.
The ANPR Camera Failure: A Timeline
- March 2022: Croydon Council signs a contract with Conduent to supply 100 ANPR cameras for school street enforcement.
- May 2023: It is revealed that the cameras are incompatible with UK number plates and are not working.
- August 2023: Conduent repays £3.25 million to Croydon Council.
- Present: Conduent (now trading as Trellint) continues to work with Croydon Council, providing parking back-office systems.
What Happens Next?
Despite the refund, the failed ANPR scheme raises serious questions about Croydon Council's procurement practices and oversight of contracts. The council has yet to announce what steps it will take to ensure similar failures don't occur in the future. With the council facing ongoing financial challenges, it is crucial that lessons are learned from this costly mistake.
The council has also yet to explain how it will recoup the estimated £16 million it lost from the failed scheme. It is likely that residents will be asked to contribute through increased council taxes or cuts to other services. The public deserves a clear explanation of how the council intends to address this financial shortfall.
