Dispute rumbles on between BPA and London Councils over appeals service debt

An unpaid sum of nearly £200,000 lies at the heart of a dispute over the running of the private land appeals service POPLA. 

London Councils operated POPLA on behalf of the British Parking Association (BPA) from its launch in November 2012 until September 2015. A sum of £198,236.34 represents additional charges set by London Councils in 2013/14 and 2014/15. But the BPA has challenged this, stating last year that London Councils had no legal right to “retrospectively” set the additional charges.

Last October the two sides stated that the matter would be referred to an independent mediator. However, nearly nine months on, a date for the mediation meeting has not been agreed.

A London Councils spokeswoman said: “We continue to pursue the BPA to agree without further delay to the appointment of a mediator and date of mediation for the disputed sums. We will also continue to chase payment of the outstanding invoiced amounts, which are not subject to the mediation process.”

A BPA spokeswoman said: “The BPA was ready last year to progress this issue with London Councils but we understood they did not want to proceed until their accounts were closed in the latter part of the year. The sooner we can resolve the issue now the better for all parties.”

Correspondence between the two sides reveals that the dispute of the charges dates back to June 2014, when London Councils informed the BPA that it had increased its charges. This followed an inspection of London Councils' 2013/14 accounts by Graeme Jones, a member of NoToMob, in July 2013. An external audit suggested that the BPA had not been billed for all of London Councils' administrative time.

London Councils told the BPA that following the audit it had re-calculated its charges for 2013/14 and 2014/15 to ensure that “work for external agencies such as BPA is not being subsidised by the London boroughs in any way”.

London Councils told Parking Review that since the dispute started it had received “further payments from the BPA” and confirmed that the outstanding amount owed for running POPLA now stood at £350,476.68 (including VAT).

Within this is the disputed amount for the additional charges of £198,236.34.

A Debtors Update Report from London Councils, published 1 March 2016, showed the money owed by the BPA for POPLA, as of 31 December 2015, was £713,723.89.

The NoToMob, a campaign group which focusses on parking and traffic enforcement issues, has been tracking the relationship between the BPA and London Councils regarding POPLA for some time. Graeme Jones of the NoToMob says he found “discrepancies in invoicing to the BPA Ltd” when he carried out an inspection of London Councils' accounts in July 2013.

Jones told Parking Review: “We found that London Councils were not recharging all the costs for the POPLA service and this was reported to the external auditor. We are angry that London Councils sought fit to subsidise a service to a private company with London taxpayers' money without sufficient safeguards in place so as to ensure there was no risk to London taxpayers. At the very least monies should have been sought in advance of any service to be provided. London Councils needs, with some expediency, to pursue this matter to the courts to recover London taxpayers' money.”

Jones added: “London Councils has not provided any evidence of any monies paid since this report was issued. However, London Councils and the BPA Ltd have confirmed they are still in dispute over a debt. We warned London Councils in August 2012 of the financial risk to taxpayers of providing this service - a warning that would now seem to be well founded.”