Car Park giant NCP owes £4M to Bolton Council – but it won’t have to pay £1.2M of it
NCP has failed to make payments to the council since the pandemic
Bolton Council is to write-off around £1.2M of debt owed to it by parking giants NCP.
Japanese owned National Car Parks Ltd (NCP), operate the council owned multi-storey car parks at the Octagon, Topp Way and Deane Road, as well as surface car parks on Ashburner Street and the Octagon.
Since March 2020, when the first pandemic lockdown was declared, NCP, who also manage the maintenance and cash collection for the on-street pay and display terminals in the borough, has failed to pay the council its contracted monthly payments as part of a 35 year deal signed in 2009. It now owes the authority £4.06M.
Within the contract, there is a requirement for NCP to make payments to the council of £79,398 per month.
A report to Bolton council’s cabinet reads: “During the period March 2020 to present, use of the multi-story car parks was significantly impacted due to national and local Covid-19 restrictions and patronage has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“As a result, NCP have experienced long periods where the car parks have either been closed, or operational but empty and have suffered a significant loss of income.”
In October the council’s cabinet agreed to use Covid support grants paid to it by central government to write off around £1.2M of the debt as NCP could not claim Covid support cash as they were the operators, not the owners, of the car parks.
That decision was ‘called in’ by Coun David Grant and in a subsequent full council debate a majority of councillors supported a motion which demanded the cabinet reject the proposed write off.
The motion said: “It is not financially prudent and not what the public expects of the council at a time of serious financial hardship for residents and local businesses.”
Councillors heard the proposed debt ‘write off’ covering the period 1st March 2020 to 31st March 2023 totalling £940,000 would be funded by a dedicated bad debt provision that has been previously made from covid related funds.
The council said using the covid grant in this way would mean no loss of income to the council.
For 2023/24, the reduction in revenue totaling £293,000 would be treated as a reduction of in-year income, which will be funded by an in-year redirection of
budget. As a result of the call in, the matter was brought back for cabinet decision on Monday and was the subject of an hour long debate before the decision to agree to the write off was made.
Conservative shadow cabinet member Coun Adele Warren said that the write off of debt ‘was not palatable to the residents of the borough’.
She said: “I’ve been contacted by many, many residents regarding this. I’ve heard it said many times now that there will be no loss to the council tax payer as this is coming from Covid money but it does say there will be a £292,000 reduction of council revenue in this year.
“That has got to come from somewhere. That affects spending in this borough.” Bolton Council’s cabinet member for transport, housing and highways, Coun Hamid Khurram, said: “This decision has not been taken lightly, but using a Covid grant to cover NCP’s debts means the council will receive the overwhelming majority of the amount owed to us.
“This central government grant is money that we can only use in situations like this and would otherwise go unspent or potentially returned to the Treasury.
The remaining amount will be managed within our existing budget for this financial year, after which NCP will revert to making a monthly payment in line with pre-pandemic levels.”