Council Hails ‘Fiercely Competitive’ Parking App Tender After Field of One Bidder Narrowly Beats Nobody
Winning firm 'edged it on price, on quality and on being the only envelope in the room'.
A pay-and-display machine, photographed before the stickers arrived. Photo: Bill Kasman, “Parking pay-and-display machine”, via Wikimedia Commons (geograph.org.uk), CC BY-SA 2.0
PERTH — Perth and Kinross Council has awarded a £305,375 contract to run its cashless parking service after what officials described as “a gruelling, nail-biting procurement process” in which a total of one bid was received.
“It went right down to the wire,” said Procurement Excitement Officer Gordon Laird, 52, still visibly drained. “At one point it was one bid versus no bids. We had to ask ourselves: do we go with the bid, or do we go with the silence? The silence had a lot going for it. It was very cheap. But in the end, the bid just had that extra something. Mainly that it existed.”
The contract, a direct award decided on price, was announced days after fake QR code stickers were again found on ticket machines in South Inch, South Street, Scott Street and other Perth car parks, prompting the council to remind motorists that the official app does not use QR codes and that they should pay “with coins, a card, the app or, in some machines, a strongly worded prayer.”
Motorists say the city’s ticket machines now carry so many stickers, warnings and notices that “the actual machine is mostly theoretical.” One Canal Street regular reported that it took him 25 minutes to find the coin slot, by which time his ticket would have expired, had he managed to buy one.
“I went to pay for an hour,” said Craigie pensioner Isobel Rennie, 74. “There was a sticker saying don’t scan the sticker. Then a sticker saying don’t trust stickers. Then a sticker saying that sticker’s real. I just went home. I’ll get my messages in Dundee.”
The council stressed that card payments, cash and the app all remain available “depending on location”, and that options “are kept under review,” a phrase understood to cover every Perth car park since 1974.
Asked whether the next parking contract might attract two bidders, Laird was cautious. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said. “Two bids would mean comparing things. We’d need a spreadsheet. Possibly a second spreadsheet. We’re not made of spreadsheets.”
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