Stop profiteering! (petition)

A yearly resident parking permit for my “controlled parking zone”(CPZ) road has just risen to £60, that’s a 41.6% increase from last year’s £35.

The fact that this unjustifiable squeeze of the public comes at a very tight economic time for all makes it all the more loathsome.

But this is not even the bitterest point, the real issue is that we can’t even know the content of the contract between the London Borough of Lewisham and the contractor because it is of course “commercially sensitive”. We can’t know why we’re being asked so much more than last year or whether they can actually impose such an increase. And if they can, why was the contract drafted so badly that there aren’t any guarantees against such arbitrary and exorbitant price increases?

I do think that we’ve been badly served and that there’s a need for something to be done about it, and this is all the more important as we know that a large and increasing number of public services are being outsourced.

It’s all very good to contain Council tax increase but that’s only relatively good news if other public services contracted out by the Council see price increases of 41.6%, an amount that can only be described as obscene.

Let’s ask Lewisham Council to re-tender the contract for CPZ in Lewisham at once and  let’s make this an opportunity for introducing a simple and transparent guarantee against this particular brand of profiteering in public services.

Let’s make it a rule that when a contractor wants to apply a higher than reasonable price increase then he also has to re-apply for the contract.

Council departments running out of money within a financial year need to ask for extra funding and following the same principle the contractor wishing to extract more money out of the public in between contracts should need to justify this as a need, not greed, with the local administration.

Let’s ask that such clause be included in future contracts!

That’s why I’m now asking you to sign this petition:

We the undersigned ask Lewisham Council to rescind the contract with the current CPZ operator because of the sudden and unreasonable 40% price increase imposed to the public in this historical moment when prices of public services ought to be more then ever under control.

We also ask that any future contract between the Council and its contractors include a clause stating that contractors wishing to increase their prices above a certain reasonable amount (amount to be made known to the public) need to re-apply for the contract.

Clic here to sign this petition.

http://www.gopetition.com/online/20424.html

Tags: budgets, Lewisham Council, parking