Capita’s C-charge win

Outsourcer lands £355m contract to run a congestion scheme

CAPITA today said it had scooped contracts worth £355 million to run the Congestion Charge and ULEZ lowemissions zone for another five years.

The deal was announced just weeks after Transport for London’s hugely unpopular move to extend the C-charge to weekends and increase it to £15 to secure a Government bailout.

There had been talk last year of TfL taking the contract in-house but it has decided to stick with Capita.

The contracts include a significant increase in the scope of the work for the contractor which is attempting a turnaround under boss Jon Lewis.

It will include an extenstion to Capita’s work on the existing schemes from October 2021 to 2026 and the handling of an extension to ULEZ up to the North and South Circulars, plus running the new Direct Vision Standards scheme to prevent lorries that do not allow drivers a clear sight of bikes and pedestrians from entering the capital.

Capita said the contracts would involve it moving all of its existing services onto the cloud in order to give it more computing power, particularly to handle the ULEZ extension.

In keeping with the various schemes’ aims of reducing traffic coming into London, most of the 900 new staff will be working from home.

Lewis said the new programmes would build on Capita’s existing work with TfL and boost value for its shareholders.

Capita managed the C-charge when it was launched in 2003 until losing the contract to IBM in 2009 and regaining it in 2014.

The company has been fighting for the past two years to get its finances back in order including the raising of £701 million from shareholders to pay down some of its debt pile.

While Covid has had some impact, adding to contract losses to hit its revenues for the second half of the year, it said in June that its cash position remained robust.

Lewis has been trying to focus the business on its higher value tech-heavy consultancy work and contracts such as those announced today.

The Evening Standard last week reported how nearly 15,000 Londoners were being hit with £160 C-charge penalty notices every weekend since it was extended to Saturdays and Sundays. On average, 7289 motorists were caught out for every extra day of charging, bringing in £4 million for TfL in fines in the first fortnight of its operation.