Monday Musing: Model behaviour the best Contract for managing parking services

Have you heard of the BPA Model Contract? Or to give it it’s full title, the BPA Model Contract for Parking Management and Associated Services. Let’s stick with the former.

The BPA Model Contract has been in general use since 2004 and was developed along with government, local contractors, and service providers. It is endorsed by the Transport Select Committee and included in Statutory Guidance, where the Secretary of State for Transport recommends that ‘enforcement authorities use a balanced Service Level Agreement (SLA), such as the BPA Model Contract.’

Originally, the aim was to create a standard contract designed to assist local authorities and others who appoint service providers, to manage their on-street parking and related services. The benefits of using the Contract include:

• Providing a standard template for the procurement of services.
• Encouraging best practice by ensuring that performance is measured on the quality of the service.
• Easing negotiations for both supplier and service provider.
• Easing the workload of organisations and time spent designing and preparing contracts.

The Model Contract is designed to underpin a partnering and risk sharing approach, as opposed to a client/contractor adversarial approach. This enables improvements in the delivery of products and services, and benefits and improvement savings to be shared throughout the life of the contract.

This approach, along with the associated payment mechanism, incentivises both parties to innovate:  the supplier provides the best possible service in accordance with the specification, thus increasing their revenues accordingly, and the contractor is protected from paying for poor service.

Primarily, the BPA Model Contract is used for Civil Parking Enforcement (CPE) contracts. Following a review, a consultant report confirmed that the Model Contract is in fact a Framework Agreement; this means that it can also be used for services other than parking and indeed, some of the current licensees have used it for their IT or cash collection services.

As well as local government, the BPA has a significant number of members who provide goods and services to the public sector and they too welcome improvements to the contract procurement process.  Recently we responded to a government consultation where we proposed to offer our Model Contract as an exemplar which might be referenced in any best practice guidance produced as part of this work.  

There are currently around 20 licensees actively using the BPA Model Contract and we encourage its take-up across the parking sector.  To find out more visit https://www.britishparking.co.uk/BPA-Model-Contract/25413