Judgments
Westminster City Council defeats interim injunction application to halt award of parking enforcement contracts
29/04/10
James Goudie QC and Deok Joo Rhee successfully represented Westminster City Council in resisting an interim application brought by Apcoa (Parking) Ltd to prevent the Council from proceeding to award parking enforcement contracts following a re-run of its procurement exercise. The Council agreed to re-run the process following complaints by Apcoa that the original process had been flawed. In a judgment handed down on 29 April 2010, Mr Justice Eady upheld the arguments advanced on behalf of Westminster that there was no serious issue to be tried in respect of its decision to abandon the original process and to start the process afresh. The fact that Westminster had decided to increase the PPQ threshold on the re-run exercise, with the result that Apcoa was, excluded from the process was not itself a basis for considering there to be a serious issue to be tried.
This judgment confirms the breadth of the right of a contracting authority to abandon a procurement process and to start the process afresh. Even where the decision to abandon is based on an admitted unlawfulness in the process, the authority is not constrained in its ability to design the new procurement afresh.
