Long Ashton park-and-ride: Firm with no buses 'was paid millions'

The Long Ashton park-and-ride is one of three operating in Bristol

A park-and-ride firm was paid £400,000 a year despite not running any buses since 2010, it has emerged.

The deal for the Long Ashton site made the council look "totally incompetent" and threatened "to turn it into a laughing stock" a Tory councillor said.

John Goulandris said money had been wasted paying the firm Park-and-Ride (PRL) for years after the council was obliged to do so.

The city's transport boss said the subsidy had stopped the service ending.

The site on the outskirts of Bristol was built in 1997 and leased to PRL.

The council subsidised it for the first six years, but after that the service was not profitable and the council ended up running the buses.

Mr Goulandris said: "Local taxpayers will be rightly outraged that we appear to have been paying this company a huge subsidy, amounting to between £5m-£6m, simply on being invoiced for managing the park-and-ride site.

"Whilst I appreciate there is a lot of anguish over the current wholesale review of council expenditure to identify potential savings, this exposé demonstrates that the local authority has been incredibly wasteful - even blasé - over the use of its resources."

Mr Goulandris said there should now be a review "into who agreed such a one-sided bargain".

Peter Mann, the council's director of transport, said if it had not continued with the subsidy after 2002 "there would be no park-and-ride", which he described as "critical to the city".

The authority revealed it had been paying the subsidy for 14 years beyond its contractual obligation, during a budget review.

Officers advised an immediate end to the payments which was passed by council.

Mr Mann said the authority was looking to see if it could reduce costs so the service can continue.

"We need to continue the private dialogue with NCP [which owns PRL]... to come to a sensible conclusion."

NCP said while it was in "active dialogue" with the council "it would be inappropriate to comment any further."

But in a In a letter from NCP's solicitors it said if the council removes the payments "our client would... reconsider the commercial viability of continuing the P&R operation".

Bristol City Council has yet to comment.