Tesco, PPCs and profits to charity

usignuolo

I am very intrigued by the view being circulated on an earlier thread, that Tesco gives "all the profits raised from charges in its car parks to charity". This raises a lot of questions which I think makes it worth its own thread.

First of all on the sign posted up by Premier, in the earlier Tesco related thread, it says the profits from CP charges will be donated to Tesco's charity of the year. Premier said that sign was in a car park which Tesco managed themselves.

There is some dispute about which Tesco car parks are actually self managed (apart from the free all the time ones) as further queries to the help line shown, and comments on correspondence from Tesco, sugggest that Tesco car parks are run by outside PPCs on behalf of Tesco.

But let us assume there are in fact some car parks self managed by Tesco who run the penalty charge side of this. Then Tesco must have a central department running the penalty side and accounting for penalties so that they can donate the profit after costs to to charity.

Pretty straightforward I agree.

But what about the PPCs? Someone here has spoken to Tesco parking help line and reported back that where PPCs are used by Tesco, they are paid a fixed management fee up front and all revenue raised from the car park fees after deduction of costs, is donated to Tesco's chosen charity. If parking is free for the first two hours, this must be profit from all penalty charges (or whatever you want to call them).

OK let's examine that a bit further. How does it work? The PPC bids to run a car park and Tesco choses the lowest bid. Let us say it is a largeish car park and the winning bid is £70,000 fee to cover cost of man with van monitoring customers and photographing overstayers, plus share of someone in the back office at the PPC. This will be paid out of the penalty fees. There will probably be some flexibility in this management fee, maybe a sliding scale when the number of penalty notices goes over a threshhold, as more penalty charges = higher admin costs at PPC.

PPC then moves in, sets up employee at Tesco car park, assigns HO employee to chase up penalties, monitors traffic and sends out penalty fines to over stayers.

At year end, PPC sends Tesco a statement showing, I guess, fixed management fee as agreed PLUS any agreed extra costs involved in administering penalty fines (say another £30,000) with balance available to be donated, by the PPC to Tesco's chosen charity directly.
Or maybe the PPC hands over a cheque to Tesco at the end of the year and Tesco hands it on to its chosen charity, probably being Tesco, after deducing the cost of running its parking helpline.

So balance in my example would be profit = revenue from penalties less (£70,000 +£30,000).

In either case how much auditing takes place by Tesco of the figures provided by the PPC to back up their charges?

Finally let us consider some figures. There are around 2200 Tesco stores in the UK. Of these the largest, Tesco Extra, Homeplus and Superstores there are around 700.

How many of these have parking restrictions with fines for overstaying?
How many are managed by Tesco, how many by PPCs and what is likely turnover and profit from penalty charges? How does this compare to Tesco's annual donation to charity?

Coupon-mad

These are questions that I would like to know the answer to as well.

I am not sure that contact from individuals to the Charities Commission, based on suppositions, would be taken seriously?

So I think I will start by copying biscuitdunker's lead and email Tesco's charity (Muscular Dystrophy) to point out the concerns about this arrangement - not least because the car park sign in question uses the Charity's name to coerce people to pay an unenforceable demand.

I wonder if the Charity just thinks that they are getting the profits from 'ordinary' £1 per hour-type of car park charges rather than from the extortionate demands, with illegal and misleading theats, which are the reality.

usignuolo

Below is what it says on Tesco website about its charity support. No mention here of proceeds from car park penalties, indeed the indication is that the money comes from fund raising efforts by local store and staff. Or maybe the "Tesco Charity Trust" then add part of the car park penalties as their contribution to the fundraising. It would be interesting to know more.

"Since 1988, Tesco has chosen a different charity every year to be the focus for staff fundraising. The Tesco Charity Trust then adds 20% to all staff fundraising.

The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign is Tesco Charity of the Year 2009.

Tesco and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign hope to raise £2 million to fund vital specialist equipment for children with muscular dystrophy
and related muscle diseases across the UK.

The Tesco and Muscular Dystrophy Charity of the Year partnership theme is Giving children equipment to be independent.

The money raised by each Tesco store, distribution centre and office will be spent on children with muscular dystrophy who live locally."

usignuolo

Just found this article which appeared in 2008 in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph

Tesco, a supermarket chain which boasts of its low prices nearly ended up charging some drivers £20 a time in a car park wrangle.

Tesco, had put up notices in the car park around its new Werrington Centre store telling parkers their maximum stay was two hours - otherwise they could be ticketed and fined £20, which would go to the Tesco Charitable Trust.

Werrington Neighbourhood Council spokesman David Hedges spotted the signs when he arrived at the centre on Friday to set up for a public meeting on proposed new retail and housing developments in the area. He said: "There were over 25 of them dotted about the carpark, basically on every lamp-post or pillar visible. They had the Tesco name on them and stated that it was a restricted car park."

The signs were removed prior to the arrival of 200 people for the public meeting - held at Ken Stimpson Community School - at which plans for the redevelopment of Werrington Centre were put on show for the first time.

In a statement read out at the meeting, centre owners the Howard Property Group (HPG), said: "As owners and landlords of the Werrington Centre, we were made aware this afternoon that Tesco had erected signs in the Werrington Centre car park restricting parking to a maximum of two hours, after which a penalty fee would be charged.

"Tesco had not sought approval from HPG to erect these signs and, as the car park owner, HPG has this afternoon enforced the removal of the signs. The Howard Group would like to apologise for any concern and inconvenience caused to the centre's users."

There are currently 353 parking spaces at the Werrington Centre, of which Tesco, whose store opened on Monday, has 215.

A spokeswoman for HPG added: "As part of a legal agreement with the Howard Group, Tesco, along with other tenants at the centre, has a right to use the centre car park for its customers. For Tesco, this right does not constitute any ownership or authority to manage the car park."

A Tesco spokesman said discussions were ongoing. He said: "We have spaces allocated, which are managed by our landlord, and we have some concerns regarding their use. For instance we know a lot of people use it as long-term car park for car-sharing into the city centre.

"As part of the revitalisation of the centre, we feel it is better for everyone, including the other centre businesses, if genuine shoppers have access to the shops and are not put off by inadequate parking. We will be having these discussions in full partnership with our landlords and we will look into whatever solution presents itself."

Premier_2

Why not contact the [STRIKE]Euro Car Parks[/STRIKE] Tesco parking helpline and ask them?

That's if you really want to know the correct answer, else you will get much speculation and/or misleading responses as per the earlier threads.

Oh, and don't believe just because you get 50 posters/posting accounts all telling you the same thing, it's the right answer

Premier_2

usignuolo wrote: »

Below is what it says on Tesco website about its charity support. No mention here of proceeds from car park penalties, ...

That's because they don't make car park penalties, just car parking charges

Premier_2

Can't the boardguide start merging all these Tesco parking threads, please?

Or should there be a specific sub-forum on Tesco car parking charges? It's getting ridiculous.

(Edit: or maybe MSE should have a sub-forum to discuss me, the interest everyone clearly takes to read the content of my posts )

VoucherMan

Premier wrote: »

Why not contact the Tesco parking helpline and ask them?

That's if you really want to know the correct answer

Tesco aren't that hot in the honesty department so I don't see why phoning their helpline would actually help.
I doubt the people at the helpline would have the answer anyway

Spartacus_Mills

Premier wrote: »

Why not contact the [STRIKE]Euro Car Parks[/STRIKE] Tesco parking helpline and ask them?

That's if you really want to know the correct answer, else you will get much speculation and/or misleading responses as per the earlier threads.

Oh, and don't believe just because you get 50 posters/posting accounts all telling you the same thing, it's the right answer

The same goes for this clown and anything it says.

Be warned.

biscuitdunker

usignuolo wrote: »

"Tesco had not sought approval from HPG to erect these signs and, as the car park owner, HPG has this afternoon enforced the removal of the signs. The Howard Group would like to apologise for any concern and inconvenience caused to the centre's users."

Very sloppy. Makes me remember all the comments from Premier and others about how Tesco would NEVER do anything which wasn't absolutely allowed in law..they're very, very clever people, you know? They have gazillions of lawyers etc etc :rolleyes:

usignuolo

Premier has a touching faith in the information dolled out by the Tesco Help Centre.

In fact as I pointed out in an earlier post, Tesco have form on this, writing to tell the owner of a car who was not driving it at the time of the overstay that as keeper they were legally liable (not true) and then that the "fine" would be transferred to the actual driver (illegal.) Sticking up car parking notices all over the car park at Werrington, as described above, also turned out to be illegal.

So I want rather more verification than the word of a call centre operative. Sorry. But presumably if it is all for charity it should all be above board and available for inspection.

Interesting though if you look at the figures, Tesco staff are hoping to raise £2m for MD this year which includes the Trusts 20% contribution. As I say above, it would be interesting to know what the actual profit is from car parking that goes to the charitable trust.

Its accounts should be on record, maybe I will do so digging on its sources of funds.

Incidentally Premier I can find no evidence that Tesco car parks which are run for "profit" ie with fines, are run direct by Tesco, the existence of a central help number and call centre does not prove this.

Do you have any other proof?