An investigative piece by City of London resident Gül Bahçeler
For months, residents in and around the Square Mile have been told that the City of London is doing all it reasonably can to manage the chaos caused by dockless bikes. We have been told that enforcement is a question of proportionality, operational feasibility and resourcing. We have been told that officers are acting responsibly. We have been told that legislation has not kept pace.
What we have not been told, until now, is just how little the City is charging the operators who are profiting from our streets.
A recent Freedom of Information response has confirmed that the annual fee paid by each dockless bike operator under the current Memorandum of Understanding is just £31,860. The City also confirms that this figure is purely operational and cost-recovery based.
That is an extraordinary admission.
On any sensible view, £31,860 a year is a pittance when set against the scale of commercial activity these companies are conducting on publicly funded streets and pavements in the City of London. Operators such as Lime and Forest are generating multi-million-pound revenues from a transport model that depends on intensive use of public space. Yet the City appears to have structured its arrangements not around the commercial value being extracted from that public space, but around a narrow internal cost-recovery exercise.
This is why I believe we are no longer simply dealing with a transport nuisance or a public safety issue. We are looking at what increasingly resembles a public accounting scandal.
The problem is not merely that dockless bikes obstruct pavements, block tactile paving, spill into roads and cycle lanes, and create daily frustration and danger for pedestrians. It is that residents and taxpayers are being left to bear the wider cost — in enforcement, complaint handling, officer time, public realm degradation and safety concerns — while private operators continue to benefit disproportionately.
The City’s own response suggests that the current fee was calculated on a highly limited basis. It was not framed as a concession fee, a usage fee, a turnover-based fee, or a charge reflecting the true value of the public infrastructure being exploited. It was simply cost recovery.
That may be administratively convenient, but it is no longer politically or morally defensible.
If a private technology company is able to derive substantial commercial value from the Square Mile, then the public authority entrusted with managing that space should not be charging a token amount and calling it proportionate. Public space is not free raw material for Silicon Valley business models. It belongs to the public, and any arrangement that allows private operators to profit from it should reflect that reality.
The most telling part of the FOI response is that the City now says it is considering alternative models for the next agreement, including turnover-based, usage-based, per-bike and per-journey charging. In other words, even the Corporation appears to recognise that the present structure may no longer be tenable.
That raises an obvious question: if those models are now being considered, why were they not considered before? Why was no proper comparison apparently undertaken with other borough approaches when the current structure was adopted? And why should residents accept yet another narrow cost-recovery formula in July when the underlying issue is one of accountability, value and fairness?
The forthcoming fee review matters enormously. If the Corporation simply replaces one modest administrative charge with another, it will confirm that it still does not understand the scale of the problem. What is needed is not a cosmetic revision, but a complete rethink of how public space is valued, protected and governed.
This issue deserves scrutiny not just from officers and committees, but from residents, journalists and elected representatives. I will certainly be scrutinising it at the next City Question Time, and I hope others will too.
Because the real question is this: why is the City of London allowing private technology companies to benefit so disproportionately from publicly funded infrastructure while residents are left carrying the cost?
EC1 Echo will be closely monitoring the City of London’s fee structure announcement in July.
The City of London Corporation were approached for comment but declined.
Lime were also approached for comment but did not respond.
Lime’s Companies House accounts are available to view here.
A report on Cycling Behaviour in the City of London is available to view here.
