Sharing leads to more jobs and savings

FROM licensing London’s famous black cabs to booking doctors appointments in Devon, winning contracts across the country is bringing jobs to Oldham.

Oldham Council’s partner NSL is mostly known for issuing parking tickets and car-park management.

But the UK’s market leaders in street parking enforcement, which has contracts with Oldham and over 60 local authorities, has seen its services expand since opening in a shared service centre in Chadderton.

A handful of workers were based at the NSL hub when it opened two years ago, but now 70 are on the rota — the majority of them from Oldham. The expansion is a result of new contracts from across the UK, and growth continues.

As well as services processing penalty charge notices and parking contracts, the centre has recently gone live with the NHS Patient Booking Service for the whole of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.

The multipurpose base — which takes 500,000 calls a year — also deals with the licensing of 20,000 Hackney carriages for Transport for London.

Andy White, NSL client account manager at the shared service centre, said: “It clearly shows the hard work this centre is providing to the rest of the country.”

The council has a contract with NSL until 2019.