Kingston has scrapped the e-bike contracts it awarded to Voi and Forest in June. Neither will be signed, ending plans for up to 500 bikes in the borough.

Kingston Council has scrapped the two e-bike hire contracts it awarded in June. They would have brought a second operator to the borough and roughly doubled the number of shared bikes on its streets.

The decision was never announced. It appears only in a procurement termination notice on the government’s Find a Tender service, published on 26 August. The notice says the council decided on 20 August that neither contract will be signed.

What was cancelled

The council’s Place Committee approved the contracts on 4 June by 11 votes to 1. The contract award notice later named the two winners as Voi Technology UK Ltd and Human Forest Ltd, the company behind the green Forest bikes already in use here.

According to the committee report, the deal would have:

  • run for three years from 6 September 2026, with an option of two more
  • covered Sutton as well as Kingston, with Kingston holding the contracts
  • put 150 to 250 e-bikes per operator in each borough, so 400 to 500 in total
  • earned each borough about £55,000 in its first year, rising to about £90,000 if the fleet doubled
  • added a flat £10,000 a year from each operator to each borough for administration
  • brought money from both operators towards on-street e-bike parking bays, on top of funding offered by Transport for London

Each contract was valued at £3.94m over five years, or £7.88m for the pair. That is money the operators would have paid, not spent by the council. The report says the scheme needed “no funding” from either borough.

Bar chart of shared e-bikes per borough: about 220 under the old Forest contract, against an expected 400 to 500 under the two cancelled contracts
Chart by Kingston Wire. Source: Kingston Council, E-Bike Concession Contract Award report, 4 June 2026.
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The council’s reason

The termination notice gives the same reason for both contracts. It reads:

“The Council’s wider financial landscape and market position has been reviewed, and the requirement as originally designed no longer aligns with the revised commercial position required to deliver this service.”

It adds that the procurement “has been discontinued and no contract will be entered into”, to meet the council’s duty to secure value for money. It calls the decision “an administrative measure taken in the public interest”.

The notice does not say what changed between June and August. It does not say what will replace the contracts either.

The committee report shows the bikes are used a lot. Forest has run Kingston’s scheme since 5 September 2022, under a contract shared with Sutton. Rides were modest in the first year, then tripled in 2024.

In 2025 the scheme averaged 29,000 rides a month in Kingston and 26,000 in Sutton. Forest kept about 220 bikes in each borough. Four companies bid for the new contracts, and all four offered to pay the highest fee per bike the council would accept.

Councillors at the June meeting raised a number of problems. These included bikes blocking pavements, bikes falling over, and bikes left opposite Norbiton station. Officers promised a one-hour deadline for operators to move a badly parked bike, geo-fenced parking zones from launch, and marked bays near stations and town centres. Those bays would need traffic orders first.

Kingston has published nothing on e-bikes since. The topic was not on the Place Committee’s agenda on 23 September. The budget monitoring report to the 24 September Corporate and Resources Committee does not mention it.

What it means for you

  • The contracts that were meant to start on 6 September will not happen. The second operator and the bigger fleet are off for now.
  • Forest’s old contract ran to 5 September 2026. Neither the council nor Forest has said publicly whether it has been extended again. The Forest app shows whether bikes are available where you are.
  • The parking bays promised in June depended partly on money from the two operators. That money came with contracts that will not now be signed.
  • To report a badly parked bike, use the operator’s app. The June report says the new contracts would have set a one-hour removal deadline; the old contract’s terms were not published with it.

We will report what replaces the contracts when the council publishes it, whether that is a new tender, an extension or a committee report.