{"id":764790,"date":"2026-09-09T07:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/764790\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T07:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:16:14","slug":"e-bike-firm-voi-refuses-to-leave-ealing-after-contract-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/764790\/","title":{"rendered":"E-bike firm Voi refuses to leave Ealing after contract ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">E-bike rental company Voi has vowed to continue operating in a west London borough, despite losing out on a local authority contract to rival providers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Voi began a dockless e-bike trial in Ealing in May 2025, operating alongside Lime. But earlier this year, Ealing Council awarded new contracts to Lime and Forest, expecting Voi to leave the borough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Voi argued it had performed well in the borough and there were no legal grounds to exclude it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ealing Council said contracts were made with Lime and Forest through a local authority Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), &#8220;in line with a majority of London boroughs&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Voi continues to operate in Ealing without paying fees to the council, which are paid by Forest and Lime. Voi also uses e-bike parking spaces meant for the other providers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Voi said it did not agree with the handling of the MoU process at Ealing, accusing it of running a &#8220;mini-procurement&#8221; exercise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The firm said the council made the deal without publishing performance data or clear criteria, which it said was not a robust basis for excluding any operator from the borough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">MoUs &#8211; widely used by councils to draw up agreements with third parties &#8211; typically set out the terms of a deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, they are not legally binding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"E-bike rental company Voi has vowed to continue operating in a west London borough, despite losing out on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}