The bank initially agreed to provide £25m of sponsorship in return for exclusive naming rights until 2015.
In 2011 the Mayor and Transport for London announced the deal had been extended until 2018 in return for a further £25m towards the loss making £225m scheme’s running costs.
Both City Hall and TfL repeatedly credited the bank with pledging “up to £50m” in public statements and evidence before the London Assembly.
However in December it emerged that no contract for the extension had been signed and that the bank’s new management had walked away from negotiations leaving TfL looking for a new sponsor.
Last year a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed the bank had deducted £1.57m from its sponsorship sums as penalty for poor service performance and missed targets for the number of journeys taken.
In response to a new FOI request TfL has confirmed the bank deducted a further £500,000 in the second half of 2013 due to poor usage.
According to official Transport for London and City Hall statistics 1,473,824 fewer people hired bikes in 2013 compared to 2012 – a fall of 15%.
The £2.07m deducted so far means Londoners will receive less than £23m of the £50m City Hall and transport bosses repeatedly credited the bank with paying towards the scheme.
TfL has sought to downplay the significance of the deductions by saying the contract with scheme operator Serco allows it to deduct higher sums from payments to the company than the bank has withheld.
