Ealing Council has rejected a call from the Liberal Democrats to review the decision to approve a five-year contract extension for its council-owned waste collection company, Greener Ealing (GEL). The Labour Cabinet made the decision on October 7, extending the contractual relationship to 15 years. The Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which has a Labour majority, voted to reject the call-in on Thursday, October 22, upholding the original Cabinet decision.
Opposition Raises Concerns Over Non-Competitive Tender
The call-in was presented on behalf of 18 requisitioning councillors across political groups. They argued that bypassing an open competitive market tender for a £150 million contract extension was disproportionate and lacked sufficient transparency. The Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Finance, Councillor Jonathan Oxley, said the decision lacked a competitive tendering process and cited ongoing concerns about service quality.
The call-in submission asserted that Cabinet relied too heavily on the conclusions of the independent Ealing Shadow Bid and Value Assessment, prepared in June 2026, which evaluated historical performance and reduced complaint volumes as primary evidence of strong delivery.
Councillor Highlights Missed Assisted Collections
Cllr Oxley said: “The administration is proposing to extend Greener Ealing's contract until 2035. It is highly unusual for an extension of this size, circa £350 million (whole-life value), to be non-competitive, and this alone warrants further scrutiny.”
He pointed to performance inconsistencies across the borough and ongoing failures regarding vulnerable residents. He said: “The target for missed assisted collections for disabled and elderly residents is zero, yet GEL has persistently missed that target since 2020, disproportionately impacting vulnerable residents. None of us should be content with this.”
He added: “This is not an ideological debate... we don't object in principle to services being delivered by a local authority-owned company like GEL, provided it performs well and it offers value for money. Unfortunately, GEL's performance is distinctly average, and that is simply not good enough for our borough.”
Cabinet Member Defends Process and Performance
Cllr Dominic Moffit, the Cabinet Member for Climate Action, pushed back against the assertions. He told the committee that it was not an “uncompetitive process”, claiming a full tendering process would have cost £120,000, not £12,000.
He added: “As a local authority-owned company, a decision to extend the contract by the council does not need to go through any kind of procurement process. The financial advice from the independent adjudicator was that we had taken the most appropriate course of action…
“In the last couple of years, there have been between eight and 10 missed assisted collections. There are 3,000 in the borough every week, every fortnight - that's 0.3 per cent of those collections that are being missed. While the target is zero because we absolutely want to make sure we get all of those done, I don't think we should think that this represents some enormous egregious failure of service delivery to some of our most vulnerable residents, who are actually well looked after by GEL across the borough.”
After hearing all arguments, the committee voted to reject the call-in, ultimately upholding the original Cabinet decision.
