A west London council has been accused of rewarding a “distinctly average” bin collection service with a £150 million contract extension.

Ealing Council is facing criticism after handing Greener Ealing, the council-owned company responsible for waste collections and street cleaning, an extra five years on its existing deal.

Opposition councillors unsuccessfully attempted to force a rethink of the decision, arguing residents deserve better from a service they say has fallen short.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Jonathan Oxley said the firm’s performance was “simply not good enough”.

Ealing Council

He accused the council of failing to open the contract to competition.

Addressing the overview and scrutiny committee on Thursday, Mr Oxley said the call-in request was backed by 18 cross-party councillors.

He 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 [its value over 15 years], to be non-competitive, and this alone warrants further scrutiny.”

Mr Oxley pointed to performance inconsistencies across the borough, and ongoing failures regarding vulnerable residents.

The firm had “persistently” missed collections at the homes of disabled and elderly residents, he said, despite the contract setting out that there should be no missed collections for people in those categories.

“This is not an ideological debate,” Mr Oxley continued. “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.”

Councillor Dominic Moffit, the Labour cabinet member for climate action, pushed back against the opposition’s criticisms.

LDRS

He told the committee that the decision had not been what opponents called an “uncompetitive process”, claiming a full tendering process would have cost £120,000, not £12,000.

“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,” Mr Moffit explained.

“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% 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 the separate arguments were heard, the committee, which has a Labour majority, voted to reject the call-in, upholding the original cabinet decision.

Council Blasted for Rewarding ‘Distinctly Average’ Bin Service With £150m Contract

A major dispute has erupted in west London after Ealing Council approved a five-year contract extension worth an estimated £150 million for its waste collection and street-cleaning company, Greener Ealing.

The decision has sparked criticism from opposition councillors, who argue that residents should not be expected to accept inconsistent services while the council commits public money to a long-term agreement without a new competitive tender.

At the centre of the controversy is a simple question: should a council-owned company automatically retain a major contract, or should its performance be tested against competing providers before such a significant financial commitment is made?

The Liberal Democrats have argued that the decision risks rewarding a service they describe as “distinctly average”.

However, Labour councillors have defended the arrangement, insisting that the council considered the available evidence and concluded that extending the existing contract was the most appropriate option.

A £150 million decision under scrutiny

Ealing Council’s decision concerns Greener Ealing Limited, a company wholly owned by the local authority that has been responsible for a range of services since taking over from a private contractor in July 2020.

Its responsibilities extend beyond household rubbish collections.

The company also handles recycling, street cleaning, parks and grounds maintenance, graffiti removal, fly-tipping clearance and other local services.

Under the approved extension, Greener Ealing will continue working with the council until July 2035.

Opposition councillors estimate that the five-year extension could be worth approximately £150 million. The broader contractual relationship, including the existing period, has been described as having a potential total value of around £350 million.

The council’s published information has not provided a definitive figure for the extension’s value, meaning the £150 million estimate should be understood as the opposition’s calculation rather than a confirmed final contract price. <Cite refs={[“turn634917search1″,”turn634917search2”]} />

The scale of the commitment has intensified questions about whether the council should have tested the market before deciding who would deliver the services.

For critics, a contract of this size deserves particularly careful examination because the money involved ultimately comes from public resources.

They argue that competition could have helped establish whether another provider might offer lower costs, improved reliability or different approaches to waste collection and street maintenance.

Residents’ complaints become a central issue

The criticism is not limited to the absence of competitive bidding.

Opposition councillors have also raised concerns about the quality and consistency of services across the borough.

One particularly sensitive issue involves assisted collections for elderly and disabled residents who cannot easily move their bins themselves.

These collections are intended to ensure that residents who need additional help can still access essential waste services.

The council’s target for missed assisted collections is zero. Liberal Democrat councillors argue that the company has repeatedly failed to meet this standard since 2020, raising concerns about the impact on vulnerable households. <Cite refs={[“turn634917search2″,”turn634917search4”]} />

For someone who relies on an assisted collection, a missed pickup can be more than a minor inconvenience.

Residents may be unable to move heavy containers to the roadside themselves, leaving rubbish uncollected until the problem is resolved.

Opposition representatives have also pointed to complaints about dirty streets, leaves and fly-tipped rubbish, arguing that these problems should be considered alongside the company’s financial performance.

Their position is that the council should assess not only how much a service costs, but also whether residents consistently receive the standard of service they expect.

They believe a new tender would have offered an opportunity to compare Greener Ealing with alternative providers and establish clearer expectations for future performance.

Labour defends the council-owned company

The council’s Labour administration has rejected the suggestion that extending the contract amounts to rewarding poor performance.

Councillor Dominic Moffitt, the cabinet member responsible for climate action, defended the decision during scrutiny proceedings.

He argued that Greener Ealing performs well against several financial and service measures and that the council had considered an independent assessment before deciding to extend the arrangement.

According to figures cited by the council, Ealing has comparatively low per-resident costs for several services, including waste disposal, recycling, street cleaning and parks maintenance.

A council report published earlier in 2026 also highlighted an increase in Ealing’s recycling rate from 47.6 per cent to 49.5 per cent, placing the borough among London’s higher-performing recycling authorities at the time of the report. <Cite refs={[“turn634917search2″,”turn634917search3”]} />

The administration has also pointed to a substantial reduction in complaints since Greener Ealing replaced the previous private contractor.

Figures discussed during the scrutiny process suggested that complaints had fallen from approximately 3,000 annually under the previous arrangement to fewer than 200 in 2023.

Supporters of the extension say these figures provide evidence that the current model has delivered improvements and that changing contractors could introduce unnecessary expense or disruption.

They also argue that maintaining a council-owned provider gives the local authority a degree of direct influence over the services residents depend on.

The debate over competitive tendering

One of the most contentious aspects of the decision is the choice not to run a new competitive tender.

The Liberal Democrats and Conservative councillors supported a request for the decision to be reconsidered, arguing that the scale and length of the extension justified greater scrutiny.

They questioned whether the financial assessment adequately accounted for future costs, particularly the expense of replacing Greener Ealing’s vehicles as its fleet ages.

Vehicle replacement could involve significant investment, especially as councils face growing pressure to move towards lower-emission transport.

Critics argue that these future costs should be fully examined before a long-term commitment is approved.

They have also raised concerns about the transparency of the financial assessment used to support the extension.

The council’s administration, meanwhile, argued that a full tendering exercise would involve additional expense and could create risks associated with changing providers.

During the scrutiny debate, Moffitt said a full tender could cost more than £100,000, while the council had pursued an alternative assessment of the existing company’s value.

He also maintained that, because Greener Ealing is owned by the council, the decision did not require the same procurement process that would apply to a contract awarded to an external provider. <Cite refs={[“turn634917search0″,”turn634917search3”]} />

The disagreement therefore goes beyond whether the bins are collected on time.

It concerns the balance between maintaining an established public-service arrangement and demonstrating that the chosen approach represents the best available use of taxpayers’ money.

Scrutiny committee rejects the challenge

The controversy reached Ealing Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee on October 22, when councillors considered the opposition’s request to call in the cabinet decision.

The challenge was intended to give the committee an opportunity to examine the decision and consider whether it should be sent back to the cabinet for reconsideration.

After hearing arguments from both sides, the committee voted against the call-in.

That outcome left the original decision in place, allowing Greener Ealing’s contract to continue towards the July 2035 end date. <Cite refs={[“turn634917search1″,”turn634917search4”]} />

The result did not end the wider debate about service quality or the use of public money.

Instead, it left the council facing the challenge of demonstrating that the long-term arrangement delivers dependable services and represents value for residents.

For households across Ealing, the immediate practical effect is limited: their collection arrangements are not being replaced as a result of the scrutiny decision.

However, the agreement will shape how waste collection, street cleaning and related services are managed over the coming years.

What happens next?

The council will now need to ensure that the extension delivers the results its administration says it expects.

Residents will continue to judge the service through everyday experiences: whether bins are collected when scheduled, whether recycling is handled properly, whether streets remain clean and whether missed collections are resolved promptly.

For vulnerable residents, reliable assisted collections will remain an especially important measure of performance.

The opposition is likely to continue questioning whether the council should have sought competitive bids and whether future vehicle costs have been adequately accounted for.

The administration, by contrast, will need to demonstrate that the savings and service improvements it cites translate into tangible benefits for the borough.

Ultimately, neither the size of a contract nor the ownership of a company guarantees that residents will receive good service.

The important questions are whether standards are clearly defined, whether performance is measured transparently and whether the council can show that public money is being spent effectively.

Ealing’s decision has settled who will provide these services for the next several years. It has not settled the argument over whether the arrangement represents the best possible deal.

For residents, the real test will be what happens on their streets and at their front doors long after the political dispute has faded from the headlines.