Labour-run Ealing Council has strongly rejected claims by the borough’s Liberal Democrats that it has lost £90 million in potential contributions from property developers. The Lib Dems say the shortfall stems from a 15-year delay in adopting a key planning charge.
At the centre of the dispute is the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), introduced by the government in 2010 to allow councils to collect funds from property developers to pay for local infrastructure such as roads, schools and parks.
While most London boroughs adopted CIL years ago, Ealing has yet to implement its own version — a delay the Lib Dems say has cost residents millions in lost income. Ealing Council said its Section 106 agreements have generated over £110 million in financial contributions and that it is now looking to implement CIL.
Ealing Council told EALING.NEWS that it is holding its Community Infrastructure Levy Examination in Public (EiP) today (5 August 2025). If the draft schedule is approved, the council says it will be able to formally adopt it and begin collecting CIL from potential property developers in due course.
Liberal Democrat councillor Gary Busuttil, spokesperson for finance and council honesty, accused the council of “negligence”, claiming the missing funds could have helped freeze council tax, boost spending on street cleaning and rubbish collection, or deliver more affordable housing. He said: “They are unable to prioritise and manage budgets for all the residents of the borough.”
The Lib Dems argue that the missed revenue could have helped avoid this year’s 5% council tax rise, funded services such as rubbish collection — which they say have seen budget cuts — and enabled the construction of additional social housing.
But Ealing Council has firmly rebuffed the allegations, calling the £90m figure “over-simplistic”, based on a flawed understanding of how developer contributions work and lacking transparency over how the Lib Dems arrived at the total.
Speaking to EALING.NEWS, an Ealing Council spokesperson said: “Instead of using the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), we have used another method called Section 106 agreements to secure over £110 million in financial contributions and thousands of affordable homes over the past 15 years, funding vital infrastructure projects that support new developments, in line with what CIL would have allowed.”
The council added that Section 106 and CIL are complementary, not competing, — and that its decision not to adopt CIL in 2016 was driven by concerns about the impact on affordable housing delivery, a position that has now changed. If approved, the council’s CIL charging schedule will provide a formal mechanism for collecting infrastructure contributions from potential property developers going forward.
