Ealing Council plans to extend its contract with Greener Ealing Limited for another five years after an independent review found there was not a strong enough case for replacing the council-owned company.
Greener Ealing Limited (GEL), which provides waste collections, street cleaning, grounds maintenance and parking enforcement across the borough, is wholly owned by Labour-run Ealing Council. It was incorporated in August 2019 and began operating in July 2020, when it took over the council’s environmental services from private contractor Amey. In April 2024, it also took over parking enforcement from Serco.
The council’s cabinet will decide on Wednesday (7 October 2026) whether to extend GEL’s current contract by five years to July 2035, following a recommendation from council officers.
The proposed extension follows a review of GEL by Ealing Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee in February 2026.
The report presented to councillors showed Ealing Council had the third-lowest combined waste disposal, recycling and trade waste costs among the London boroughs compared, at £20.47 per resident, while street cleansing costs of £31.22 per resident were the 11th lowest.
It also said the council had the lowest parks and open spaces costs in the benchmarking data. During the meeting, councillors were told Ealing was in the top third of London boroughs for spending on grounds maintenance in parks, although officers said differences in the way costs were accounted for were likely to explain the comparison.
The committee subsequently called for a “thorough value for money assessment” of GEL’s services, particularly those which appeared to have a higher cost per head than other boroughs.
The council commissioned an independent assessment looking at the quality and cost of GEL’s services, their performance and how they compared with other ways of providing them.
It also looked at what it might cost if Ealing Council put the services out to tender instead. The assessment found there was not a strong enough financial or service case for replacing GEL and that any potential benefits of putting the services out to tender were unlikely to outweigh the costs, risks and disruption involved.
A number of documents, including the independent assessment, have not been made public. Ealing Council says they contain information relating to the “financial or business affairs” of the council or others and are being withheld under Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.
EALING.NEWS asked the council for a copy of the independent assessment and, if it could not be provided in full, whether a redacted version or more detailed summary could be made available. We also asked who carried out the assessment, when it was completed and how much it cost. The council did not answer those questions in its response.
An Ealing Council spokesperson told EALING.NEWS: “The council commissioned an independent value-for-money assessment following the recommendation of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee. The assessment looked at the performance and cost of services delivered by Greener Ealing, relevant benchmarking, alternative delivery models and the likely implications of competitively procuring the services.
“It did not find a compelling value-for-money or service case for replacing the existing arrangements and found insufficient evidence that a competitive procurement exercise would deliver benefits sufficient to outweigh the associated costs, disruption and delivery risks.
“Taking that evidence, alongside GEL’s operational performance and the need for longer-term certainty around workforce, fleet and infrastructure investment, officers are recommending that Cabinet extends the contract for five years to July 2035. The decision will be for Cabinet to take at its meeting on 7 October.”
