An LGA panel calls Ealing Council confident and well run, with 73% of its action plan done. It also flags scrutiny, homelessness oversight and the basics.

A panel of council leaders sent by the Local Government Association has found Ealing Council is still “a confident, well-run organisation with a clear sense of direction”. But its report also says the council has more to do on scrutiny, on its homelessness service and on “getting the basics right” for residents.

The council published the report on 30 October. It is a follow-up to a full Corporate Peer Challenge held over four days in May 2025. The panel returned for one day, on 2 July 2026, to check progress. The 14-page report is the source for everything below unless we say otherwise.

What the panel found

The 2025 review made nine recommendations. The council turned them into an action plan with 30 actions. The council reports that 73 per cent of those actions are complete, and the panel says positive progress is being made on the rest.

The panel praised:

  • the council’s “Connected Communities” approach, which it says runs through all of the council’s work
  • the staff training programme behind it
  • Your Voice, Your Town, the scheme that hands small grants to town teams
  • a new board that brings together finance leads from every directorate to look for savings
  • a new Digital, Data and Technology plan, including the rollout of AI licences to staff

It also noted the council’s regulator rating for its housing. The Regulator of Social Housing gave Ealing a C2 grade in November 2025, after the council referred itself over potential building safety breaches. The report explains that C2 means some weaknesses were found and further improvement is needed.

One figure differs from the council’s announcement

The council’s news release said “more than 80%” of staff had now completed the foundation training. The panel’s report says 72 per cent had. The release does not say where the higher figure comes from. The report reflects the position at the July visit, and the release was issued four months later, so the number may have risen since.

What the panel said needs more work

The report is polite, as these reports always are. But it names several gaps:

  • Scrutiny. The council has rewritten its overview and scrutiny rules since the May 2026 election. The panel says its original recommendation was “broader in scope”. Some councillors told reviewers there was still room to develop scrutiny further. The panel suggests a wider review.
  • Working with opposition groups. A protocol on briefing opposition councillors was written and shared in summer 2025. But “the councillors we met with during the Progress Review were not aware of the protocol or the work undertaken to develop it.”
  • Homelessness. An independent review of the homelessness service found a need to strengthen governance, risk management and record keeping. The panel says the council must keep implementing it to tackle “ongoing demand and expenditure pressures”.
  • Day-to-day services. The council must “continue to get the basics right for residents in relation to day-to-day service delivery”.
  • Partners. Community groups said experiences “can still be variable across the broad range of council services”.

The money behind “well run”

The panel says Ealing closed 2025/26 with an underspend of £0.7m, after putting a budgeted £3.5m into reserves. It adds that the underspend “masked significant service demand challenges” in adult social care, children’s social care and homelessness.

It also records that the council is getting about £60m of extra money over three years, 2026/27 to 2028/29, from the government’s Fair Funding Review. The 2026/27 budget included £4.5m of savings.

Those pressures have grown since the July visit. The council’s own mid-year figures, going to Cabinet on 4 November, forecast that services will overspend by about £19m this year, with adult social care alone £14.2m over. Most of that is covered by one-off corporate money. We reported the detail in Ealing Council budget: £14.2m adult care overspend at Q2.

Who was on the panel

The panel was:

  • Althea Loderick, chief executive of Southwark Council
  • Peter Marland, former leader of Milton Keynes City Council (online)
  • Councillor Emily Davey, housing portfolio holder at Kingston Council
  • Becky McIntyre, director of resources and transformation at Calderdale Council
  • James Winterbottom, director of strategy and innovation at Wigan Council
  • Cindy Lowthian, peer challenge manager at the LGA

What the council said

Council leader Peter Mason said in the council’s release: “There is more to do, but it’s positive that leaders in local government have endorsed Ealing’s approach to changing lives, and believe that others can learn from it.”

What it means for you

A peer challenge is not an inspection. The council invites it, the panel is made up of people from other councils, and nothing in it is binding. It is still one of the few outside views of how the council is run.

If you want to see how the scrutiny side works, the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings are open to the public and webcast. That committee heard the call-in of the Greener Ealing contract extension on 22 October.

For temporary housing, see our report on Ealing’s temporary accommodation placement policy. For small grants for your area, the current Your Voice, Your Town round closes at 1pm on 3 December.

Sources