Ealing's new road and pavement contracts start on 1 April 2027, seven months later than Cabinet approved. Bids close 30 October, and price is 70% of the score.
Ealing Council has put the job of fixing the borough’s roads and pavements out to tender. The contract is worth up to £140m, and it will decide who fills Ealing’s potholes until at least 2032.
The tender notice went on to Find a Tender on the evening of 11 September. It is the council’s Highways Works Term Contract, reference 23261HE, run as an open procedure under the Procurement Act 2023.
There is one date in it that does not match the council’s own record. Cabinet was told the new contracts would begin on 1 September 2026. The notice says they will begin on 1 April 2027.
What the money buys
The work is split into two lots of £70m each, excluding VAT. Including VAT, the notice values the whole thing at £168m.
Lot 1 is Highway Maintenance Works. The notice describes it as reactive, routine and planned maintenance, covering:
- pothole and footway repairs
- gully cleansing
- road markings
- crossover construction, the dropped kerbs for driveways
- minor works to highway structures
- emergency call outs
- winter maintenance, which is the gritting run
- standalone resurfacing and repaving programmes
Lot 2 is Highway and Civil Improvements. That is the schemes rather than the repairs:
- new or upgraded footways
- cycle infrastructure
- bus priority measures
- junction improvements and safety schemes
- sustainable drainage, the kind used to hold back surface water
- traffic calming
- resurfacing where it forms part of a wider capital scheme
Bidders can win one lot or both. The council has marked both lots as suitable for small and medium-sized firms.
Price is worth 70 per cent
For both lots, the notice sets out the same scoring:
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Price | 70% |
| Method statements | 20% |
| Social value | 10% |
That is a heavily price-led award, and it is deliberate. When Cabinet approved the procurement on 11 June 2025, the report by Tony Singh, the council’s Chief Highway Engineer, said a longer contract was chosen precisely to drive rates down. A framework was considered and dropped, because the Procurement Act 2023 caps frameworks at four years and officers judged that “the rates for this shorter duration would be less competitive”.
The seven-month gap in the record
The same Cabinet report, and the minute of the decision, set out a clear timetable.
The council has held two highways contracts with a single supplier, Murrill Construction Limited, since 1 September 2017. Cabinet agreed on 11 June 2025 to extend both of them by five months, to 31 August 2026. It agreed on the same day to procure replacements starting 1 September 2026, running five years to 31 August 2031.
None of that happened on time:
- the approved extension of the existing contracts ran out on 31 August 2026
- the tender notice was published 11 days later, on 11 September 2026
- the new contracts are now dated to start on 1 April 2027, seven months later than Cabinet agreed
- they now run to 31 March 2032, with two possible one-year extensions taking them to 31 March 2034
The council’s decisions register for this issue records no further decision after 11 June 2025, and the tender notice does not say what arrangement covers the borough’s roads between last September and April 2027. That is a question for the council rather than an answer we can give from the record.
It matters because officers set out the risk themselves. The report told Cabinet that failing to have contracts in place “would likely mean the council’s highway infrastructure would not be maintained to an adequate standard, creating public safety issues and increasing the liability facing the council from insurance claims for damage and injury”. The highway is the largest asset the council owns, and keeping it in repair is a statutory duty under section 41 of the Highways Act 1980.
What Ealing currently spends
The Cabinet report published the approved spend for 2025/26, which officers offered as a typical year.
Highway maintenance came to £8.279m: £2.029m on reactive repairs and £6.250m on the planned Highways Improvement Programme.
Minor civil engineering came to £6.013m, and almost none of it is the council’s own money. £4.776m came from Transport for London through the Local Implementation Plan, and £1.237m from section 106 contributions paid by developers.
Officers estimated the new contracts at up to £10m each per year, or £100m over five years and £140m over seven. The £140m in last week’s notice is that same figure.
Insourcing the work was examined and rejected. The report said the highways service does not currently do physical construction or repair, so the council would have to recruit supervisors and crews and buy or lease vehicles and plant, none of it budgeted.
Key dates
- 2 October 2026, 5pm: deadline for bidders’ questions
- 30 October 2026, noon: tenders close
- 22 December 2026: award decision expected
- 1 April 2027: contracts start
- 31 March 2032: initial five-year term ends
- 31 March 2034: latest possible end, if both one-year extensions are used
What it means for you
If you report a pothole or a broken paving slab in Ealing this autumn, it is repaired under whatever arrangement is running now, not the contract being tendered. You can still report defects through the council’s roads and pavements pages.
From April 2027, the rates in these bids set what Ealing pays for every pothole, every gully clean and every gritting run for at least five years, and up to seven. A 70 per cent price weighting tends to produce a low headline rate. Whether it also produces repairs that last is what the remaining 30 per cent is supposed to test.
If you run a local contractor, the council has kept the work in two lots rather than one specifically so that smaller firms can bid. Questions close on 2 October and bids on 30 October, both through the council’s e-tendering portal named in the notice.
The Transfer of Undertakings regulations may also apply. The council’s own legal advice to Cabinet was that if the supplier changes, staff currently doing this work in Ealing may have the right to transfer to the new contractor on their existing terms.
We track live closures and diversions on our Ealing roadworks and travel page, and council decisions on our Ealing planning page.
Sources
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