Opposition Party Leaders in Ealing State Their Case
Set out priorities on tax, housing, social care and potential coalitions
L to R: Cllr Gary Malcolm (Liberal Democrat), Craig Smith ( Ealing Community Independent) and Neil Reynolds (Ealing Green Party)
April 29, 2026
From bin collections and street cleaning to housing and social care, the local elections will have a big impact on how services in Ealing and other London boroughs look after 7 May.
As part of our local election coverage the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has offered every party leader in Ealing the opportunity to sit down for an interview about their priorities and pledges. Councillor Peter Mason, the current Labour Leader of the Council was interviewed and the LDRS laid out his party’s priorities and plans if they retain control, in a separate article.
Challenging Cllr Mason and the Labour group is Craig Smith leading the Ealing Community Independents, Neil Reynolds, Ealing Green Party Chair, and Cllr Gary Malcolm, Leader of the Ealing Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives and Reform were invited, however no response was received.
Craig Smith (Independents) said that some of his party’s key priorities are providing a political alternative, tackling dirty streets and fly-tipping, and improving community involvement in local democracy.
Neil Reynolds (Greens) is expecting a strong showing for the party in Ealing. He said his three main priorities are protecting green spaces, providing a fair opportunity for access to good quality housing, and holding Labour to account.
Cllr Malcolm (Liberal Democrats) will be hoping that the Lib Dems will be able to build on their recent defections and series of by-election wins in this term. We asked what his main priorities are for the borough, and he started with the children’s centres closures, waved through by Labour.
He told the LDRS that he would reverse the closure of all the centres on day one if he becomes council leader. He went on to list better management of council contracts and cleaning up the streets and making them safer, as other priorities.
The Ealing Community Independents will make the case for “council taxes increasing certainly by at least as much as inflation”. However, Mr Smith says “In return for that, we’re going to have a sort of contract with our residents and make sure that they are aware that not only are we not going to cut public services, but that we will start to reinvest in some of the services that have been cut.”
Neil Reynolds, Ealing Greens Chair, told the LDRS that “council taxes will have to continue to rise”. He says this is because of the national government’s “austerity” which he says chokes council funding.
During his interview, Cllr Malcolm (Liberal Democrats) said: “I know Labour have said they will raise taxes, but we wouldn’t.” However, when pushed to clarify if he was promising a council tax freeze he rowed back on this, instead saying he’d like to get more information from officers once running the council before making any “bold predictions”.
Ealing Community Independents have promised to suspend the right to buy, and order compulsory purchases of unoccupied homes for council tenants. When asked how this would be financed, Mr Smith said “by the existing housing budget”, adding: “For many of the promises in our manifesto, including these, we would look to prudently tap the reserves that do exist within Ealing, but primarily those purchases would come through the existing housing budget.”
The LDRS pointed out that the average home costs upwards of £570,000 in Ealing, and asked Mr Smith how the housing budget could finance buying enough homes to tackle the shortage properly. He responded by saying that local money helps, but his party would be “applying regular pressure… to ensure the government is funding the local authority and housing budget properly”.
Mr Reynolds criticised the Labour administration in Ealing for awarding contracts “but not building”. The Green Party advocates for fewer tower blocks and more “moderate density” developments.
When asked how this will ensure enough affordable housing is built, he said Labour’s policy will never work when private companies do not have an interest in reducing housing costs. He added: “The only way you can really affect the quality of housing, the quantity of it, is for the state to start taking a role in building it, and it’s part of Labour’s ideological cowardice that they failed to grasp this nettle. They’re not building homes. They’re approving them, and they’re two very different things.”
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to restrict developments to no more than eight storeys, instead focusing on mid-rise mansion blocks. Cllr Malcolm was asked how he would ensure as council leader that enough affordable housing is built if he is restricting the height of developments, particularly given the surging costs.
He said that his party would focus on lower rise developments spread across the borough. He added: “I would say that if you set out from a negotiation position from the beginning about what is expected then I think once you get those developers in… you would meet with them and say ‘this is how it’s going to operate now’ what they’ll find is they may not have one or two big developments, they may have 20 smaller developments…That [will give] them the confidence that this is what we’re going to do over the next five to 10 years; it will give them the confidence to invest at the beginning.”
The Ealing Community Independents have pledged to scrap charges for up to three bulky waste collections per council tax account per year. When asked how the council would absorb the lost revenue, Mr Smith described it as a “false economy”.
He said, “It’s the reality that if you don’t make these things affordable, if you don’t make it easy for people to dispose of their waste, you’re actually incurring a higher charge because ultimately the council has got to send out vans and teams to go and collect the refuse anyway.”
The Greens do not have a manifesto or a set of costed pledges, despite fielding enough candidates to win a majority on the council. When asked why this is, Mr Reynolds said this is because they are a “volunteer-led” party that hasn’t historically been close to controlling the council – however the party do have a number of “values”, he said.
The Lib Dems have promised to hold ‘mini referenda’ on issues that impact residents’ daily lives such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Cllr Malcolm said some would be advisory to allow the council to get a sense of the local mood on an issue – only some would be binding.
His party has also promised to reverse the council’s Stop and Shop+ parking charges, something he says would cost £200,000. When asked how he would make up the lost revenue he said: “All we would need to do is essentially find £200,000 which we did… one was printing reduction and then the other was having fewer contracted staff.”
Craig Smith told the LDRS that the Ealing Community Independents would not go into coalition with Labour. He said his party’s primary objective is to offer an alternative to Ealing Labour.
Neil Reynolds said “it is clear” that the Greens will have a “very strong election” but admitted that it is hard to predict how many seats they will win. On coalitions, he says he would work with parties that share the values of the Greens “for the benefit of residents”.
Cllr Malcolm says he would not predict whether he will be council leader on May 8, but that he “would hope so” and he is “very confident” the Lib Dems will increase their number of councillors. He says if no party wins a majority he would rather act on a “topic-by-topic” basis instead of a formal coalition, and has ruled out working with any Reform UK councillors.
Philip James Lynch – Local Democracy Reporter
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