Wandsworth Council has quietly signed a £775,186 deal to lease 24 new diesel vans, locking in three more years of pollution on the borough’s streets, despite its claims of going green.
The deal, made behind closed doors in May and kept under wraps until Putney.News forced it into the open through a Freedom of Information request, sees the council renew its contract with the same supplier it’s been using since 2019: Lime Square Vehicle Rental Ltd.
The new fleet includes 11 Ford Transits and 13 Renault Traffics, all diesel-powered. They’ll be running through Wandsworth until at least 2028.
What makes things that much worse however is that one of the council’s top priorities in its Climate Action Plan 2024 [pdf] is to switch to low and zero-emission vehicles. Number 3 on its official list is clean transport – but it’s now doubling down on diesel.
No EVs, no competition, no public say
So why did the council ditch electric vehicles? Officers gave a list of reasons: not enough charging points, long delivery waits, uncertainty over their depot’s future, and claims that EVs on offer were “inefficient.” But there’s little evidence they seriously tried to make it work.
There’s also no sign that green criteria such as emissions or carbon impact played any role in choosing the winning bid; just price and convenience.
Even more troubling, the full decision [pdf] was kept secret, labelled “restricted,” and only released after a Freedom of Information request. Even then, it came 42 working days late, more than triple the legal time limit. Whole sections remain blacked out [pdf].
The council won’t say how many companies submitted bids. It won’t publish how the suppliers were scored. And it won’t explain why the same supplier got the deal again.
So much for going green
The decision flies in the face of the council’s own promises. Wandsworth declared a climate emergency back in 2019, swore to become a carbon-neutral council by 2030, and signed onto a low carbon procurement policy last year.
It even claimed it would start replacing diesel vehicles “at the end of life” with electric ones. But when that moment came, it quietly signed off on three more years of diesel and hoped nobody would notice.
Officers blamed the decision on the lack of charging points. But four years after declaring a climate emergency, we have been unable to find a plan to introduce more chargers for council vehicles, details of a new depot or solid plans for investment. If we’re wrong and the council is willing to provide them, please email us at: evchargersnotwords@putney.news.
Wandsworth Council owns and runs a large depot just behind the Wandsworth circular system and backing onto the train tracks close to Wandsworth Town station called Frogmore. In is decision, it references uncertainty about the depot’s future as one reason why it couldn’t move forward with EVs.
There are seemingly no charge points at the depot and the implication is that the council doesn’t want to invest in them if the site is repurposed. But there is no reference to what the council does plan to do instead.
The bigger point of course is that if the council isn’t even ready to electrify its own fleet, how can it ask anyone else to go green?
A done deal with no real competition
Instead of opening up the contract to new bidders, Wandsworth rolled on with its existing supplier, claiming that switching costs would be too high. That means less competition, no price pressure, and no fresh thinking.
Experts warn that extending contracts without retendering can lead to worse value for money, complacency, and poor transparency, especially when the council refuses to say who else was in the running, or how the bids were judged.
Broken promises and a diesel future
This was the first big test of Wandsworth’s green credentials—and the council failed it. Not only did it stick with diesel, it kept the whole thing quiet and dodged scrutiny.
It’s not just disappointing, it’s hypocritical.
Wandsworth is talking green but acting grey.
