TfL to spend £100m a year on cleaning tubes amid graffiti spat
Commuters will foot an annual £100m bill for cleaning tubes and buses over the next five years, Morning Wire can reveal, with transport officials hoping a new provider will help to wipe out graffiti across the network.
Transport for London (TfL), which is chaired by Mayor Sadiq Khan, revealed it signed a contract with the London-listed procurement firm Mitie Group last week to clean services across the transport network.
Morning Wire understands the total value of the contract, which runs until 2031, is estimated at £500m, with a special team to be created to address graffiti across the fleet of trains and buses.
TfL also spent £67m on cleaning graffiti on tube tracks over three years. The contract also covered pigeon prevention and grease cleaning.
Supplier company Cleshar oversaw specific services for track cleaning. The contract ended in November last year.
Mayor Sadiq Khan and transport bosses will face scrutiny to keep the London Underground and other services cleaner after the pressure group Looking for Growth (LfG)’s campaign for cleaning graffiti on the Bakerloo Line gained attention online and among opposition politicians.
Local campaigners including the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, Rupa Huq, have called attention to graffiti on the Central Line.
TfL commissioner Andy Lord apologised last year for wrongly suggesting that he had evidence of activists creating graffiti and then removing it.
The debacle brought fresh scrutiny over the work of Khan and Lord, upping the stakes for officials to tackle the problem across the transport network amid higher tube fares kicking in from March.
LfG head Lawrence Newport said: “Andy Lord has failed the people of London.
“If City Hall wants to outsource their tube cleaning services to LFG volunteers, we would be happy to clean the tube for a quarter of the price.”
Lord told the London Assembly that TfL was spending up to £11m each year on cracking down on tube graffiti while the BBC reported earlier this year that staff were removing “one tag on average every three minutes”.
He has also urged Londoners not to clean the tube themselves as they could “cause inadvertent damage”.
TfL looks to bring tube cleaning in-house
Khan has also vowed to bring more contracted services in-house amid criticism from the railway union RMT.
The contract with Mitie features a pilot programme to “understand the necessary steps” to embed cleaning services within TfL.
He said the programme would help to “build a fairer and more prosperous London”, with further details around the pilot still to be announced.
Khan has faced questions over public procurement contracts issued by the TfL.
It was announced last year that rail company First Group would run the London Overground in a £3bn deal.
London’s Transport Committee chair Elly Baker, a Labour member of the London Assembly, said Khan should ensure the capital city “keeps pace” with a wider electoral pledge to bring all railways into public ownership.