02 October 2025
Why the Mayor of London must stop the outsourcing of London Underground’s cleaners If the Mayor does not take control of what his TfL executives are doing, more than 2,000 cleaners who work on London’s iconic Underground will be outsourced once again.
Sadiq’s pledges: In July 2020, during the Covid pandemic, the Mayor told the Transport Select Committee ‘our cleaners have saved lives’. He also pledged to review the contract to see whether it should be insourced: ‘Whenever a contract comes to an end, we always look at whether there is a business case and it offers a better-quality service to bring it in or to continue to tender it. It happens with all our contracts and we will do so with that contract as we do with the others.…You are right to ask the question, and we will look at the contract when it ends to see whether it makes sense to bring it in or not.’ Sadiq Khan, Transport Select Committee, 22 July 2020. His 2021 Manifesto included a pledge that said: “I’ll look, when opportunities arise, to bring services back in house. I’ve already started by bringing the failing Woolwich Ferry back in house. I will instruct TfL to review its cleaning contract with ABM, including an assessment of extending the free travel cleaners receive whilst at work to their journeys to and from work.” In September 2022, the Mayor extended free travel facilities to ABM cleaners among others and asked TfL to ‘look into whether sick pay standards for low-earning workers could be improved, and to ‘conduct work early next year to assess TfL’s ability to bring cleaning services in house.’1
TfL’s prejudiced reviews TfL have been directed to review the contract three times since that date. Each time, RMT has had to raise concerns that the reviews were prejudiced to generate a single outcome. Firstly, TfL executives have delayed conducting reviews until there was pressure to re-tender the contract. Secondly, they have conducted one-sided reviews where the outcome was predetermined and RMT evidence was either ignored or dismissed. RMT believes that TfL senior executives are resolutely opposed to insourcing and have worked to ensure that the reviews have one outcome https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/25/tfl-cleaners-caterers-and-security-staff-to-getfree-transport-in-london 1