Aled Richards-Jones: A financial asteroid is about to hit Wandsworth Council

Cllr Aled Richards-Jones is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Wandsworth Council.

Local government has its various traditions and procedures, which exist for a reason: to ensure transparency, accountability and proper scrutiny of decisions that affect residents’ lives.

Traditionally, the February ‘Special’ Meeting of Wandsworth Council has two agenda items: rent setting for council housing, and the general budget. But this month, Wandsworth Labour made the extraordinary decision to include only the first agenda item and block any discussion on the budget.

You might ask why.

Shortly before Christmas, when attention was more focused on mince pies than municipal finances, the Government published its Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for the next three years.

It immediately confirmed the worst fears of those of us who warned that a Labour Government would punitively rewrite the local government grant formula to transfer more money to their ideological heartlands.

In short, the settlement is a catastrophe for Wandsworth.

The Government is slashing Wandsworth’s funding by 39 per cent

Wandsworth Council faces an annual loss in funding of £85m a year by 2029/30 – roughly 39 per cent of its core spending power.

Worse still, that merely compounds Labour’s local financial mismanagement: the Council’s finances already have a budget gap of £51m a year by that same period – a cumulative £136m a year deficit. On top of that, the Administration is borrowing on its way into a financial crisis: planning to borrow £1.1 billion (at a cost over 50 years of nearly £2.5 billion) is reckless, particularly in these circumstances.

To compensate for the loss of funding, the Government expects the Council to increase council tax by at least 86 per cent.

Cynically, the Government’s model assumes that the punitive increases will start only after May’s local elections. The Government assumes only a five per cent increase this year, rising to 40 per cent in 2027/27, 77 per cent 2028/29, and 86 per cent in 2029/30.

The Council’s total useable reserves (all inherited from the previous Conservative Administration) stand at £166m – not enough to get through more than a year of this. The piggy bank will be smashed, the money will be gone and a decision on catastrophic tax hikes, public service cuts, or both, will need to be taken within the two-year window the Government has conveniently provided.

Labour knows that tax hikes will prove hugely unpopular. That’s why Labour ministers have granted Wandsworth a two-year exemption from the long-standing requirement councils have to hold referenda on council tax increases over five per cent.

It’s only right that councillors of all political persuasions should want to discuss such a dire state of affairs. But Labour shut us down.

When Conservative members raised points of order at the meeting, asking why the budget was missing from the agenda for the first time in living memory, the response was a nonsensical dismissal: procedures had “evolved.”

These procedures haven’t evolved; as I have written about before, procedures have been manipulated or just plain ripped-up, and councillors have been gagged. And once you look at the figures the Administration is hiding, you understand why Labour didn’t want any discussion on the budget.

Wandsworth Labour’s election strategy: deny, distract, and delay

This is not just a funding cut; it is a fundamental rewriting of the contract between resident and Council, orchestrated by Downing Street and silently accepted by Labour’s meek local leadership.

Yet the Administration has still not published these figures. So far, they’ve been provided in a written briefing to councillors by the Executive Director of Finance. If our February meeting had debated budget matters as usual, these figures would have been published in the agenda.

Almost as jaw-dropping as the figures themselves was the revelation in the briefing that the settlement for Wandsworth is actually worse than Council officials had expected. In the days after the 2024 general election, Wandsworth Labour proudly boasted about the “benefits” a Labour government, Labour Mayor of London and local council would bring the area. It’s only right Labour councillors now explain why their lobbying of their own party colleagues in Government resulted in such a bad deal for Wandsworth.

As Conservatives, it’s not only the stifling of debate we have a problem with – it’s the mobilisation of the Council’s press machine to spread untruths. Funded by taxpayer money, residents have been besieged with Facebook ads celebrating Britain’s “lowest council tax”, with not a mention of what the Labour Government expects the Council to do in the coming years.

We’re not backing down – and we refuse to accept Labour’s game playing.

By using the Council meeting to move a technical motion of our own, we managed to force a brief window of debate.

We pointed out that there is not even a sniff of a plan to deal with this £130m black hole. Labour refused to engage with the debate, and would not put up any speakers. The Leader of the Council sat silently, despite being called on to speak.

A clear choice at the election

This meeting laid bare Wandsworth Labour’s electoral strategy for the coming year: simply pretend the Government funding cuts aren’t happening, and hope residents won’t notice until it’s too late.

A financial asteroid is about to hit Wandsworth Council. The combination of a hostile Labour Government slashing our funding by nearly 40 per cent and an incompetent local Labour administration burning through our savings is catastrophic.

The next Wandsworth Council administration will receive the worst financial inheritance of any incoming administration since the Council’s creation.

Before May 2022, Wandsworth Conservatives ran the Council for 44-years, setting the country’s lowest council tax and providing award-winning services. Only Wandsworth Conservatives have the competence to navigate this crisis.

Labour refused to talk about it last night because they have no answers.

But we will not let them pull the wool over residents’ eyes.