Wandsworth’s Conservatives returned to power in May with the thinnest of majorities — one seat, propped up by a single independent. Since then, the borough has gone through a leader’s resignation after just 75 days, a controversial successor with a fraud scandal in his past, suspended scrutiny committees, and a sweeping package of cuts justified by what the council calls a £137 million “financial crisis” — a figure Labour disputes. Here’s what has actually happened in Wandsworth’s difficult first months of Conservative rule, and where the two parties simply don’t agree.

After the May 2022 London boroughs election, only two councils ended up with no overall control: Havering and Croydon, both with the Conservatives the largest party but short of a majority. The picture flipped dramatically after May 2026 with 9 boroughs, the highest number of London councils in no overall control at any point since the current system of local government in the capital was established in 1964. Amongst them was Wandsworth where the situation was particularly tight in our borough

Wandsworth returned the most fragile of hung councils: the Conservatives emerged as the largest party with 29 seats, just one ahead of Labour’s 28, leaving a single independent, Malcolm Grimston, holding the balance of power. Although Grimston (a member of the Conservative Party until 2014) has since signalled that he will back the Tories, had he instead sided with Labour, the vote would have been tied at 29-29, allowing Labour to form an administration thanks to the outgoing Mayor’s casting vote.

The numbers underline just how volatile the new political configuration is. Labour, not the Conservatives, won the larger share of the vote (33.6% with 31.1% for the Tories) meaning the party that lost control of the council actually out-polled the one that now leads it. And the Conservatives’ own vote share has fallen by nearly seven points since 2022, when they lost the borough to Labour outright. A one-seat “majority” depending on the vote of an independent councillor and built on a shrinking vote share is not exactly the mandate for stable government the winning side might wish.

Several resignations and a controversial new leader

Few, however, could have expected the drama that would hit the council less than two months after the new administration took office. On 10 July, Aled Richards-Jones announced that he would step down as Leader of Wandsworth Council, although he would remain a councillor.

Having served as Group Leader for more than two years while in opposition, after three years as Group Whip, the Northcote ward councillor was elected Leader of the Council following the Conservatives’ return to power. Peter Graham, of Wandsworth Common, became Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance.

Richards-Jones justified his departure by pointing to his increasing professional responsibilities following his appointment as a law firm partner, which meant, he said, that he could no longer devote the time the leadership role required, according to a statement published by Wandsworth Conservatives. He explained :

“Over that time, the team into which I was recruited has achieved a level of success that has already outpaced our expectations, and as a result, my professional responsibilities have grown more quickly than expected. It is now clear to me that I can no longer give the role of Leader the time and focus it deserves alongside those responsibilities.”

Balancing his evolving professional workload while serving as a councillor would always have been challenging — let alone while leading a council — and was likely unsustainable in the long term. In his monthly newsletter, Labour Councillor Tony Belton offered a different account, pointing to what may have been a decisive change in circumstances: “He had strong family health reasons to resign.”

But the fragile arithmetic created by the election result also helps explain the timing of the change. Securing a Conservative-led administration depended entirely on winning Malcolm Grimston’s support at the 27 May Annual General Meeting. With those negotiations finely balanced, changing leader midway through the process would have risked derailing them at the worst possible moment. The confidence-and-supply agreement with Grimston was not finalised until the day before the council’s AGM, leaving little scope for an abrupt leadership change.

Richards-Jones also wanted to see two important pieces of work through to the council’s first ordinary meeting on 22 July: the Constitution Review, with its first tranche of reforms due to be presented and approved, and the Spending Review, whose initial findings were due to be published. Staying on until that meeting ensured both were delivered as planned before the handover took place.

Conservative councillors elected their new leader at a group meeting on 16 July 2026, with Robert Morritt, councillor for Thamesfield ward, narrowly defeating his colleague, Daniel Hamilton, to take over as group leader.

The result itself highlighted the divisions within the Conservative group. Former Labour Cabinet Member for Housing, Councillor Aydin Dikerdem commented:

“[The new group leader] won by only a single vote, which kind of show how divided the administration is.”

Morritt’s nomination was a surprise even within the Conservative group and is particularly controversial given his previous history with the party. In 2013, he was expelled from the Wandsworth Conservative group following an internal investigation into missing party funds. The affair involved more than £60,000 in funds, including a £25,000 taxi account, and led to the withdrawal of the Conservative whip. The Wandsworth Guardian reported at the time:

“A Conservative Party source revealed East Putney ward Councillor Robert Morritt had his whip removed after 78% of his fellow Conservative councillors voted to boot him out following a key meeting on Thursday, October 31. An investigation was launched last year examining the alleged financial irregularity while Councillor Morritt was working as an agent for the Wandswort Conservative group.”

Ravi Govindia, still a Conservative councillor today and who was then leader of the Council, confirmed the decision, saying:

“The Conservative group on Wandsworth Council has voted to withdraw the whip from Councillor Robert Morritt. Members had expressed concern about a number of matters that have subsequently come to light, which occurred prior to Robert Morritt became a councillor in 2010.”

Morritt was not a candidate in the following local elections and only returned after being elected again in May 2026.

The appointment has already triggered resignations from the new administration. Cabinet members Tom Pridham and Daniel Hamilton, both councillors for Lavender ward, resigned from their positions in protest. Pridham said he had “profound ethical and professional concerns” about the new leader.

But the chaos is not only within the Tory party. Lizzy Dobres also announced her resignation, both from her role as Labour Deputy Leader and from her seat as a councillor for Trinity ward. According to Tony Belton, it was due to a “politically restricted job in the Civil Service” she applied for. The by-election to be held on 27 August is tricky as only 64 votes separated Labour and Conservatives for the final councillor seat in the ward.

Councillor Richards-Jones noted that his own resignation as Council Leader incurred no cost to the taxpayer, since he remained in his council seat. He drew a contrast with a situation where a councillor resigns their seat entirely shortly after an election — as Dobres did — pointing out that “when a councillor stands down and resigns only 44 or 45 days after an election, there is a cost incurred to the taxpayer of £25,000,” referring to the expense of organising a new vote.

Suspension of democratic scrutiny following the chaos

When he was elected at the council’s Annual Meeting on 27 May, Richards-Jones said:

“My priority is straightforward – a well-run council that delivers for every resident. That means financial responsibility and transparent decision making. That is the foundation for the services residents rely on – like clean streets, safer neighbourhoods, and high-quality housing.

I look forward to setting out the full programme at the Council’s first ordinary meeting in July, and to working constructively with all councillors to deliver it.”

During his first speech, Councillor Aled Richards-Jones announced a “a review into the constitution and the council’s decision-making process so that we can act in a more open, effective, and transparent manner, and that my team can be scrutinized by councillors of all parties and none“.

It was one of the request from Malcolm Grimston for his support. It is clear that he did not appreciate the way he was treated by the former Labour administration, and left no doubt of his feelings in his email to the residents following the election results:

“I have been very disappointed at several moves taken by the last Council to prevent debate and challenge, including stripping Independent councillors of an ancient right to raise matters during Council meetings via what was called an ‘adjournment debate’. It reached a peak during the final Council meeting of the last term when the Labour group, supported by a Labour Mayor, shut a debate down after just three speeches, apparently because they weren’t interested to hear what other councillors had to say.” [Note: to learn more about the Council meeting he is talking about you can refer to the video CJI published and the article associated]

Grimston has also set out a series of conditions the Conservatives must meet to retain his support, warning that failure to honour them will cause him to “withdraw from any arrangement we have come to“:

1. Honesty at all times with residents about the finances (and other matters).
2. Constitutional changes that will protect the rights of all councillors to contribute to debate – including of course the Labour group.
3. A more collaborative atmosphere.

With the chaos that occured during the first 2 months of the new Conservatives’ administration, the least that can be said is that transparency and immediate scrutiny have been delayed.

Overview and Scrutiny Committees (OSCs), sitting alongside the Cabinet, are politically balanced — seats allocated in proportion to each party’s strength on the council as a whole. They’re the forum where councillors from every party can question and challenge decisions, before or after they’re made. Given Wandsworth’s hung result, these committees were always going to carry more weight than usual.

In practice, they didn’t get the chance. At the council’s first Annual Meeting on 27 May — three weeks after the election — the new Conservative administration tabled last-minute papers proposing a wholesale restructuring of the committee system. Labour said they hadn’t been consulted and walked out.

In short, right after the election, the incoming Conservative administration didn’t want to lock in the full six-committee scrutiny structure straight away and “wished to give further consideration to the composition and role“. Rather than leave Wandsworth with no scrutiny function at all while the six specialist committees are suspended and the wider review is carried out, the administration created one temporary, larger, catch-all scrutiny committee to cover the gap (the General Overview and Scrutiny Committee — normally a small, five-member committee — expanded it to 11 members). However, it was a stopgap measure, and it was meant to only last until the next Council meeting on 22 July.

With the Council in turmoil, the July ordinary Council meeting was subsequently renamed a “Special” meeting to elect a new council leader.

A series of constitutional reforms

The “more collaborative atmosphere” wished by Malcolm Grimston might be questionable after the first two full council meetings, but  the Council presented a first series of constitutional reforms aim at making proceedings more open, transparent, and effective.

These changes, presented by Councillor Aled Richards-Jones during the Council meeting,  include enhancing the role of all councillors by allowing them to participate more freely in debates and question sessions, introducing a facility for pairing to allow for absences, and granting the Leader of the Opposition and relevant Opposition speakers the right to attend cabinet meetings and refer items to the full council for debates. The reforms also aim to restore meaningful pre-decision scrutiny to overview and scrutiny committees (OSC), increasing the membership of the main OSC from five to seven members, and introducing “proper cabinet member scrutiny, not just at full council but also at committee itself where the real detail of proposals can be investigated” in addition to the possibility to ask written questions to the cabinet on a rolling basis, not just on full meetings, increasing accountability.

Especially, as it was a point of criticism raised strongly by Grimston, they have abolished the “Guillotine ” system and debates will no longer be cut short by a time limit, allowing for more thorough discussion. All councillors will have greater opportunities to speak and ask questions, reducing the control of party whips.

While acknowledging “a degree of consensus and cooperation in this process on the fact that the current arrangements are not 100% fit for purpose“, the opposition highlighted major disagreement on the remedies, and argued the changes were “minor elements of tinkering” and potentially “unworkable” because too complicated. Labour councillor Jo Rigby, opposition whip, voiced concerns that the changes might not adequately address diversity of voices within the council.

The new cabinet

Following the resignations of Pridham and Hamilton, the cabinet has been reshuffled from the initial appointments made at the 27 May Annual Meeting. Councillor Hedges moved from Health to Opportunity (Pridham’s old brief), while Councillor Ghossain took the now-vacant Health portfolio, and Austin stepped into Transport in Hamilton’s place. The new cabinet numbers nine roles, but only two are held by women (5 in the Labour cabinet out of 8 roles).

The appointment of the wider committee structure has been just as delicate. Conservatives hold 50% of the council (29 seats), Labour 48.26% (28 seats), plus one independent, Malcolm Grimston. By law, committees must reflect this balance.

The “ordinary” committees — Audit, Planning Applications, General Purposes, Standards, Licensing, etc — have been constituted and the general repartition of seats has been allocated by party. Because these only need to balance in aggregate, not committee-by-committee, the council split them 27 Conservative to 25 Labour overall (51.92%/48.07%), close enough to the underlying 50%/48.26% split to satisfy the legal requirement.

N.B. The Conservative Group nominated Councillor Grimston to sit on the General Purposes Committee which is reflected in the official committee structure published by the council.

In the meantime, the Overview and Scrutiny Committees remain unstaffed, pending the promised reconstitution at the July Council meeting. Only chairs and opposition speakers were listed on the council’s website at time of writing — notably, the Children’s and Environment committees are chaired by Labour, as per the commitment announced after the election to give some positions to the Labour group (although creating some confusion currently as the opposition chair is also Labour on the Council’s website)

The axe falls on Labour’s legacy

The full Council meeting on 22 July was partly a stage for the Cabinet Member for Finance, Peter Graham, to present the initial Spending Review. The reshaped Cabinet met the following week to sign off a package of cuts, addressing the financial crisis the Conservatives have been denouncing since taking office. The Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Speaker for Finance were invited to the meeting but were on leave.

Listed in a Cabinet report and passed under emergency powers on 29 July, it may look like a dismantling of many things the previous Labour administration built during its four years in charge. As a symbolic measure, it was decided to stop using the new council logo (which cost over £50,000, according to Councillor Graham) and revert to the borough’s Coat of Arms. However, no replacement will occur on existing signage.

• Read our previous article: With Labour in charge, Wandsworth gets a new logo

The council has decided to scrap three ring-fenced funding pots — Cost of Living, Access for All, and Borough of Sanctuary and the report brought to Cabinet by Peter Graham states plainly that these arrangements were set up under Labour and are “not sustainable” to continue

“These funding arrangements were established to support activities that reflected the priorities of the previous administration. Continuing to fund these through time-limited reserves or separate ringfenced pots is not sustainable in the current financial context.”

The decision therefore affects two very different sources of cost-of-living support, which should not be confused.

The first is the Household Support Fund, a central government grant. This is being replaced nationally by the smaller Crisis and Resilience Fund, reduced by 16.7% to £3.77m, while new rules also prevent councils across England from continuing blanket holiday food vouchers (worth around £2.78m a year in Wandsworth). However the decisions do not lie on the new Tory council as both changes are central government moves that would have hit Wandsworth under Labour too in any case; the shortfall is imposed nationally, not chosen locally. To maintain some support, Wandsworth has replaced the vouchers with a smaller £567k package of holiday clubs, breakfast packs and food pantries.

The second is the council’s own £6.2m Cost of Living Reserve, created by Labour in 2022/23. Unlike the Household Support Fund, this is a local decision: the Conservative administration has chosen to close the reserve and return the money to general reserves, arguing that the previous arrangements were no longer sustainable. £2.08m has been set aside to honour existing commitments for another year, but almost nothing beyond that is protected going forward.

In practice, the new administration is withdrawing Labour’s dedicated ring-fenced pots and moving the money back into general reserves. Future funding for Cost of Living, Access for All and Borough of Sanctuary will depend on whether individual schemes fit the Conservative administration’s priorities. Some cost-of-living support will continue through the nationally funded grant system, while the council has also indicated that a new Access for All scheme is being developed, with details on refugee support expected in September.

The Leader’s Office, a six-person team built to support Labour’s Cabinet, is being disbanded outright. The Delivery Unit, stood up in 2025 to drive Labour’s agenda, is being wound down, though it was always intended to be temporary. And the £90,000-a-year youth bus, introduced in 2023, is being axed, with its equipment repurposed into youth centres.

Then there’s housing — Labour’s flagship achievement in office. Five sites due to deliver new council homes under the 1,000 Homes programme are being scrapped: Fitzhugh Estate, Lennox Estate, Ashburton Estate, Tyneham Close, and Lavender Hill.

Two schemes (Ashburton and Lennox) are being dropped in response to local opposition; the remaining three (Fitzhugh, Tyneham Close, Lavender Hill) on financial viability grounds. The council says cancelling all five avoids around £77 million in future borrowing, against £5.74 million already spent on design work that will now go to waste.

They were included within the 1,000 Homes programme, the flagship housing initiative of Aydin Dikerdem, Labour’s Cabinet Member for Housing since 2022, previously developed mainly to deliver new council-rent housing alongside estate and public realm improvements. Together the sites would have added roughly 253 homes.

• Read our interview: Aydin Dikerdem on council homes, rent control, the funding squeeze and why there is still so much more to do in Wandsworth

The report presented before Cabinet said:

“Proceeding with these five schemes would require significant capital investment and additional borrowing at a time when the Council must focus on strengthening its long-term financial sustainability and reducing financial risk.”

It’s a pointed reversal — the new Conservative administration unwinding a programme built around large-scale direct council house-building, at a moment when it was already under scrutiny for slow delivery and high build costs. An Equality Impact Needs Assessment, covering all of Wandsworth, has been prepared to weigh the fallout: fewer homes for people on the housing register, homeless households, overcrowded families, and disabled residents needing accessible housing — the exact groups the programme was designed to serve.

However, so far the presented measures are only roughly £6m a year in ongoing savings (housing debt servicing avoided, disbanding the Leader’s Office and also the cumulation of other small cuts listed above), with a one-off £4.12m net transfer to reserves from the Cost of Living Reserve closure. This is far short of the tens of millions of pounds needed to close the gap created by the withdrawal of central government funding. Councillor Graham announced that the final outcome of the Spending Review will be presented in September, so further cuts are expected, potentially paving the way for a rise in Council Tax as a last resort.

Most of the actions taken read as a Conservative administration methodically stripping out the institutional and financial scaffolding of the Labour years — not just cutting spending, but cutting Labour‘s spending, function by function.

The opposition highlighted that all those measures were pushed through under emergency powers while all scrutiny committees remained suspended, meaning there was no formal opportunity to debate or challenge them — the very kind of “blocked scrutiny” the Conservatives themselves accused Labour of engineering back in February, when Richards-Jones said “blocking scrutiny doesn’t make these figures disappear; it only proves Labour are more interested in ducking accountability,” according to the London Post media. The Cabinet paper itself all but concedes the gap, promising “a return to pre-decision scrutiny at OSCs from September” — after, not before, the decisions in question were taken.

The two parties do not agree on the reality of the budget crisis

The narrative about the council’s financial crisis was set out by the Conservatives from the moment they took office, when they pointed to a £137 million budget gap in the forecast for Wandsworth’s finances.

The full controversy began with a decision made by central government’s “Fair Funding” review last December, which strips Wandsworth of a large share of its government funding. The council’s grant from central government is being cut by £19m in 2026/27, rising to £79m a year by 2028/29, though the exact baseline for that percentage hasn’t been independently published. Only £7m a year of transitional protection has been offered by government to cushion the loss.

• To understand more about the financial issues, read our article: A financial timebomb: what Wandsworth isn’t saying about council tax

In his foreword to the Spending Review report, Peter Graham states that Wandsworth’s funding has been slashed by 40% and writes:

“This administration inherited the largest government cuts, the largest projected overspending and the largest predicted budget gap in Wandsworth’s history. The Spending Review will take the difficult choices that are necessary to fix the financial crisis at the town hall.”

The paper itself puts the mechanism plainly:

“Wandsworth’s revenue raising power is around a quarter of that calculated by the Government when determining funding levels. Combined with the lower assessment of need, this higher assumed income has left Wandsworth facing the largest cash reduction in funding in the country over the next three years.”

Labour rejects this almost entirely. Simon Hogg, who led the council until May and now leads the opposition, has called the Conservatives’ financial statements “plainly misleading,” pointing out that Wandsworth holds some of the highest reserves and lowest debt of any London borough, and arguing his administration “would have covered the loss of government income through greater efficiency, more growth, smart partnerships and prudent use of reserves” without resorting to what he calls an “austerity approach, cutting frontline services, cancelling investment, firing staff and putting up council tax.” Councillor Hogg concluded:

“This is a financial challenge, not a financial crisis. It does no good for anyone to cry and panic.”

So is it a Whitehall funding trap, as the Conservatives argue, or a crisis that is at least partly a political choice about how to close a gap that didn’t have to be closed this way, as Labour maintains? Either way, the Conservatives have clearly decided to lean hard on the rhetoric of financial crisis to justify a wide-ranging package of cuts and shrinking budgets, that are labelled as “hard choices are required to protect core services and put the Council back on a sustainable footing“.

Over the next four years, much can change. A leadership challenge, a by-election or a defection could all alter the fragile balance of power on the council. For an administration that began with only the narrowest of majorities, political stability cannot be taken for granted.