Wandsworth Council’s new Cabinet meets next week—but no one outside the room knows what it plans to discuss.
While the meeting will be livestreamed for residents to watch online, there are no published reports, no advance information, and no opportunity to ask questions. The official agenda offers nothing more than “Leader Update” and “Cabinet Member Update”—vague headings with no indication of what policy areas or decisions they cover.
This startling vacuum of information marks the first test of the Council’s restructured governance system and confirms widespread fears about the erosion of transparency. Council leaders promised that the changes would make decision-making more efficient and resident-focused. But instead, the public will be left watching a broadcast with no context and no content—a façade of openness that hides the decision-making process itself.
Significant change from the past
Just weeks ago, the situation was very different. In February 2025, the Executive meeting was accompanied [pdf] by detailed reports reviewed by the Housing and Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committees. Items ranged from service delivery performance to housing strategy and budget oversight.
In December, the Council published [pdf] an extensive set of papers for decisions on youth services, environmental contracts, sexual health services, and financial policy. Each decision came with scrutiny comments, competing views, and clear recommendations.
And in November 2024, the Executive considered [pdf] transport policy, grant funding, and budgetary adjustments—again, with full documentation accessible to the public in advance.
These reports didn’t just inform residents—they allowed councillors across parties to question proposals before they were implemented. Scrutiny Committees debated and voted on key decisions, with the outcomes reflected in final recommendations to the Executive. That system made governance visible. It also made it accountable.
Now, that accountability is under direct threat. Wandsworth’s six Overview and Scrutiny Committees will soon be replaced by a single “General Overview and Scrutiny Committee” that only convenes after decisions have been made—and only if five councillors submit a formal request for a review. This change, combined with a raised threshold for what counts as a “Key Decision,” means many significant actions by the Cabinet or senior officers may proceed entirely unchallenged and unnoticed .
Although residents can technically still “attend” meetings by watching livestreams, the absence of any accompanying information renders the experience almost meaningless. Without agenda papers, background reports, or options for public questions, the livestream is not a tool of transparency—it’s a broadcast of bureaucracy with the sound turned off.
Concerns over Wandsworth Council’s retreat from transparency have been amplified by recent revelations about its financial position. There have been recent warnings of a growing and unsustainable debt burden—described as a “ticking timebomb”—and there is no recording of the last meeting of the Pensions Committee which discussed how its pension fund had gone from a £350 million surplus to a £7.2 million deficit in just one year.
With mounting debt, reduced reserves, and significant capital spending commitments, the new governance system may allow serious financial risks to go unexamined—shielded from public view just when accountability is most needed.
Richmond: A shared staff, a different ethos
What makes Wandsworth’s retreat from transparency even more striking is that it stands in direct contrast to Richmond Council—a borough that shares its senior staff, including the Chief Executive, through a joint staffing arrangement. Despite this shared infrastructure, the two councils operate very differently.
Richmond continues to use a committee system where decisions are debated in public by service-level committees composed of councillors from all parties. Reports are published in advance, and meetings are open to both the public and press, with clear channels for questions, deputations, and scrutiny. Members of the public can see what’s on the agenda, read the proposals, and attend or speak to those making the decisions.
The fact that two councils sharing the same officers can function with such contrasting levels of openness makes one thing clear: Wandsworth’s lack of transparency is not a matter of capacity—it’s a matter of political will.
