Wandsworth Council has published its official response to a damning judgment from the Regulator of Social Housing—but the new plans risk creating more bureaucracy, not real change.
In March, the regulator gave Wandsworth a low C3 rating, citing systemic failings in tenant safety, housing conditions, complaints handling, and overall governance. The council now says it accepts those findings in full and has drawn up a series of corrective measures.
But key elements of the plan—outlined in Cabinet Paper No. 25-176 [pdf], due to be rubber-stamped on Monday—remain thin. Observers are questioning whether the response will address the deep-rooted cultural problems that led to the crisis, or simply shuffle responsibilities and produce more performance data.
No escaping the resident verdict
The council’s weakest point—its relationship with residents—is also where its response is most vague. According to the council’s own figures, more than three quarters of tenants (76%) say they are dissatisfied with how Wandsworth communicates with them or handles complaints.
The Regulator singled this out as a major failing, and Wandsworth has promised to create a new resident scrutiny panel. But despite this being one of the most serious and visible issues, the Cabinet paper offers no timeline, no budget, and no structure for how the panel will work.
In other areas—like safety checks, complaint logging, and housing data management—the council offers more technical fixes. But in the one area where trust must be rebuilt, the response is little more than a placeholder.
Big spend, weak scrutiny
Meanwhile, the council continues to throw money at the symptoms of the problem.
At the Cabinet meeting today, it will propose spending:
- £50,000 on iPads for officers to take photos of mould
- £560,000 on a self-designed digital surveillance system, asking residents in temporary accommodation to verify their presence using selfies and location data via text message
Both projects are framed as “spend-to-save” initiatives, designed to cut costs over time. But neither has been properly tested, and neither was recommended by the Regulator. Instead, they appear to be in-house inventions, pushed forward without external validation or robust consultation.
Less scrutiny, more risk
Perhaps most worryingly, the Labour administration has made it harder to challenge decisions like these. In February, the council abolished its Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee, eliminating the main route for councillors and residents to hold officers accountable.
The council has now created a new Regulatory Compliance Board, intended to oversee progress and report to the Regulator every quarter. But this is an internal group, not a democratic forum. Decisions about multi-million-pound reforms are now being made behind closed doors—at the same time as public confidence in housing services is at rock bottom.
Is this recovery—or reputation management?
Wandsworth says it hopes to return to regulatory compliance within 12–18 months. But many of its promises rely on technology, consultancy, and internal restructuring—rather than changing the culture that led to the failings in the first place.
With no clear plan for rebuilding trust, and no credible route for residents to be heard, the fear is that this latest plan may produce more dashboards than difference.
