Just two years after launching what it called “the most significant programme of change the Council has embarked upon,” Wandsworth is spending £1.9 million on consultants for an entirely new transformation programme – raising fundamental questions about the council’s promise of “long-term financial sustainability.”
Those questions came to a head at a meeting of the Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee last week when opposition councillor Peter Graham confronted the cabinet member of finance Councillor Angela Ireland: “Either the change programme has failed or it was never the transformation programme that you and Councillor Hogg claimed it to be. Which is it?”
The question goes to the heart of concerns about whether the council can deliver the £50 million in savings it needs over the next three years to avoid drastic cuts or massive council tax increases.
When it was launched, the 2023 change programme was described in glowing terms as something that would have a dramatic impact on Wandsworth Council’s financial position. That hasn’t happened and the council’s current Medium Term Financial Strategy now describes it as merely “a series of 35 small discrete projects in contrast to the more ambitious organisation-wide transformation now being taken forward.”
Challenged on its success, Councillor Ireland defended the earlier programme, reeling off a list of achievements.
“The change programme certainly has not failed. There have been many successes. We launched the Seven Rings programme earlier this year – 80% of calls are now answered within Seven Rings. That never happened before. We process council tax queries within under 24 hours,” she said.
She continued listing improvements: “We’ve transformed the recruitment process so that we’ve halved the time it takes to recruit staff. We’ve introduced lots of changes in IT, including in children’s social services, Magic Notes, which saves administrative time of one day a week per social worker, enabling them to spend more time on the task.”
Ireland also claimed financial savings: “We’ve saved a million pound, I think, on the waste contract, and more money is coming in from the Enable contract.”
The waste contract claim immediately raises questions. Putney.news has extensively documented ongoing problems with waste collections, with complaints soaring and performance metrics plummeting since the new contract began.
The council claims to be clamping down on the contract provider – Serco – but when we tried to verify those claims, the council has been forced to admit that no formal enforcement action has been taken at all. It has also refused to reveal how much, if anything, Serco has actually been fined, citing commercial confidentiality.
If the contract really is saving £1 million, residents appear to be paying the price through worse service. The question is whether that represents good value or a false economy that stores up problems for later.
When Graham pressed on why a programme designed for “long-term financial sustainability” needed replacing after just two years with another programme for the same purpose, Ireland argued: “The change programme was appropriate for the time. Things have changed. It’s now developing into a transformation programme.”
Graham interjected sarcastically: “Long-term is two years.”
Why this matters
The council faces a projected budget gap of £21-51 million over the next three years, potentially rising to £46-90 million when government funding cuts are factored in. It needs the new transformation programme to work.
But if the previous “transformation” programme fell short of its goals – or was never really transformational at all – residents have every reason to question whether this new attempt will be any different.
As the most recent financial papers have made clear, the current administration will find itself in increasing financial trouble if it doesn’t achieve huge savings from this new programme. This month, it approved a large spending plan while also facing increasing costs in adult care, SEND provision and housing repairs.
Officers have explicitly warned about “a rapid deterioration” in finances with reserves falling £28m this year alone from £194m to £166m, and the refusal – for political reasons – to raise council taxes has only made the situation worse.
The council approved the £1.9 million transformation programme funding at its September cabinet meeting.
Whether the new transformation programme delivers where its predecessor fell short will become clear over the coming months. Putney.news will continue to track its progress.
I presume you mean Peter Graham and Angela Ireland?
Yes, thanks for catching the embarrassing slip that came from writing late on a Sunday. There were also two typos 🙂