Yesterday, Wandsworth Council issued a press release. The headline read: “Affordable housing in Wandsworth boosted by changes to local planning rules.”
Ten days earlier, the planning inspector’s final report had used very different language.
The plan, it found, had “a number of deficiencies in respect of soundness.” It recommended “non-adoption of it as submitted.” It required 21 mandatory modifications before the plan could proceed. The council’s proposed 45% affordable housing threshold was “not justified and would be counterproductive, materially impacting on the delivery of much needed homes.”
The net result, after four years of work, was an affordable housing requirement that was exactly the same as when Labour took control of the borough in 2022.
The press release made no mention of the 35% threshold. No mention of the inspector’s rejection. No mention of the 21 modifications. No mention of the front-page manifesto promise from four years ago: “We’ll set an ambitious target of 50% affordable housing on all new developments.”
It described the outcome – an outright rejection – as placing Wandsworth “amongst London’s most proactive and ambitious boroughs.” Ambition is not a housing policy.
Five days before the press release was issued, we reported that Cllr Aydin Dikerdem, the Cabinet Member for Housing, had told Cabinet the inspector’s response was “very, very good news” and compared it to being told “you’ve done really well.” When we asked how his characterisation of the inspector’s findings was possible when read alongside what the report actually says, the response was telling: no answers and then personal abuse.
But it’s not just one rogue cabinet member: the council’s press office has now repeated the same housing fiction in writing, officially, for the whole borough.
What the press release did not say is that 13,000 households remain on Wandsworth’s housing waiting list. The inspector’s report had noted that fact too.
The pattern
This is far from the first time the council has described failure as success, or adopted Trumpian up-is-down messaging.
A year ago, it spent £20,000 of public money on leaflets and videos declaring a council tax freeze. The leaflets came in the same envelope as council tax bills that showed a 2% increase. Last month, it did the same again – but worse. Because next year, unless the council imposes a 34% council tax rise, according to its own figures, the council will run out of money.
Instead of warning residents about this financial cliff edge, we had another nonsense press release and the leader of the council starred in a video claiming, falsely, that council tax was frozen this year, and then that he would not increase taxes next year, if elected. This is also false; he would have no choice.
There are other examples. After boiler explosions left council tenants without heat and homes damaged by fire, the council declared it had done “a great job.” Residents were stunned. There were even more surprised to hear representatives claim they had opened and manned a community centre looking after those evacuated from their homes.
Another press release covered the independent report into another fire. The report warned that residents “had to bend towards the bureaucracy of the Council rather than the bureaucracy bend to them”, and that some waited for “a call that never came.” In the council’s telling, however, the report noted that “emergency support was provided immediately” and “commends Wandsworth Council for its strong response.”
When a residents’ survey in 2023 showed satisfaction among Wandsworth residents had fallen 11 per cent, the response was, again, telling: the results were buried. Then, when 2025 came around, and with the verdict due just months before May’s local elections, the survey was cancelled entirely. No explanation was given. It took us four months just to get confirmation. For 20 years, Wandsworth measured what residents thought of their council’s performance. This year, it stopped.
This is not a communications failure, it is something far more deliberate. It is treating the announcement as a substitute for the outcome; the claim for the reality. Yesterday’s press release about affordable housing is accurate about what the council says, but wholly misleading about what the council has done.
The distinction matters, because residents now have no reliable mechanism for holding the council to account. Even when residents do complain, their voices are silenced. When one independent councillor called for an explanation over why official complaints had tripled, he was barred from raising the issue at Full Council.
A council that does not measure what residents think, and bars challenge when its claims are questioned, does not have a communications problem; it has a governing problem. It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but clearly it is: local government is not Instagram. Social media is not social welfare. Proclaiming success is not the same as achieving it.
