Ten questions Putney’s council candidates need to answer this month

Buses through Putney are running 41% worse than the rest of the borough, according to TfL’s own data. What will you specifically do to fix Putney Bridge junction, and when?

Wandsworth Council redesigned the Putney Bridge junction in December 2024. TfL’s Excess Waiting Time data (the measure of how much longer than scheduled passengers wait) shows routes through the junction run 41% above the borough average and 55% above TfL’s own target. Three FOI requests across fourteen months found not a single document authored by a Cabinet Member about the problem: no report, no briefing, no recommendation. The council’s Transport Committee published a report but has been content to wait to see the impact of small measures before reviewing the situation. The junction remains unfixed. Putney.news has reported on the data and on the absence of political action.

The council’s Growth Plan mentions Putney zero times. Putney has paid more than £1.3 million in neighbourhood levies. Where did that money go, and what investment is Putney actually getting?

Putney contributed more than £1.3 million in neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy between 2016 and 2024. The council’s 2025 Growth Plan, which sets out where strategic investment goes, does not mention Putney once across 18 pages, while detailing hundreds of millions for Nine Elms, Battersea, Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Town. The full story is here.

The council spent four years trying to raise affordable housing requirements and ended up with the same 35% target it started with. What is the plan for the 13,000 households on the waiting list?

After nearly four years of work, a planning inspector rejected Wandsworth’s proposed 45% affordable housing threshold as “not justified and counterproductive,” leaving the council with the same 35% target in place since Labour took control in 2022. The council’s own delivery data shows it has been achieving around 30% in practice. The Cabinet Member for Housing described the inspector’s outright rejection as “very, very good news.” More than 13,000 households are on Wandsworth’s housing waiting list. Putney.news reported on the inspector’s decision and on how it was presented to Cabinet.

Nearly 4,000 children in this borough have been living in temporary accommodation for an average of three and a half years. What is your specific target for reducing that number, and by when?

Council papers presented to the Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee show 3,947 children living in temporary accommodation in Wandsworth. Families rehoused in 2024/25 had waited an average of 43 months. Current occupants have already waited an average of 27 months. The council is spending £37.5 million a year on temporary housing and overshooting its own budget by more than £5 million. The 34-page committee report that revealed these figures contained no strategy to reduce them. The full report is here.

The council has applied twice to house nine people in 23 square metres, well below the legal minimum, on a Putney conservation area street. If these standards apply to private landlords, why not to the council itself?

Wandsworth Council applied to convert a flat it owns on Clarendon Drive, a Victorian terrace in a Putney conservation area, into a five-bedroom home for nine people, with combined living space of 23.3 square metres. The legal minimum is 37 square metres. The first application attracted 74 objections from virtually the entire street. The council withdrew it without explanation, then resubmitted a near-identical plan. The second application attracted 135 objections before consultation closed. The story is here.

The UK Statistics Authority found that the council’s council tax freeze claim misleads residents: their bills went up over 3%. Do you accept that finding?

The UK Statistics Authority, accountable to Parliament and independent of all parties, wrote to Council Leader Simon Hogg to say his repeated frozen council tax claim “has the potential to mislead” residents, because total bills rose 3.1% due to the GLA precept and other charges. The UKSA asked him to amend all communications carrying the claim. It is the first such adverse finding directed at an English council leader in the authority’s 18-year history. Putney.news had independently fact-checked the same council tax leaflet and found all four financial claims in it to be false. The UKSA story is here.

The council faces a £137 million budget gap over two years. Its reserves are £121 million, less than the gap. Without cuts or a 34% council tax rise, where does the money come from?

Council papers show Wandsworth faces a £137 million budget gap over the next two years, against reserves of around £121 million, less than the shortfall they are meant to cover. A £45 million transformation programme is meant to close part of the gap but has no identified savings behind it. The strategy for finding those savings is not due until September 2026, four months after the May election. The council’s interim chief executive told a public committee that the only plan to avoid insolvency is “a broad, reasonable aspiration to get us going.” The full investigation is here.

The council has spent £5 million on its Access for All leisure scheme and refuses to release the data to prove it works. If it is a success, what is it hiding?

Wandsworth has spent £5 million on its Access for All leisure scheme and claims 100,000 bookings and 12,000 members. It refuses to release year-by-year usage data, unique user counts, or any internal evaluation of whether the scheme works. Putney.news has an active complaint with the Information Commissioner over the refusal, after a year-long FOI battle in which the council delayed, blocked, and at one point promised a full Cabinet report with the information but released only a small amount of it. The council’s own press releases in a six-day period in March gave membership figures that were mathematically inconsistent with each other. The story is here.

The council’s interim chief executive earns £294,000 a year, more than any other council chief executive in England. Are we getting good value for money?

Andrew Travers earns £294,120 a year as Wandsworth’s interim chief executive, 71% more than the Prime Minister, and 6.46 times the median salary of the council workers he manages, up from a ratio of 5.1 before he took the post. His salary was approved at a Full Council meeting without debate or announcement. In the past year, days lost to stress, anxiety and depression among council staff rose 33.5%. Full details here.

After the council hit national headlines in the Drina Gray case, it promised to improve how the council handles antisocial behaviour. But a recent situation in Fownes Street showed the same failures eighteen months later. What has changed?

In July 2025, after a council tenant subjected neighbours to two years of death threats while the council failed to act, Cllr Dikerdem publicly promised: “We accept that we could have acted more swiftly. Following this case, changes are being made.” Eighteen months later, the Fownes Street case showed the same failures: the council arrived at a court hearing without properly serving its own evidence, did not apply for contempt despite documented injunction breaches, and failed to give a tenant replacement keys for nine weeks. The judge had to order keys delivered by Uber, in court, immediately. The story is here.

Name one thing the current administration has done wrong, and one thing the opposition would do worse.

This question requires no research and cites no data. It is a test of character and judgment. A candidate who can answer both halves honestly, criticising their own side and acknowledging merit in the other, is showing the kind of thinking you want from someone who will sit in scrutiny committees and vote on budgets. A candidate who cannot answer either half is telling you something equally important.