Wandsworth’s new council convenes for the first time next Wednesday, 27 May, when a 58-seat chamber split 29-28 between Conservatives and Labour, with one Independent in the middle, meets for its Annual Meeting.
Aled Richards-Jones was confirmed as Conservative leader last Wednesday. He inherits a Forward Plan he did not write, listing twenty decisions due in the next four months. The biggest problems facing the borough are not on it. Four Thames bridges are in trouble. A million-pound junction redesign will not be assessed until February 2027. The largest housing regeneration in the borough is paused. And every contested vote in the new chamber depends on the Conservative group turning up complete and agreeing on the day.
A council that cannot lose a vote
A chamber where the largest party has 29 of 58 seats has no majority. The Independent who holds the balance is bound to neither party and no formal coalition has been announced. Lose one Conservative to illness, a family emergency or a difference of view, and a tied vote is decided by the mayor’s casting vote. Wandsworth has not been governed on those terms in decades.
The arithmetic shapes everything that follows. A council that cannot afford to lose a vote cannot move fast on a difficult decision. It can move slowly, or not at all.
The bridges
Four Thames crossings define how Putney moves. All four are in trouble.
On 12 May, the same morning the Forward Plan was published, this publication reported that Putney Bridge has a structural problem the council has known about since December 2023. Critical load-bearing elements of the last unrestricted Thames crossing in southwest London are below the threshold at which national guidance says work must be done. The Forward Plan contains no item on repair.
Hammersmith Bridge has been closed to vehicles for nearly seven years. Wandsworth shot down a chance to reopen it and said nothing about that decision for a year. After a fourth Commons debate in April, a minister said it would be a good candidate for the government’s £1 billion Structures Fund. No funding has been confirmed.
Albert Bridge closed entirely in April, leaving Putney Bridge as the last crossing standing on this stretch of the river. Wandsworth Bridge is losing lanes for four months for separate maintenance.
None of these appear as Forward Plan items.
The junction
The Putney Bridge junction redesign has cost more than a million pounds and made traffic worse. In February the Transport Committee was told the council would not assess whether the junction works until February 2027. The fixes residents have been waiting for would not come until October 2026.
That timetable was set by the previous Labour administration. The new administration can accept it, accelerate it, or set a different test for whether the scheme can work. The Forward Plan does not require it to choose.
The Alton Estate
The largest housing regeneration in the borough is paused. The 2022 hybrid planning permission to demolish 288 homes and build up to 1,108 has been suspended. Residents voted yes in October 2025 to a £100 million redevelopment, but nearly 60% did not vote at all. A 55-home standalone application went to Planning Applications Committee in March. The wider scheme has no timeline for resumption. Residents have alleged managed decline of the estate during the years of planning uncertainty.
The Forward Plan contains no Alton Estate item.
Council tax, the campaign issue
The Forward Plan does carry the first council tax decision of the new administration. Council Tax Setting 2027/28 (ref. 76730) is also the issue on which the Conservatives were most exposed in the election. In March this publication ran a three-part fact-check of the outgoing Labour administration’s council tax communications. The first piece fact-checked the leaflet itself. The second showed the council’s response made things worse, not better. The third identified £2 million the leaflet had failed to mention.
What the Conservatives now choose for 2027/28 will be measurable against what they campaigned on. With a 29-28 split in the chamber, it will also be the first real test of whether the group holds together for a tax decision.
What the Forward Plan does contain
A Forward Plan is required by law. The council uses it to publish the decisions it expects to take, who will take them, and when. The 12 May plan is published on the council’s democracy portal under reference 136.
Several items continue stories already in production on this site. The laptop procurement is back, as Supply of Portable Computer to Wandsworth and Richmond Council (ref. 71939), after this publication reported a £3.7 million IT contract deferred more than twenty times and a £1 million contract coming in £67,325 below the scrutiny threshold. A right-of-reply we sent to the council’s head of IT on 27 April has gone unanswered for fifteen working days.
The CCTV contract, Maintenance and Support of Unmanned CCTV Camera Network for Wandsworth Borough (ref. 76427), comes forward as a FOI on Putney High Street cameras enters its response window. It follows a £500,000 surveillance app commissioned without challenge last June.
The leisure framework, Culture and Leisure Commissioning: Future Delivery Model Options (ref. 76397), is due at Cabinet on 13 July. Our Places Leisure FOI on the current contract has been on internal review since 5 April.
Three SEND-adjacent contracts move to Cabinet together. Early Years CAMHS (ref. 75267), Speech and Language Therapy (ref. 75265) and Occupational Therapy (ref. 75266) will be decided against the backdrop of two open FOIs and a Schools Forum meeting today with SEND items on the agenda.
Council’s Financial Results for the Year 2025/26 (ref. 76719) is the first full-year set of accounts the new administration will be asked to receive. Handover accounts rarely look dramatic at the time. They are the documents the rest of the term gets argued over.
The plan also carries Microsoft E5 Licences, Legal Services litigation arrangements, and the Wandsworth Mental Health Floating Support Services contract (ref. 74544), which sits in the same commissioning space as Britain’s most expensive mental health suite. The HRA Business Plan and Budget Setting (refs. 76723 and 76728), the Capital Programme, the Medium Term Financial Strategy, Integrated Sexual Health Services, and a Transformation Consultancy commission round out the twenty.
What happens next
Cabinet appointments follow the Annual Meeting. Most Forward Plan items do not yet have firm decision dates. They will be assigned once Cabinet is constituted.
Four bridges, one failed junction and a paused housing regeneration are not on the Forward Plan. They will define the new administration’s first hundred days regardless. The fastest way to follow what happens next is to subscribe.
