Wandsworth has a new government. Nobody can challenge it for a month.

Wandsworth’s new Conservative administration is running the borough without any formal oversight this month. No one can question its decisions in a public meeting. No committee can demand answers. The one session where residents can walk in and speak directly to the council has been cancelled.

It is the first full month of a council that won power promising to invite “scrutiny and challenge from everyone.”

The practical effect: nine meetings gone. Cabinet is not sitting. All six scrutiny committees (covering finance, housing, transport, children’s services, health, and the environment) are cancelled until 22 July. The Borough Residents’ Forum on 10 June, where any Wandsworth resident can put questions directly to the council, will not take place.

The administration says this is a temporary pause while it rebuilds the committee structure from scratch. Scrutiny committees are due to return on 22 July. But before they do, the new Cabinet’s first formal decision is already scheduled for 15 July, with no oversight body yet reconvened. Whatever it decides that day, there will be no scrutiny committee with the power to challenge it.

That first decision could be anything on the current Forward Plan: the future of the borough’s leisure centres, laptop procurement worth millions, the CCTV contract, mental health services. The new administration will make it in private, present it as done, and answer questions about it in July. If then.

Deputy leader Cllr Peter Graham acknowledged the process had been “far from ideal.” Labour refused to take part in the single replacement committee the administration installed, saying it had been ambushed by the decision on night one.

That committee is staffed entirely by Conservatives. Leader Aled Richards-Jones told the Annual Meeting his administration would invite the opposition “to challenge our decisions and hold us to account.” The confidence and supply agreement he signed commits to cross-party committee chairs and opposition presence at every cabinet meeting. Both of those things start in July.

This is not the first time Wandsworth has spent a month ungovernable in the name of governance reform. Labour did the same, and broke every promise that came with it. The Conservatives have had one month in office. July is when they start being testable on theirs.

Until then, residents can contact their ward councillors at wandsworth.gov.uk/council. The full June schedule is at democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk.