UPDATED Aled Richards-Jones has resigned as Leader of Wandsworth Council, just six weeks after leading the Conservatives back into power. It has come as a shock even to his closest colleagues.
Richards-Jones said on Friday he will step down once a successor is chosen at the council’s full meeting on 22 July. He gave his reason as the growing demands of his job as a partner at law firm Mewburn Ellis, which he joined in December. “It is now clear to me that I can no longer give the role of Leader the time and focus it deserves,” he said.
A senior Conservative councillor close to Richards-Jones described colleagues as devastated by the news, saying it caught everyone by surprise. Nothing had been dropped in the run-up to the decision, they insisted, and Richards-Jones’s attention had stayed on the ongoing spending review throughout.
The Conservative Group is expected to name a successor “in the coming days,” according to the party’s own statement, with the appointment confirmed at the 22 July meeting. Richards-Jones will continue as ward councillor for Northcote, where he was confirmed as Leader at the annual meeting in May, ending four years of Labour control.
His successor is likely to come from within the current cabinet with finance head Peter Graham and transport lead Daniel Hamilton the likely frontrunners.
A fortnight meant to prove the administration works
The news comes at a crucial time: two meetings this month were meant to show whether Wandsworth’s administration can actually deliver.
On Monday, the council’s General Purposes Committee is due to meet to sign off the results of the constitutional review and rebuild the committee structure that fell apart at the administration’s first meeting in May, when papers arrived late and Labour walked out. All six scrutiny committees have been suspended since, and the changes due before the committee are meant to restore the pre-decision scrutiny and cross-party access to papers that the previous Labour administration had stripped out.
As of Friday, none of the four papers due for Monday’s meeting had been published. Between them they cover changes to the constitution and standing orders, changes to the overview and scrutiny procedure rules, and changes to the committees and their allowances.
Then, at full council on 22 July, the same meeting where Richards-Jones’s successor is confirmed, the administration’s spending review is due to be outlined in detail, on top of the £137 million gap Labour left behind. The review is said to involve significant cuts.
“It has been an honour to serve as group leader for more than two years, following three years as group whip,” Richards-Jones said in his resignation note.
May’s election left the council split 29 seats to the Conservatives, 28 to Labour and one to Grimston, short of the 30 needed for outright control. Both meetings depend on the confidence and supply agreement that keeps the administration in power, struck between Richards-Jones and independent councillor Malcolm Grimston in the wake of that result. Grimston, who has represented West Hill since 1994 and left the Conservative Party in 2014, took the highest vote of any candidate in the borough this May. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour can govern without him.
Putney.news has been told that the agreement holds regardless of who leads, because it sits with the Conservative Group rather than with Richards-Jones personally. The delay in publishing Monday’s papers does not bode well however: talks between the two parties and Grimston have been difficult, according to those involved, and changes may now come just days before council sits properly for the first time since March.
Grimston has confirmed that his support extends to whoever succeeds Richards-Jones.
For residents who have watched Wandsworth change hands twice in four years, the stakes are straightforward. The council’s finances, its committee structure and now its leadership are all in flux at the same time, and all of it still rests on the agreement of one independent councillor who has yet to speak about it publicly.
Why Richards-Jones is going now, rather than before May’s election or immediately after winning it, remains unclear.
What happens next
The General Purposes Committee is due to meet on Monday at 7.30pm at the Town Hall, although that looks increasingly unlikely. Its papers, once published, and the meeting itself will be available via the council’s democracy portal. The Conservative Group’s successor process is expected to conclude by 22 July, when full council also receives the spending review outline and confirms whichever constitutional changes the General Purposes Committee has by then agreed.
Putney.news has covered how the council’s rulebook changed and what’s still wrong under the confidence and supply arrangement. That reversal, not the identity of whoever ends up leading it, is what this month were always going to test.
Update, 4.20pm: The planned meeting of the General Purposes Committee on Monday is increasingly like to be postponed to just before the full council meeting on 22 July. That meeting is crucial to the functioning of the council as the changes are part of the deal struck between the Conservatives and independent Malcolm Grimston that gives it a majority to act.
Update, 4.30pm: Independent councillor Malcolm Grimston has confirmed that his support will extend to whoever takes over from Richards-Jones.
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