“Rob is an inspirational leader and knows how to deliver for residents,” one supporter of Robert Morritt told Putney.news this week, as he took over as leader of the Wandsworth Conservatives and likely leader of Wandsworth Council later this month. “A great result for Putney and for Wandsworth.”
That is one version of the man now set to run one of the country’s largest and most influential councils with a budget of £275 million. But there is another, and it has been documented, repeatedly, in his own party’s records.
Over more than a decade, an accountant, his own party’s leadership, and, as recently as a few months ago, an independent Conservative panel have each separately examined specific episodes in Morritt’s conduct. None of them sit comfortably with the vision of him as an inspirational leader.
With power comes scrutiny and in Cllr Morritt’s case, it brings with it a harsh light.
“All he needed to ensure eligibility was a lease on a Wandsworth property… could be anything, and for as little as £50.”
“We have concluded that a man who doesn’t live nor work in the Borough ought not to be allowed to stand.”
The £50 lease
In March 2025, Morritt advised a fellow Conservative, Lee Roberts, that a lease on almost any property, for as little as £50, would be enough to satisfy the residency rules for standing as a council candidate.
Roberts was the Conservative’s general election candidate for Putney in 2024 and decided he wanted to run for council in West Putney. He is popular with local Conservatives but he lives just outside Wandsworth. As chair of the Putney Conservatives, Morritt told him that wasn’t a problem: a £50 lease and he met the requirements.
Months later, however, Roberts’ approved candidacy was subject to a formal Note of Concern by Morritt which argued the opposite, in the collective voice of the Association: “We have concluded that a man who doesn’t live nor work in the Borough ought not to be allowed to stand.”
An independent Conservative panel, asked to adjudicate the dispute, ruled unanimously in Roberts’s favour in November 2025. It found Morritt’s position “not credible,” and said the contradiction between his private advice and his public objection “could even be construed as biased given the egregious inconsistency of Mr Morritt’s statements.”
On the question of what changed his mind, the panel’s own conclusion was blunt: “It seems more likely that Mr Morritt has only changed his mind regarding Mr Roberts.”
Remarkably, however, that wasn’t the end of it. Roberts’ candidacy was withdrawn, then reaffirmed a further two times, each time with the chair – Morritt – putting forward a new reason to question his candidacy. Roberts did not appear on the ballot in May.
“Could even be construed as biased given the egregious inconsistency of Mr Morritt’s statements.”
The account nobody signed off
Thirteen years earlier, a different independent process reached a similar verdict, this time over money rather than a lease.
Morritt was the Conservative group’s paid election agent from 2006 until 2010, responsible for running campaigns across the Battersea, Putney and Tooting associations, paid a salary that reached £39,000 by 2009 plus a bonus scheme worth up to £25,000.
In 2008, two officers signed the paperwork to open an account with taxi firm Addison Lee in the party’s name. It was never disclosed to the wider Group Management Committee, the body meant to oversee the party’s finances, and never appeared as its own line in the accounts.
Six named members of staff used it regularly. When the independent accountant brought in to review the affair, Ray Puddifoot, examined it in 2013, he found extensive personal use by Morritt, who does not drive.
Puddifoot’s conclusion was direct: the private use “left the Group open to a possible challenge from HM Revenue & Customs,” and was “sufficient to consider it as an abuse of his position.”
A £33,524.58 question, cheque by cheque
Puddifoot’s report, submitted in April 2013, went further. It found £33,524.58 across 32 cheques from the period, some recorded as paid to Morritt with no explanation attached, others with no payee recorded at all.
He found that “blank cheques were signed as a matter of practice” at the party’s office, a standard of control that “fell well short of acceptable accounting standards.” In his own defence during the 2013 dispute, Morritt argued that improperly benefiting himself would have been structurally impossible, since he was never “a cheque signature on either of the Groupings accounts” and it “would have been impossible for me to claim or receive any monies without having received authorisation.”
A further investigation by then leader of Wandsworth Conservatives, Ravi Govindia, found the process worked differently in practice: cheques were generally “written out by a very junior member of staff on RM’s [Robert Morritt’s] instructions,” sometimes signed blank, and the junior staff member “was in no position to challenge instructions.”
Individual examples run through the report. A £3,000 cheque was recorded as covering a colleague’s retirement present; Morritt told Puddifoot the gift itself would have cost £300 to £500, with the remaining roughly £2,500 going toward “general cash expenses.” A separate £1,500 cheque was recorded for conference equipment that had already been bought, three days earlier, with a different cheque; Morritt accepted the £1,500 “was not to purchase equipment” but represented other money he considered himself owed.
Salary top-ups, meant to correct a payroll system that consistently underpaid him, drifted into overpayment: Puddifoot calculated an excess of £4,756 in 2008 and £3,496 in 2009.
Cash also went missing. At one fundraising event, £1,165 was raised and held in the office safe rather than banked, of which only £520 was eventually recorded. At another, £345 was not accounted for. But the most significant was the Wandsworth Borough Dinner in November 2009: £5,045 raised through a raffle and two other draws was never traced as banked anywhere, and remains unaccounted for.
Puddifoot checked whether the shortfalls might reflect genuine campaign costs, but the five candidates in the 2010 general election had used only 57.4% of their allowable expenses, leaving, in his words, “no reason for, and there is certainly no evidence of, additional payments being made.”
Puddifoot’s overall conclusion: Morritt’s conduct as agent “fell well short of what the Group could expect from a trained agent,” and had brought the party “into disrepute.”
“Some of the media accusations do have substance.”
Expelled
In October 2013, following a formal request from 11 of his fellow councillors, group leader Ravi Govindia recommended Morritt’s expulsion. Councillors voted to remove him.
Govindia’s report records a doubt about whether the finding fully held up at the time: if the account given by the party’s former treasurer was accepted at face value, “then plainly the Puddifoot Report is wrong on the related matters of expenses and cheque payments.”
Morritt has always disputed the findings, arguing Puddifoot never spoke to the officials best placed to explain the missing paperwork. There had been a 2011 settlement, agreed two years before Puddifoot’s report, that had already waived the party’s right to recover money over “expenses payments, taxi journeys or similar amounts.”
There was significant tension within the party for several years while some officials proposed it be resolved quietly to prevent wider embarrassment while others argued that the actions uncovered were so concerning that they had to be dealt with in public.
The £5,045 has never been accounted for by either side.
“It would have been impossible for me to claim or receive any monies without having received authorisation… a minimum of two nominated signatures.”
Cheques were “written out by a very junior member of staff on RM’s instructions… sometimes signed blank.” The junior staff member “was in no position to challenge instructions.”
A disputed origin
How the case became public at all is itself contested. Documents were removed from party offices two years earlier by the then chairman of Battersea Conservatives, who was apparently concerned that Morritt would remove them himself and destroy them. His concerns were justified: a report found that Morritt had in fact done exactly that.
Those documents then found their way into the hands of the press, with a series of articles published outlining Morritt’s actions and eventually his ouster from the party.
Morritt at that time claimed there was a campaign against him – and others supported that. A statement from a former colleague at the time, filed alongside Morritt’s formal rebuttal, described the dossier compiled against him as having “solely malevolent intent” and its author as delivering “a continuous stream of hostile comments” about Morritt at a private meeting.
It follows a wider pattern: we reported on internal power struggles reported last summer, when a sitting councillor defected to Reform UK amid an earlier leadership dispute. Whatever the origin of the Morritt case, the findings that followed rest on documents both sides accept as genuine, examined independently by Puddifoot and Govindia in turn.
“There was no proper accounting and severe doubt exists about the application.”
Splitting up the old system
For more than a decade, Putney, Battersea and Tooting Conservatives shared one office in Summerstown, one pool of money, and one joint selection process, run under the group structure examined in Puddifoot’s 2013 report.
That arrangement held until around 2020 but then broke apart at the point Morritt became Putney’s chairman, according to senior Conservatives. Putney has since run its own separate office and its own separate candidate selection, distinct from the joint structure that still links Battersea and Tooting today.
What that separated control has meant in practice is visible in two cases. Morritt, using his authority as Putney’s chairman, moved to have Roberts blocked from standing, on eligibility grounds he had privately told Roberts didn’t matter. An independent Conservative panel later found that intervention “not credible.”
Steffi Sutters, one of the 11 councillors who signed the 2013 letter that led to Morritt’s expulsion, represented West Putney continuously from 2010 and held senior Cabinet roles under three different council leaderships. As with Roberts, she did not stand for re-election in May 2026. A bullying complaint was filed and upheld by the Conservative Central Office.
When the candidate slate for the May 2026 elections was published, it contained a number of new names. Among them was Robert Morritt.
“I found the whole thing bloody draining because everything became a battle about whether you like Rob or whether you don’t like Rob. Just dominated all local politics.”
A former senior Conservative, speaking on condition of anonymityA pattern others describe the same way
Not everyone who has worked with Morritt describes him the way the supporter quoted above does. We reported in May that Wandsworth’s Conservatives were a party not fully at ease with itself even before polling day.
Former colleagues, speaking to Putney.news on condition of anonymity, describe a consistent pattern rather than an isolated dispute. One recalled him as relaxed and charming in ordinary conversation, but said a switch would flip the moment a decision affecting him personally was challenged and he would become incredibly aggressive, before reverting to charm once the subject was resolved.
Another put it more bluntly: they said they would not trust him to shake a collection tin on the street for the British Legion.
“RM’s continuing membership of the Group has damaged and will continue to damage the interests of the Party in Wandsworth and beyond.”
What’s actually at stake
Whether any of this matters practically depends on a vote that hasn’t happened yet. Full Council meets on 22 July to confirm Morritt’s leadership, and the outcome is genuinely open: independent councillor Malcolm Grimston, whose backing the Conservatives currently rely on to govern at all, could decline to support him, or Conservative members could simply not attend.
The stakes are about to rise regardless of that outcome. The Conservatives govern Wandsworth with 29 seats to Labour’s 28, one short of a majority, and can only do so through an agreement with Grimston. A 27 August by-election in Trinity ward could hand them a 30th seat and an outright majority, ending the need for Grimston’s agreement altogether. Residents in Trinity ward can register to vote in that by-election ahead of the 11 August deadline.
Right of reply
Putney.news put six questions to Cllr Morritt covering the 2013 findings, the vote result, and the circumstances of his return to the party. He had not responded as of publication.
