In March 2025, Wandsworth Council spent your money on flashy leaflets and videos proclaiming they had frozen your council tax. Your bill went up. The BBC exposed it. The council quietly dropped the claim.
Last week they did it again.
Simon Hogg’s administration announced another “council tax freeze” on 10 February. The adult social care precept rises 2%. Same promotional materials. Same bet that residents won’t check their bills. The official budget paper uses the word “freeze” 11 times while documenting the increase.
The man who called it out as ridiculous, who challenged the same leader over a 253% increase in complaints to the Chief Executive’s office? Silenced. The council introduced procedural rules that blocked him from raising issues at Full Council.
This is the administration that just confirmed – four months after being asked – that it cancelled the 2025 residents’ survey. For 20 years, Wandsworth measured resident satisfaction every two years. When results turned negative in 2023, they buried them. When 2025 came around – months before elections – they killed the survey altogether.
Use council money for propaganda. Kill the feedback mechanisms. Hope residents are too busy to notice.
The council tax con – twice
Let’s be clear-eyed about this: Labour took over Wandsworth Council in 2022 because voters were tired of the Conservative government; a decision that was reflected nationally two years later. The biggest worry among Putney voters in 2022 was that if Labour got in that they would ramp up council tax. And so the party, under Hogg, promised it would not do so.
That same group of politicians now knows a tax rise would all but guarantee their loss of power, and that they may not return for decades. So it is entirely understandable why Labour under Hogg feels the needs to advertise that it has not increased council tax.
But the world is not controlled from Wandsworth Town Hall, no matter how much its current occupants wish it were.
Reality bites
Ten months after the BBC exposed the fact that council tax bills in Wandsworth had gone up at the same time that bright pink leaflets through the door claimed otherwise, residents described feeling “misled”. Labour dropped the language from its website.
Now, they’re back at it. But this year, the fiscal context makes this kind of misleading messaging that much worse. Wandsworth faces a funding crisis. That’s a fact. Council tax must nearly double by 2028 because central government is cutting back what it gives Wandsworth Council every year.
The truth is that Wandsworth has benefitted from over-generous funding (compared to other councils) from central government ever since Margaret Thatcher was in power. Our famously low council tax bills are the result of Westminster manipulation not extraordinary effectiveness.
Council tax bills must rise and a responsible council would be laying the groundwork for that reality. Instead, not only is the Labour ostrich sticking its head in the sand but can be heard loudly exclaiming that it is drinking from an underground stream.
Our current council may not have increased its portion of council tax but it has built up a heavy debt pile and consumed a significant amount of council reserves to avoid doing so.
Killing the feedback
In 2019, a residents’ survey conducted by the council reported 85% satisfaction, 79% agreeing the council provides value for money. The 2023 survey – the first under the new administration – showed significant declines. Overall satisfaction dropped 11 points to 74%. Value for money fell 9 points to 70%. Residents feeling informed dropped 11 points to 55%. Cost: £56,000.
They buried it. A 163-page report was uploaded to a third-party website with no announcement. The official Performance Indicators page still lists every survey from 2005 to 2019 but excludes 2023.
The 2025 survey? Cancelled. The biennial pattern that has run for at least two decades has been broken. When asked via Freedom of Information whether it was conducted, the council took four months to confirm: no. Elections are 7 May. The press office was asked on 27 January why the pattern was broken. Still no response.
The pattern
Hogg told Full Council that rising Ombudsman findings were “reflected across local government.” His data: Housing Ombudsman determinations against Wandsworth rose 238% versus 107% nationally. When Cllr Grimston challenged this, the council blocked him from raising it at Full Council.
Last month, the council admitted it failed to implement fire safety reforms following Grenfell – reforms that have been required for years. The admission came only after sustained questioning.
This isn’t governing
Simon Hogg promised to make Wandsworth “more open.” Instead: propaganda funded with your money, data buried when negative, surveys cancelled before elections, councillors silenced for challenging him.
The next time a glossy council leaflet arrives claiming success, remember: they spent your money producing it, then cancelled the survey that would have measured whether you actually agree.
