Wandsworth Council has cancelled all its meetings until the end of next month to carry out two reviews. The first is how to stop the council going bankrupt. The second is how to reintroduce democracy into how Wandsworth, and Putney, is run.
That second review was the price demanded by Malcolm Grimston, the independent councillor on whom the entire council rests because of the 29:28 split between parties delivered at the election last month.
Grimston was effectively silenced last year, despite having been a councillor for over 30 years and despite having won more votes than any other councillor in London, thanks to a rushed, anti-democratic overhaul of how the council does its business by the former Labour administration.
The Constitutional Review will not only undo much of the worst of those changes but also take things forward and improve how our council is run.
But what are those changes, why do they matter, and have they gone far enough? Find out below.
How he was shut down
Grimston spent months trying to raise his ward’s issues at Full Council, only to find that Labour’s revised constitution blocked him from doing so. On at least one occasion he was shut down mid-debate by a procedural motion designed to stop filibustering. He called it “acting like an elected dictatorship.”
The confidence-and-supply agreement he signed with Conservative leader Aled Richards-Jones on 26 May lists specific constitutional changes to be passed on 22 July.
A quick, ugly history
The Labour cabinet that approved the changes that are now being unravelled took 24 seconds to do it. Council leader Cllr Simon Hogg presented papers cooked up behind the scenes and asked if there were any questions, heard none, and said: “Wonderful, well look, as I say, thank you all very, very much for your work.”
The council had paid £29,000 for advice on how to run the process properly and then promptly ignored it: a fig-leaf for a process designed to centralise power. The working group it set up kept no records of either of its two meetings. Dozens of changes to the constitution went through Full Council without proper scrutiny. The Labour bloc voted it in.
What actually changed
Who controls constitutional change itself
Labour removed the General Purposes Committee from the process. Any Full Council majority could rewrite the constitution with no oversight. The new council has already reinstated the extra step. The GP Committee, which has served as an oversight and clearinghouse for decades, is now running the review before final changes go to full council.
Who can raise motions
Labour rewrote the rules so that motions had to go through a party Group Whip. That locked out independent councillors completely. Grimston, with no whip, had no way to raise ward issues at Full Council. When he tried, he was ruled out of order. The July agreement removes that restriction.
Pre-decision scrutiny
Labour effectively scrapped the council’s scrutiny committees and replaced them with a single, party-stacked committee that could only review decisions after they had already been made. The result was shamefully illustrated after the Bradstow School closure in November 2025: eight legitimate concerns were raised, zero resolved, the headteacher was given three minutes then silenced by a party-line vote.
Worse, the Orwellian committee chair then called the process “Democracy at its best” and the leader of the council – Hogg – later wilfully misrepresented what had happened. It was the low point of the short-lived Labour administration.
Now, however, six proper scrutiny committees come back under the July agreement, and they will see decisions before Cabinet makes them.
The key-decision threshold
The old Wandsworth constitution required everything to be done in public. Labour introduced a £1 million threshold below which decisions did not need the same transparency, double the London average. A large slice of spending decisions quietly moved out of public view. The threshold stays under the new agreement, but decisions between £150,000 and £1 million will now at least be published in a Cabinet member’s rolling list.
The monitoring role
Labour transferred responsibility for monitoring the constitution from elected councillors to council officers. That change has not been reversed and is not in the July agreement. Officers, not councillors, are still responsible for checking whether the constitution works.
The motions deadline
Labour doubled the notice period for tabling motions from two days to five. Councillors who want to respond to a fast-moving local issue now need five days’ warning. It is still in force and not in the July agreement.
Wandsworth was not alone. Less than four weeks after these changes, Merton Council removed independent councillors’ right to table motions too. We have tracked this story since it began.
What Grimston extracted
Six proper scrutiny committees return, covering Transport, Health, Housing, Children’s, Environment, and Finance, and they see decisions before Cabinet makes them. Public deputations are now allowed at Cabinet meetings. All councillors get access to documents previously restricted by committee membership. Written questions can be asked at any time, not just at meetings.
Labour get the chairs of three committees and nearly half the ordinary seats. Grimston sits on the GP Committee. This is a settlement, not a takeover.
What is still missing
The £1 million transparency threshold stays, though the gap below it is partially addressed. The monitoring role (who checks the constitution is actually being followed) was transferred to officers by Labour and has not been restored. The doubled motions deadline is still in force.
Grimston also named a members’ charter as one of his three conditions, a code of behaviour actively policed by the two group leaders. The budget review is happening. The constitutional changes are in the agreement. The charter is not.
The changes Grimston extracted are real and welcome. But with one exception (allowing all councillors access to all council documents) they are a reversion, not a reform. They return Wandsworth to where it was before Labour changed things, rather than where a modern, digital democracy could be.
It is worth noting that just four miles away, sharing the same chief executive and senior officer team, Richmond Council has built something significantly more open.
Richmond does it better. Here’s how.
Richmond Council moved to a full committee system in 2019. The committees there are not a scrutiny layer; they are the decision-makers. Any resident can register to speak at any committee meeting by noon the day before. Any resident can ask a question at Full Council. Thirty minutes every meeting is set aside for it.
Under Labour’s Wandsworth rules, a resident who wanted to address a committee had to organise a group of at least six people, make a formal written request, and accept five minutes, usually after the decision had already been made.
Both councils are run by the same chief executive. Andrew Travers runs Richmond and Wandsworth. The difference was not resources or capacity. It was a political choice.
The new Wandsworth agreement is a real improvement. But Wandsworth remains a Cabinet-led council, and July will show how far the Conservatives are willing to go.
Review of the review
On 22 July, we will update the ledger above with what actually passes. We will note what is still missing.
The deal renews every May. If it delivers, Grimston’s support in 2027 follows. If it doesn’t, he holds the same card again.
The extraordinary council meeting on 22 July is open to the public. Details and papers will be published at democracy.wandsworth.gov.uk. Scrutiny committees resume from 22 July; under the new agreement, members of the public will be able to register to speak. To contact your ward councillors, visit the democracy portal or the council’s councillor directory.
I still say – why are we running local government on a party basis? Party whips at local level is ludicrous.
I agree with this, Amanda. Although I greatly prefer Labour to the Conservatives in general I wasn’t impressed by their 4 years and Hogg was a total disaster. Will things improve? I hope so, though I’m not betting on it.
And thank you to Kieren for this report.