Wandsworth Conservatives closed down the council’s scrutiny committees at last night’s annual meeting of the council.
These committees examine the council’s policies and performance, and give councillors a chance to hear from residents and community groups.
In a paper published an hour before the meeting, the new Conservative Administration suspended the Health, Housing, Children’s, Finance and Transport Committee meetings scheduled to take place next month.
Labour councillors were not consulted on the changes – which now put all scrutiny in the hands of a new committee which has only Conservative councillors on it.
Wandsworth Council is in No Overall Control following the election earlier this month, with 28 Labour councillors, 29 Conservative and 1 independent.
Labour chief whip Jo Rigby told the meeting:
“The Labour Group cannot vote for this committee paper. For one, it arrived late this afternoon. The first time our team saw it was on the chairs in this meeting. It involves changes to the constitution that we need to run through legal advice, not be rushed into signing like a Tenerife timeshare.
This council is in No Overall Control. We’ve not been consulted on these changes to our shared constitution.
They were hurriedly given to officers for us to make a Group decision on while we’re getting ready to come here tonight.
We have provided names for the usual scrutiny committees and we are ready to serve on them.
However these proposals suspend these committees and we don’t know how things will be scrutinised. We are ready work with the opposition, including councillor Grimston, to discuss and design the best constitution for our residents.”
The future of the scrutiny committees remains unclear, with any reinstatement unlikely to be possible before September or October. These committees have been at the heart of Wandsworth’s democracy for decades and their suspension is unfair.