Hamish Adourian is a former councillor for Earl’s Court Ward in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
The morning after the local elections in May, I woke to the news I’d been dreading: all three Earl’s Court ward seats had gone yellow. I hadn’t been standing again myself, my growing family and I had just moved out of RBKC, but after eight years, two terms, thousands of emails, countless late meetings, planning battles, licensing rows and street-level campaigns, it still felt personal. Not because I thought the ward belonged to us. It didn’t. But because I knew how much work had gone into holding that ground.
With a bit of distance from it all, I’ve had a chance to reflect. A few caveats first. RBKC remains one of only a handful of Conservative councils in London, and Earl’s Court is hardly representative of Middle England. And RBKC is still living with the shadow of Grenfell, which shaped decisions and processes throughout my time.
I was first elected in 2018, one of two Conservatives in a split ward, the third seat held by a well-known Lib Dem activist. There were training sessions when I arrived. But what nobody told me was how to actually get things done. Here I was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor in my senior colleague, the late, much-missed Malcolm Spalding. He knew how to get hold of TfL, how to push initiatives across departments, and had simple things like contact details for local housing associations that officers wouldn’t share, invoking the then-recently arrived GDPR regime as if it were a spell that could make awkward requests disappear.
If you are now expecting me to say officers were all obstructive ideologues, I’m going to disappoint you. Yes, there were those with an agenda, and yes, some who thought they knew best and treated councillors as an inconvenience. But here’s the thing – these were a minority. Mostly, they were just people doing a job – some passionate, some not, some at it for twenty years and taking pride in knowing their patch, some just as frustrated with ‘the system’ as anyone else.
The trick is to be clear in your own mind what you want to achieve – a street scheme, public planting, a Sunday market, an increased cleaning budget – and then be relentlessly persistent. Being told something isn’t possible is usually a starting point, not an ending. And even when officers do say yes, that’s only half the battle: proposals have a habit of being agreed in principle and then quietly stalling. Keep your priorities clear, maintain cabinet member support, and treat officers with respect (not to be confused with deference). The machine is slow to get moving, but once it does, it can move surprisingly fast. Pick fewer battles, be ruthless about the ones that matter, and never mistake a yes for a done.
Much of the job, though, is actually about stopping things: a poorly thought-out parking change, a bad planning application, a proposal to remove a well-used bin. None of these arrives with a warning sign, so no ‘routine’ email from officers can be overlooked, no key decision notice skipped over, and no application waved through unscrutinised, the origin of more than a few 5am starts. Sure, scrutiny committees and full council meetings serve a purpose, a well-timed question can help shift a policy, but they are not where the real work gets done.
In Earl’s Court, anti-social behaviour, much of it drug-related, dominated my eight years more than anything else, though the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre redevelopment and the health of the Earl’s Court Road high street were not far behind. Dealing with ASB required sustained effort, building working relationships with the police, housing associations, the NHS, and recovery hostels — often with the Lib Dems pulling in a different direction or just competing to see who could shout the loudest. It was also a constant test of whether local government could be made to respond to the reality residents were experiencing. Residents do not care about departmental or agency boundaries. They care that a drug user is passed out outside their front door. One of the councillor’s jobs is to stop the system using its own complexity as an excuse.
The same was true of inappropriate planning and licensing applications, each one essentially its own campaign. Register to oppose. Make sure residents know you’re opposing and why. Help them with objection letters. And when the council rejects it, make clear who fought for that outcome. The Lib Dems understand visibility better than almost anyone in local politics: residents often remember who told them about a decision, not who secured it. They are also skilled at presenting partisan positions through ostensibly ‘non-political’ community groups. Conservatives should not retreat from those spaces or allow dubious calls to “take the politics out of things” to prevent us setting out openly what we believe.
The hardest part of my second term was doing it alone – sole Conservative in the ward, full-time job, young family. Some weeks brought consecutive evening council meetings on top of surgeries, RA meetings, calls with officers and site visits. Sure, I signed up for this – I’m not complaining – but if we keep saying we want councillors (or MPs) with real-world experience, we need to accept they come with real-world commitments. In my case, what helped was a fantastic ward committee. Regular contact, strategic discussion, fellow Conservatives who could share the mental load and help run campaigns. Not every association can offer that, and the disparity is worth taking seriously.
So what of conservatism in all this? Is there such a thing as local conservatism, let alone in a place like inner-London? I think there is, and it isn’t just a blue rosette and saying we manage money better than the others. It is about believing the built environment matters. That civic pride is worth fostering. That high streets are more than retail units. That residents should be able to sleep, walk to the station, raise children, and run businesses in streets that feel cared for. That public order is never, ever, a side issue.
But all this requires Conservatives to actually govern. And governing is a discipline. It is not the same as activism. It is not the same as campaigning, though they do go hand in hand. It means learning how the system works, deciding what you want to change, building alliances, reading the paperwork, taking residents seriously, and sticking with a problem even when the outrage has faded.
Losing Earl’s Court hurt. It should hurt. But I would do it all over again. If you are thinking about standing: go in with your eyes open. It’s harder than it looks, more bureaucratic than you’d like, and more worthwhile than the cynics will tell you. The only way to make conservatism real at street level is to show up and keep showing up, long after the leaflets have been delivered.