Cllr James Craig is a newly elected councillor for Northcote Ward on Wandsworth Council, and Chairman of the Battersea Conservatives.
In May 2026, I was elected to Wandsworth Council for the first time. It should have been an unambiguously happy day. We wrestled back control of the council from Labour by just 16 votes, after four gruelling years in opposition, and my ward colleague and I won our own ward with a significantly increased majority. It was the culmination of years of hard work.
But as the jubilation of winning subsided, reality quickly took hold. That’s because, upon our victory, we knew we’d have to deal with the greatest challenge to our finances in the Council’s history. We inherited a budget that was overspending by £53m a year by the outgoing Labour administration and a savage £84m cut in funding from the national Labour Government. There’s a reason our manifesto was titled “Rising to the Challenge”.
In November 2025, the Government published its response to the Fair Funding Review 2.0 – a consultation on redistributing grant funding for councils in England to ‘more deprived’ areas of the country.
Supporters of the resulting reforms argue that councils serving areas with greater deprivation require proportionally greater support. While few would dispute that deprivation should be recognised in the funding formula, the Government’s current approach will effectively penalise councils that have managed finances prudently over the long term.
For instance, the new policy of council tax equalisation assumes every council charges the average level of council tax. It might make sense on paper, but the reality is that it is a policy tailor-made to punish historically efficient councils.
Wandsworth is famous – in so far as it’s possible for a council to be famous – for pioneering the Thatcherite revolution in municipal government. It was among one of the first councils to put services out to tender to the private sector, to implement ‘right to buy’, and was the first to truly apply a business-like mindset to governing – emphasising value-for-money above all. The result was a rate of council tax that was often the lowest in the entire country.
Right now, council tax for a Band D property in Wandsworth is £1,020. This figure reflects decades of prudent financial management from 1978-2022, sadly interrupted by the Labour interregnum of 2022-26.
But the Labour Government doesn’t see it that way. To them, Wandsworth is a source of great, untapped wealth. A piggy bank waiting to be raided. We already contribute more via income tax than Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds combined – but the Government wants even more.
And so, the Government has proceeded to slash grant funding to Wandsworth by a staggering 40 per cent. At the same time, they gave us and several other councils in similar positions the power to make uncapped tax rises until 2028. They did so knowing that the only way to offset this brutal loss in funds was to hike council tax far in excess of the 5 per cent limit that would normally trigger a local referendum.
With incredibly heavy hearts, last month we announced that unless the Government changed its policy, Wandsworth would have to raise council tax by 94 per cent. That Band D property paying £1,020 now might have to pay £1,978 next year. And that’s after we’ve found savings of £79m a year from the last Labour administration’s fiscally illiterate spending plans.
It is often said that to govern is to choose. Our Labour opponents at Wandsworth Town Hall would have residents believe that the choice in front of us is to raise tax, or not raise tax. The choice is actually between fiscal consolidation, or bankruptcy followed by appointment of government commissioners, and total financial ruin.
The only way for us to avoid these hikes is for the Government to change course. And that is exactly what we are asking them to do.
Wandsworth, alongside other affected councils, are challenging them using the Sustainable Communities Act 2007. This gives us a mechanism to survey residents and submit alternative proposals for the Government to formally consider.
We’re not asking for unfair treatment. We’re asking not to be singled out for punishment by a socialist government that wants to disincentivise efficiency. Why should we only be getting £234 per resident when Tower Hamlets receives £623, Newham gets £629, and Hackney, a whopping £699?
It is a legal requirement for a council to set a balanced budget. When they don’t, disaster follows. Liverpool under Militant in the 1980s provides a stark example: taxis scurrying around the city handing out termination papers to council employees.
Unfortunately in Wandsworth’s case, such a scenario would not be enough. Our budget deficit is greater than the entire staffing budget. Taxis could take papers to the houses of every council member of staff, and yet we’d still go bankrupt.
The Government still has time to change course. I urge it to do so before our most vulnerable residents bear the consequences of this disastrous policy. It will be up to Wandsworth Conservatives to rise to the challenge of restoring the Council’s finances and protecting residents, come what may.
Cllr James Craig is a newly elected councillor for Northcote Ward on Wandsworth Council, and Chairman of the Battersea Conservatives.
In May 2026, I was elected to Wandsworth Council for the first time. It should have been an unambiguously happy day. We wrestled back control of the council from Labour by just 16 votes, after four gruelling years in opposition, and my ward colleague and I won our own ward with a significantly increased majority. It was the culmination of years of hard work.
But as the jubilation of winning subsided, reality quickly took hold. That’s because, upon our victory, we knew we’d have to deal with the greatest challenge to our finances in the Council’s history. We inherited a budget that was overspending by £53m a year by the outgoing Labour administration and a savage £84m cut in funding from the national Labour Government. There’s a reason our manifesto was titled “Rising to the Challenge”.
In November 2025, the Government published its response to the Fair Funding Review 2.0 – a consultation on redistributing grant funding for councils in England to ‘more deprived’ areas of the country.
Supporters of the resulting reforms argue that councils serving areas with greater deprivation require proportionally greater support. While few would dispute that deprivation should be recognised in the funding formula, the Government’s current approach will effectively penalise councils that have managed finances prudently over the long term.
For instance, the new policy of council tax equalisation assumes every council charges the average level of council tax. It might make sense on paper, but the reality is that it is a policy tailor-made to punish historically efficient councils.
Wandsworth is famous – in so far as it’s possible for a council to be famous – for pioneering the Thatcherite revolution in municipal government. It was among one of the first councils to put services out to tender to the private sector, to implement ‘right to buy’, and was the first to truly apply a business-like mindset to governing – emphasising value-for-money above all. The result was a rate of council tax that was often the lowest in the entire country.
Right now, council tax for a Band D property in Wandsworth is £1,020. This figure reflects decades of prudent financial management from 1978-2022, sadly interrupted by the Labour interregnum of 2022-26.
But the Labour Government doesn’t see it that way. To them, Wandsworth is a source of great, untapped wealth. A piggy bank waiting to be raided. We already contribute more via income tax than Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds combined – but the Government wants even more.
And so, the Government has proceeded to slash grant funding to Wandsworth by a staggering 40 per cent. At the same time, they gave us and several other councils in similar positions the power to make uncapped tax rises until 2028. They did so knowing that the only way to offset this brutal loss in funds was to hike council tax far in excess of the 5 per cent limit that would normally trigger a local referendum.
With incredibly heavy hearts, last month we announced that unless the Government changed its policy, Wandsworth would have to raise council tax by 94 per cent. That Band D property paying £1,020 now might have to pay £1,978 next year. And that’s after we’ve found savings of £79m a year from the last Labour administration’s fiscally illiterate spending plans.
It is often said that to govern is to choose. Our Labour opponents at Wandsworth Town Hall would have residents believe that the choice in front of us is to raise tax, or not raise tax. The choice is actually between fiscal consolidation, or bankruptcy followed by appointment of government commissioners, and total financial ruin.
The only way for us to avoid these hikes is for the Government to change course. And that is exactly what we are asking them to do.
Wandsworth, alongside other affected councils, are challenging them using the Sustainable Communities Act 2007. This gives us a mechanism to survey residents and submit alternative proposals for the Government to formally consider.
We’re not asking for unfair treatment. We’re asking not to be singled out for punishment by a socialist government that wants to disincentivise efficiency. Why should we only be getting £234 per resident when Tower Hamlets receives £623, Newham gets £629, and Hackney, a whopping £699?
It is a legal requirement for a council to set a balanced budget. When they don’t, disaster follows. Liverpool under Militant in the 1980s provides a stark example: taxis scurrying around the city handing out termination papers to council employees.
Unfortunately in Wandsworth’s case, such a scenario would not be enough. Our budget deficit is greater than the entire staffing budget. Taxis could take papers to the houses of every council member of staff, and yet we’d still go bankrupt.
The Government still has time to change course. I urge it to do so before our most vulnerable residents bear the consequences of this disastrous policy. It will be up to Wandsworth Conservatives to rise to the challenge of restoring the Council’s finances and protecting residents, come what may.