Wandsworth Council will soon have a new leader if an expected challenge from with its majority Labour group to current group and council leader Simon Hogg is successful, with a decision likely to be made at a meeting scheduled to take place later this month.
Sources say Hogg’s fellow Labour councillors Kate Stock and Rex Osborn have been seeking support in advance of the group’s annual general meeting, due to take place on 22 April, though it may be that only one of them eventually stands in the election for group leader. Neither have so far responded to On London‘s attempts to contact them.
Stock is Hogg’s fellow representative of Wandsworth’s Falconbrook ward and the council’s cabinet member for children, and Osborn represents Tooting Broadway ward and chairs the council’s general purposes committee.
In May 2022, Hogg led Labour to its first victory in Wandsworth since 1974, depriving the Conservatives of a borough that had long been one of their London and national flagship local authorities.
Labour currently has 34 councillors compared to the Conservatives’ 23, and one Independent. The Tories are hoping to regain control at the next full borough elections in May 2026. London by-elections since the general election last July have seen Labour losing support.
Under Hogg’s leadership, the council has continued the Conservatives’ tradition of setting low Council Tax rates, and will charge Band D households £990 in total for the financial year 20025/26 – the capital’s lowest. It has claimed success for its Cleaner Borough Plan, saying this has increased recycling and enabled more money to be spent on cleaning services, and promoted “active travel”, with more road space being allocated for exclusive bicycle use. It was chosen by Sir Sadiq Khan to be London Borough of Culture for 2025.
On housing policy, the council has recently proposed changes to its Local Plan, which it argues would result in private developers providing greater numbers of homes for social rent, though this has been opposed by City Hall, which has argued that it would have the opposite effect.
Wandsworth has recently been criticised by the Regulator of Social Housing, which found “serious failings” in its duty to meet legally-required health and safety standards for tenants, such as around 40 per cent of its 17,000 social rented homes not having had an electrical safety test and almost 1,800 “overdue fire safety remedial actions”. The regulator also found that Wandsworth “does not have up to date information on the condition of most of its homes”.
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