Wandsworth council tax challenge: Tories instruct lawyers over 40% funding cut

The Conservative Party has instructed lawyers over what it describes as a Wandsworth council tax challenge, after central government cuts of 40% to the borough’s funding forced the council to propose a 94% rise in council tax. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch announced the legal move during an appearance on BBC Two’s Newsnight, telling presenter Matt Chorley that the Government appears to be redistributing money away from areas that do not vote Labour.

Badenoch said: ‘I think it is outrageous that Wandsworth Council is having to put up council tax. But they’re not doing it because they want to. It is because the government has taken away 40% of their funding. So we have actually instructed lawyers, as the Conservative Party, to see if we can challenge the Government on this decision.’

What the Wandsworth council tax challenge actually means for residents

The scale of the proposed increase is stark. According to Wandsworth Council, a Band D property could see its council tax rise by £958 if government funding is not restored. That is not a marginal adjustment: it is the kind of sum that changes household budgets overnight.

Wandsworth has historically kept its council tax among the lowest in London, so the base figure is lower than in comparable boroughs. The Government’s position, at least as implied by the funding settlement, is that this headroom makes a large percentage rise more manageable in practice. Badenoch rejected that framing directly: ‘Just because on average it’s lower than somewhere else doesn’t mean that people are going to be able to afford it. Families have budgets.’

The council itself describes the situation as its most serious financial challenge in decades. Wandsworth Conservatives have put the resulting shortfall at £137 million, a gap that has driven the proposed council tax increase as the primary mechanism for protecting local services.

How Wandsworth was granted powers to raise council tax beyond the normal cap

Under normal rules, councils in England cannot increase council tax by more than 5% without holding a local referendum. Wandsworth is one of a small number of councils that have been granted what the Government calls ‘funding realignment powers’, which allow them to exceed that threshold over a two-year period. It is this mechanism that makes a 94% rise legally possible, even if politically contentious.

Badenoch used the comparison with welfare spending to sharpen her argument. ‘Andy Burnham has not found 40% of anything to cut, but he’s asking Wandsworth to do that. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that’s right.’ She added that the Conservative Party ‘would never’ cut a council’s budget by 40% on the grounds that its residents were voting for the opposition.

The wider principle Badenoch is asserting is straightforward: that local government funding should be allocated according to need, not according to how an area votes. ‘Right now it’s about the principle of it: that you don’t just take money from areas because they’re not voting for you and give them elsewhere. That’s the principle that we are challenging,’ she said.

Wandsworth’s political history adds context. The borough was Conservative-run from 1978 to 2022, when control passed to Labour. At this year’s local elections, the council ended up with no overall control, with the Conservatives as the largest party on 29 councillors to Labour’s 28. The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been contacted for comment on the funding settlement and the legal challenge.

Whether the lawyers find firm legal ground remains to be determined, but the political pressure is already building: a £137 million shortfall and a potential £958 annual bill for Band D households are not abstractions residents can easily set aside.