Wandsworth Council charges residents in a band-D property just £961 this year, yet it's still opening libraries and launching 'skip days' - many across the UK might be looking and wondering: how can we get the same service?
By 10am, the Larch Close skip has already taken in half a dozen mattresses, multiple sofas and at least four broken printers. “It works really well,” says local resident Jenny . “It saves you driving to Wandsworth skip, so it’s environmentally friendly and it prompts people to bin things.
“We have something of a unique ecosystem in one sense – I couldn’t just walk into another council and say, ‘look, do it this way and you’ll be able to cut your council tax by three quarters like that’,” he explains. “That’s just not how it works … we’re very fortunate to have the financial muscle we do.”Unpicking the apparent miracle of Wandsworth turns out to involve more than a century of the borough’s particular history, as well as a look under the hood of how local government works.
That desire, particularly under Thatcher, to show there was a “new” Tory way to run local government set Wandsworth up to succeed, according to local government expert Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics and Political Science . In other words, after a period in which Thatcher had publicly clashed with “loony left” Labour-run councils in London, ministers could have one eye on how to reward London councils that were likelier to vote Conservative and run an agenda more favourable to them – without the changes to grants that were having much impact on councils out of London.
“So, bills would go down in the north as they go up in most of London: the money would then just travel up the M1.”London councils are at an advantage versus most others, but Wandsworth has also played its hand well. The council is known for managing its private contractors efficiently, and shares almost all of its back-office functions with neighbouring Richmond – reducing the costs of both, even though one is Labour-run and the other Lib Dem.
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