"Scare-mongering"? Wandsworth Guardian explains basis for £54m funding gap article

Within a few hours, Wandsworth Council responded with a press release on the news section of its website, accusing us of ignoring them in favour of a good headline and scare-mongering.

Our article was based on publicly available documents published on the Wandsworth Council website and written after attempts to garner an official response from them.

The funding gap figure is found in an audit report published by PWC.

Read the audit report here.

The council tax figures come from a budget book report, which shows how much more council tax funding would be needed in the next two years to meet that shortfall and accordingly how much council tax per household would have to be.

Read the budget book here.

We worked out that the jump from £683.42 to £1,145.88 was 67 per cent - 75 per cent in the first year, and then a further 27 per cent from 2016/17 to 2017/18.

These figures appear in the same report.

Before Christmas, the Wandsworth Guardian spoke to Councillor Guy Senior, cabinet member for finance, about the effect the Government grant cut would have on the budget. He said he was optimistic about the future and even hoped the council could be self-funded through council tax and business rates.

He also told us there would be a further update in January.

The Wandsworth Guardian contacted Coun Senior on Monday, February 1, by email to request a time to talk to him about the reports.

Reporter Rebecca Taylor was in the office until 6.30pm on both Monday and Tuesday, and no call was received from Councillor Senior. He did not respond to the email.

Before Christmas, Coun Senior called Miss Taylor on a withheld number, so his email address was the only contact.

On Tuesday, Miss Taylor called Council Leader Ravi Govindia twice, leaving a message detailing her request to speak about council tax, the budgets and a separate matter.

No response was received, so we got in touch with the press office to ask when we could speak to Coun Govindia.

This was the response we received.

Although the response did not address any specific questions we had raised, what detail was provided was woven into our article to provide balance.

The Wandsworth Guardian did everything it could to speak with the councillors about documents readily available to the public online.

Upon publication Wandsworth Council then demanded we delete the article "on the grounds that it's untrue a tax hike of this size is being considered".

Nowhere in the article do we state that such a rise is being considered. The article states that council officers have identified there is a huge budget gap, and that council tax would have to be raised by 67 per cent in order to plug this gap. The article makes it clear the Coun Govindia is not willing to comment on specifics, but cutting services and finding "efficiencies" will feature in the council’s plans.

We refused to pull an article designed to inform our readers of the facts that will be placed before their elected officials when they come to set the next budget. Rather than discuss this position further with us, the council issued its release.

It stated:

At no stage did the council formally tell us there would not be a council tax rise, despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Nor did Cllr Senior respond to Miss Taylor's questions on the subject.