Local democracy: Is Lewisham Council making it harder for residents to be heard?

As we approach council elections on the 7^th May, many councillors will be saying they are keen to hear from the public as they canvass for support.

However, it is a reasonable question to ask whether Lewisham council has been listening to the public over the last four years.

Sadly, there is some evidence that it is becoming more difficult for members of the public to be heard. 

End to public questions at March Full Council meetings   

In a sudden departure from previous practice, the public will be excluded from being heard at the March Full Council meeting. 

From now on, no public questions will be allowed at this meeting, despite the fact that public questions have been an agenda item of similar Full Council meetings for many years.

Nor will councillors be permitted to ask questions or raise any issues on anything unrelated to the budget, and if you want your councillor to present a petition at the Full Council, forget it - that will not be possible either.

Councillors approved the changes to Lewisham Council’s constitution at the AGM in May 2025.

Green Party councillor Hau-Yu Tam, the sole opposition councillor at the time, was the only councillor to oppose the changes.

She raised concerns that the changes would make it more difficult for the public and councillors themselves to ask questions.

Lewisham's Constitution, Part 4. Rules of Procedure now states:

3.2 At the relevant ordinary meeting of the Council when the Council’s Budget and Council Tax is approved and set, the agenda will be limited to consideration of the budget report, including the Mayor and Cabinet’s recommendations for the Budget, Capital Programme, Borrowing Policy and Council Tax together with any items the Proper Officer, in consultation with the Speaker, has agreed be taken as urgent.

The given reason for the change in arrangements is that this is the meeting when the council’s Budget is finally agreed.

However, the council’s Budget was passed in previous years without any problems, despite including the items that are now being dropped, indeed last year’s Full Council meeting ended at 9.05 pm – hardly an unreasonable hour.

So why the change? Could it possibly be because the March Full Council meeting is just a few weeks before local elections?

Perhaps the thought of awkward public questions being asked is just too much for some councillors to stomach? 

The end of local assemblies

The revised constitution also sealed the fate of Lewisham’s ward-level local assemblies.

They were created back in 2007, with the objective that they would be a vehicle for local empowerment where local concerns were heard and communities allowed to engage in the solutions - including having influence over funding decisions.

The council put forward two arguments for their sudden abolition. Firstly, it was said that those who engaged with the local assemblies were not truly representative of the social composition of each ward, and secondly that financial savings had to be found and their annual cost (about £200,000) could no longer be justified.  

Sadly, no consideration was given to addressing why local assemblies were not fully representative of each ward.  

As for their cost, it is bit rich to be lectured about this when our previous Mayor of Lewisham, Damian Egan, departed the borough less than two years into his four year term of office, creating a hefty bill for council taxpayers of £635,000 – a sum that would have funded ward assemblies for three years. 

Councillor casework

One measure of how councillors engage with the public is the level of casework they undertake.

It is of course only one specific aspect of a councillors’ role, and councillors may be responding to issues raised by their constituents, without this becoming casework. And some councillors have said in the past that they are doing casework, but not recording it on the system.

But the low levels of recorded casework undertaken by some councillors must raise questions about the accessibility and responsiveness of our elected councillors.   

Response to FOIs

The final indicator of how local people have been excluded from decision making is the council's historic refusal to provide answers to freedom of information requests.

Three years ago Lewisham Council was served with an Enforcement Notice by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), following its poor performance in meeting its statutory duties under the Freedom of Information Act.

It was revealed that at the end of 2022, the total number of overdue requests was 338, with a staggering 221 over 12 months old.

At the time of the Enforcement Notice, the ICO made this comment about Lewisham Council:

“By failing to respond to these requests, Lewisham Council is keeping hundreds of people in the dark about information they have a right to ask for. People need to have confidence in the decisions being made by their local authority and this council’s failure to comply with the law erodes trust in democracy and open government. 

“This is our second FoI enforcement notice in recent months, and I hope it is clear that we will be taking action when public authorities fail to be transparent and accountable.” 

Of course, not everything is dire in Lewisham. There are certainly some hard-working councillors and there are also councillors who make good use of social media to engage with local people.

The Lewisham Young Mayor is an important initiative which aims to ensure that the voices of young people are heard.

However, the trends in the last few years cannot be ignored. Looked at in the round, and with the impacts of the changed constitution gradually emerging this year, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Lewisham residents are increasingly excluded from being heard.

Mark Morris was a Liberal Democrat councillor for Downham ward on Lewisham Council from 2002 to 2009.

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