The quality of services offered by Richmond Council will not be affected by a merger with Wandsworth, said council leader Lord True.

On Friday, it was announced the two councils would merge back office staff from March 2017 to each save about £10m-a-year.

Under the proposals, both councils would share Wandsworth’s current chief executive, Paul Martin, and Richmond’s director of finance and corporate services, Mark Maidment, would be appointed deputy chief executive and director of resources.

Richmond had originally planned to merge services with Kingston Council under the Thames Agreement, but talks were suspended in December.

Lord True, leader of Richmond Council, told the Richmond and Twickenham Times what happened after it became apparent the Thames Agreement with Kingston would not progress and how the merger would affect residents in the borough.

How did the merger idea come together?

We already share education with Kingston and legal services with Merton. All over the country, local authorities are coming together to cut the back office to protect frontline services. That is a necessary thing to do.

I had spoken to Kingston before the last election and it seemed logical we should try and form a relationship with them and in July, we were trying to bring our services together.

Why did the proposals with Kingston break down and how did Wandsworth get involved?

Richmond and Twickenham Times:

After months of negotiations, it became clear to me and both sides, there were differences in view about how this should be done, so in December after months of negotiations, we decided to break off the talks with Kingston.

At that time we said both authorities would be free to look at other approaches. I hadn’t talked to anyone apart from Kingston but we were both approached by Wandsworth in about July. That was at the time the Thames Agreement was in action. I said to him [Ravi Govindia, leader of Wandsworth Council] at the time ‘sorry no’.

We want to work with anyone who could cut costs but we were committed to Kingston. Ravi Govindia said the door would be open if we wanted to work with them.

By the middle of November, it became clear the talks were becoming difficult and likely to fail. On November 24, I did ask the chief executive [Gillian Norton] to explore if the Thames Agreement didn’t work out, whether anybody would be interested.

We had the approach in July and it was clear they were still interested and I asked her to explore that further. When the Thames Agreement broke down we were in a position of knowing Wandsworth would be ready to do business with us. 

From Saturday: Richmond and Wandsworth councils merger "should trigger referendum", says Richmond's opposition leader

This provided a contrast to negotiations with Kingston because we and Wandsworth shared a view of what would be the best way of doing this, which is to share a chief executive. If we are bringing two organisations together, we have to have a single person who sees this as how it has to be done. We have found it quite easy in contrast to the previous talks that we will have a single management structure.

We conclude the shared chief executive model was correct and we hadn’t been able to agree that management structure with Kingston, but that is not the only reason for failure.

We are at a different stage of development if you like. We have had four years in administration and they [Kingston] have a new administration and we fully understand and respect the leader of Kingston’s view about how he wants to be served and supported. I think he is a good leader and will do a good job for Kingston.

How much will the merger save?

We think we will be able to save £10m a year for each council - Wandsworth will save more because they are a larger council.

Richmond works with Kingston on Achieving for Children - will that change?

For education, we had intended to create a social enterprise from our children services department which we hoped would be able to offer its service to areas of London where children are less fortunate. Then Kingston ran in to trouble with their children’s services and were put under special measures by government. We agreed at that time to extended Achieving for Children to help Kingston out. The negotiations took over a year and even though it was a Liberal Democrat council, it was a token of being a good partner.

I don’t see any reason why it [the merger] should affect Achieving for Children at all. I call it a social enterprise and I see no reason for that to change. Both I and Ravi Govindia both hope that we can include Kingston [in other aspects of sharing] in the future.

What do you think of the calls for a referendum by leader of the opposition, Councillor Stephen Knight?

Richmond and Twickenham Times:

I think it is a ridiculous suggestion. We have a promise to share services with other local authorities. Eventually every authority in the county will be doing that. In the residents’ survey, a huge amount [74 per cent] of people agreed with doing that. We will still be separate councils and services will still be delivered in the Richmond way. If we held a referendum to cut backline services, I know what the answer would be. We won’t be run by Wandsworth, we will still be Richmond.

We will run the council according to local people’s needs and that will stay the philosophy. I don’t think people are inferior because of where they live. People who live in Tooting have the same aspiration as those who live on Richmond Green. We are in many ways different from some parts of Wandsworth but I think we have to put that sort of thing aside. We have differences in our own boroughs. It is a slightly unfortunate view to take. I believe we are in a public service to improve life for everybody.

Wandsworth has a low rate of council tax whereas Richmond is quite high - what will happen to that after the merger?

It won’t be affected. The councils will continue to be separate, the level of council tax is based on how much we get from Government. Wandsworth gets a lot of grant from government whereas we don’t. That is not going to change. I can’t promise council take will be going down as we don’t get the money from Government. I would love to have lower council tax. The time I have been leader, we have frozen council tax and will do the same for the coming year. Not every council in London can say that.

What is of concern to the public and me is the quality of services they get. When the rubbish is collected and recycling take away, the public aren’t really concerned where the head office is. Their concern is they get good service. When we have shared management with Wandsworth, people won’t worry very much if the manager sits in the office in Putney of Twickenham - they just want good service.