Lest we forget: how Hammersmith Tories were cocking up the borough last January

If a week is a long time in politics, twelve months is an age. We look here at the mess that Hammersmith & Fulham Tory council was already making of our borough in January 2011, as reported by HFConwatch.

• The council votes to cut nearly £7 million from children's services, including £3.2 million from early years support, taking funding from nine out of 15 Sure Start early-years centres and making 50 jobs redundant at a cost of £600,000. 

• The council's Housing Director, Nick Johnson, is named "Retiree of the Year" in Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs Awards 2010 after receiving over half a million pounds of H&F taxpayers' money for his services, following his retirement from Bexley council with a £50,000 pension on grounds of ill health.

• As Andrew Lansley launches his NHS shake-up, the Hammersmith Tory Party's £50,000 links to a private healthcare millionaire are revealed. 

• The Refugee Council describes as "deplorable" the council's plans to eject 22 charities "supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society" from Palingswick House in Hammersmith to make way for the West London Free School.

• HFConwatch exposes the Tories' plans not to give the Bryony Centre to the Cambridge School for children with special needs but to give the centre to the West London Free School instead until Palingswick House is ready (in the end, the Cambridge School did get the Bryony Centre and the WLFS moved into Cambridge's vacated premises).

• The Tories go back on an agreement with Hammersmith's Irish Centre to extend its lease to 2017, aiming to sell it off in April 2012 instead. 6,000 people sign a petition against this. 

• As the economy contracts, a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses reveals that Hammersmith council is failing to engage properly with local business. 

And one piece of good news: five years after Labour did the deal, it is announced the Hammersmith Academy will finally open in September.