The council's community bosses have been forced to send an embarrassing letter of apology to voluntary groups around the borough, months after making unsubstantiated claims against two respected service leaders.
The gaffe dates back to June, when Hammersmith and Fulham Council decided to close down the Carers Centre in Hammersmith Road and accused its chair, Kamaljit Kaur, and chief executive, Harbhajan Purewal, of having a personal interest in the centre's contract being continued.
A letter sent out at the time to MPs, councillors and voluntary organisations made a number of allegations, including the false claim that Ms Kaur, who is herself a councillor in Hounslow, was the sister of a man who stood to gain financially from the deal.
It came in the wake of a vocal campaign by the Carer's Centre against the authority's plan to sell off their building and bring services back in-house.
On Friday the authors of that letter – the council's community service leader, Joe Carlebach, and director of community services, James Reilly – sent another to the original recipients apologising for the slur.
It said: "We wrote the letter in good faith and based on the information which we had at that time. It now transpires that there had been a misunderstanding of familial relationships.
"We now fully accept that Ms Purewal and Ms Kaur had no personal or personal financial interest in the bid and that they did not compromise their professional roles.
"We wish to apologise unreservedly to Ms Purewal and Ms Kaur for the embarrassment they have experienced."
The accusations contained in the original letter were raised in Parliament in July, when Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter accused the local authority of being 'out of control and behaving in a highly improper way'.
The council's opposition leader, Stephen Cowan, said the false accusation levelled against the Carer's Centre leaders was the worst example of the council 'seeking to smear people when they raise legitimate concerns about the cuts'.
He said: "I'm going to call for a full investigation into how not just a cabinet politician but a senior director of the council become involved in such obvious defamation of two innocent people. It's indicative of how propaganda and smear has seeped into the DNA of how this council operates."
Mr Reilly is understood to have left his post at the council last month.
