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Grieving Mattey accuses LibDems of ‘weaponising’ complaints

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The Sutton Council administration’s most vocal critic is to be hauled before a ‘kangaroo court’, at a time when he is organising his mother’s funeral. Report by CARL SHILTON

Targeted: independent  councillor Nick Mattey

Senior officials at Liberal Democrat-controlled Sutton Council are insisting on staging a disciplinary hearing later this month for a complaint raised against an independent councillor over incidents that date back nearly seven years.

Nick Mattey has been a councillor for Beddington North ward since 2014 and has been a constant thorn in the side of the LibDems ever since he quit the party after he acted as a whistle-blower and exposed their plans to push through the vast, polluting incinerator at Beddington Lane.

Mattey has been the subject of a spree of formal complaints from LibDem councillors in the past 18 months, which have mostly been dismissed. But the council’s monitoring officer, the most senior legal official at the authority, Tim Martin, is insisting that Mattey faces a Standards Committee hearing on December 12.

Mattey says he will refuse to attend, as he is coping with the death of his mother and busy arranging her funeral.

He also says that he has filed his own counter-complaints which have not been dealt with by Martin but are relevant to the case.

Ombudsman complaint: council monitoring officer Tim Martin and Sutton CEO Helen Bailey have been reported to the Local Government Ombudsman

Martin is known not to be entirely trusted by Sutton’s opposition councillors, from the Conservative, Labour and independent groups, who see him as being too closely aligned to the LibDem group. Martin has arranged for Mattey’s hearing panel to comprise two LibDems and a single opposition councillor.

“It’s a kangaroo court,” was the view of one councillor.

“It can’t possibly give him a fair hearing,” said another. “They are abusing the council’s official complaints system for their own party political motives.”

Mattey has told friends that he believes that the Liberal Democrats have “weaponised” the complaints process in their efforts to discredit him.

Of the complaints that were filed against Mattey in 2022, one from “Calamity” Jayne McCoy, the former deputy leader of Sutton’s LibDems, was dismissed out of hand. The basis of her complaint was proven to be totally false.

In a similar complaint made by McCoy against a Tory councillor, the senior LibDem mentioned Mattey no less than 43 times. This complaint was also thrown out.

It is a complaint against Mattey made by LibDem councillors Marian James and Barry “Biggles” Lewis that is to be considered by the Standards Committee.

‘Totally false’: ‘Calamity’ Jayne McCoy

James and Lewis claim that Mattey had likened the actions of the LibDem administration to the methods used by Nazi Germany to silence their critics.

This all dates back to an incident in 2016. Sutton Council was sponsoring a conference on sustainable cities at the local Holiday Inn. There were ample spaces available for attendees, but security guards hired by the council removed Mattey from the venue when he tried to attend.

Mattey believed his treatment to be unwarranted and excessive, and while there is acknowledgement that his language was clumsy and untimely, the LibDems’ complaints appear to be drenched in hypocrisy.

For instance, in October 2022, their party colleague, Andrew “Pottymouth” Jenner, retweeted a picture of an SS officer’s hat with the caption “Suella Braverman throws her hat into the ring”.

But it is James and Lewis’s complaint against Mattey that was upheld by an independent investigator and has resulted in the imminent Standards Committee hearing.

Mattey is incensed by the way the complaints against him were handled. Council officials did not tell Mattey about the complaints for more than three months (contrary to the council’s constitution), and they removed from the council website a recording of a planning committee meeting that would have exonerated him immediately.

Don’t mention ze var!: unless, that is, you are Sutton LibDem councillor Andrew Jenner, who retweeted this attempt at political satire

It has been shown that this recording was removed at the request of Councillor McCoy, who had claimed that language in the recording was directly threatening her safety. This was proven to be untrue.

Further, in a withdrawn standards report to the council, the Monitoring Officer’s team claimed that the complaints against Mattey (and others) had been subject to thorough but informal discussion. This was untrue, and Mattey insists there was never any attempt by the council to discuss the complaints.

In fact, because he was denied sight or knowledge of the complaint, Mattey incurred significant legal costs to defend himself when the existence of the complaints became known.

Mattey had concentrated on the complaint from McCoy which falsely accused him of bullying, witness intimidation and attempting to obstruct a police inquiry.

This left him with no time to deal with the concurrent complaint from James and Lewis.

Mattey is now taking his grievance to the Local Government Ombudsman, and is including the council’s chief executive, Helen Bailey, and another Sutton official, Alexa Coates (“Head of Committee and Management Support”), as well as monitoring officer Martin as those responsible for failing to handle the complaints against him in a fair or timely manner.

Inside Sutton approached Councillor Mattey but he declined to comment.

Read more: Investigators apologise after sending reports to wrong person
Read more: Sutton’s 40-page emissions report fails to mention incinerator
Read more: LibDems’ EIGHT complaints against Mattey are all rejected


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