Failed businessman Barry “Biggles” Lewis is to be the next leader of Sutton Council, the borough’s Liberal Democrats announced yesterday.
Would you buy a used aircraft from this man?: Sutton LibDems’ choice as leader, Barry Lewis
Lewis is to replace Ruth Dombey, who is standing down as Sutton’s LibDem leader in May after 12 years in charge.
As predicted by Inside Sutton three weeks ago, Biggles gets the job pretty much because there’s no one left among Sutton’s LibDems who aren’t either far too old, have been discarded as incompetent, or are caught up in some kind of civic scandal.
Until recently, David Bartolucci had been Dombey’s deputy leader and heir apparent, but he has been bypassed because of his role as chair of the council’s housing, economy and business committee in the multi-million-pound Beech Tree Place scandal.
Which leaves the LibDems, and to its potential misfortune Sutton Council, with arch-bullshitter Lewis as the next off the rank. It is hardly an appealling prospect, especially if he runs the council in the same manner that he ran his failed travel businesses.
Lewis, 63, has been a councillor for Wallington North ward only since 2019. He has been a member of the Liberal Democrats only since 2015.
As Inside Sutton revealed five years ago, he was a director of two companies that were in liquidation with a trail of debts – including to the taxman – of nearly £9million.
According to Companies House records, on October 25 2018, the board of Cello Aviation Ltd, of which Lewis is a director, agreed to put the company into voluntary liquidation.
The administrator’s statement of affairs showed only £35,000 estimated to be available to preferential creditors, while the total liabilities – what the company owed – was stated at £8.58million. About £4.06million of this amount was shareholder debt.
The company owed £220,000 to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in respect of PAYE, £226,200 for employee redundancy payments, and £153,400 in wage arrears and holiday pay.
A second company of which Lewis was a director, Charter Flight Centre Ltd, was put into voluntary liquidation in November 2018. With just £3,306 in the kitty available to creditors, this company left debts of £246,988. This included £7,334 owed to staff and £1,683 to HMRC.
Just fancy that: how Inside Sutton predicted the selection of Barry Lewis
Which all puts the LibDems’ official biography of “Biggles” put out yesterday in a slightly different light.
“Barry has spent most of his career in the leisure travel industry, including running his own small travel business,” Sutton’s LibDems stated, omitting any mention of his trail of debts.
They also forgot to mention Lewis’s role in stoking the fires of the Beddington incinerator, and therefore pumping up the profits of operators Viridor. The LibDems’ whitewashed version of Lewis’s council career makes no mention of the incinerator, but instead just states that as the chair of Sutton Council’s environment and sustainable transport committee, “This role has seen him lead on many public-facing aspects of the council, including parks, libraries, waste and highways.”
Lewis, who lives in Carshalton, said: “Sutton is my home and I am ambitious for our borough’s future.” Which made him sound a bit like Tony Newman when he was leader of Croydon’s council. And we all know how that ended up…
Read more: LibDem power struggle after Dombey retires as Sutton leader
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