Wish you were here: political leafleting has taken a new twist in Sutton
INSIDE SUTTON: It was only a matter of time before Sutton’s incinerator supporters tried to make capital out of a rival party’s councillor’s wanderlust. By our political correspondent, BELLE MONT
Sutton’s Liberal Democrats have rubbed a bit of Spanish sea salt into the wounded feelings of Hackbridge councillor Sheldon Vestey by distributing thousands of “postcards” through the letterboxes of residents in his ward.
As Inside Sutton reported last month, in November 2024, Vestey put his family’s four-bedroom home on Hackbridge’s New Mill Quarter up for rent, asking a cool £3,100 a month.
Señor Vestey could yet find himself in more hot water over what neighbours have described as the “at least unethical” use of the government’s Help to Buy mortgage scheme.
And now the privately-educated scion of one of the wealthiest families in Britain is suffering the opportunistic political backlash from the LibDems, who have seized on Inside Sutton’s reporting to embarrass the sometimes abrasive Vestey with the voters who elected him to Sutton Council in 2022.
Vestey receives £12,616 per year in allowances from Sutton Council as an elected councillor. His day job is as chief commercial officer (or as some describe it, “salesman”), for software company SciChart is probably a job that can be done working from home, whether that home in in Sutton or nearly 1,000 miles away in Valencia.
Planning ahead: one of Cllr Vestey’s earliest online enquiries about moving to Valencia
There is nothing to stop councillors working from abroad, but they are not allowed to be absent from council meetings for more than six months. Vestey was absent from half of Sutton’s meetings of full council in 2024.
When it comes to standing for re-election in May 2026, Vestey would need to be on the electoral register in Sutton or have a business registered in the borough.
When Inside Sutton asked Vestey why he had moved, the Labour councillor said: “I want to reassure residents in Hackbridge that I am able to carry out my duties both remotely and in person. I am still attending council meetings.”
Good as his word, Vestey jetted in from Valencia last month to attend in person a local committee and full council meetings as required. Albeit he faced some heckling from political opponents, with cries of “Olé!” and someone humming the tune of “Viva España”. Someone suggested they even heard the sound of castanets in the council chamber, although Inside Sutton has not been able to confirm this.
Now, the LibDems have taken the political rough and tumble to the doormats of Hackbridge homes.
The leaflet looks like a postcard. “Greetings from Spain” says the front page of the leaflet, over a picture of golden sands and what is asumed to be the shimmering Mediterranean.
On the reverse, though, the message is clear. “Your ‘local’ Labour councillor now lives in Spain”, the leaflet states, above two quotes, one from Private Eye, the other from this website.
Olé!: Señor Sheldon Vestey
“How can Cllr Sheldon Vestey fight for Hackbridge when he has already left it behind?” is the not unreasonable question posed by the LibDems.
They then offer a freepost address for residents to sign a petition calling on absentee councillor Vestey to resign. Olé! indeed.
“I’ve seen less one-sided bull fights,” said one resident who has received the postcard.
“The LibDems have a bit of a cheek – it was they who lumbered Hackbridge with toxic incinerator pollution and the dodgy SDEN heating system with the sky-high bills for residents in New Mill Quarter. They don’t mention that on their sneaky little postcard, do they?”
Read more: The Help to Buy mortgage and councillor’s shifting interests
Read more: ‘Local’ councillor now based 1,000 miles from Hackbridge
Read more: Ofgem called in to rule over SDEN’s unfair heating prices
Read more: SDEN’s business plan ‘dishonest at best, fraudulent at worst’
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1. Has Sheldon Vestey actually persuaded any mug to rent his (Barratts) house yet? He hadn’t by the time of your “Councillor now based 1,000 miles from Hackbridge” article in January (last month). Perhaps he has let another member of the Vestey clan house-sit there, and let him stay when he turns up every five months for council meetings?
2. The Valencia region was hit by devastating floods in October/Nov 2024, so why did he move there? They probably needed salvage experts/builders/engineers there, NOT IT software sales people ?!
Good old political opportunism you come to expect from the Fib Dems in their best campaigning mode. This is effective though and the New New Labourites better wake up to booting out such self seeking grifters like Vestey quickly in such situations to make themselves credible in Sutton, but they probably won’t because they know they will lose this seat anyway and old Jabez Vestey shares all the shadiness of their themselves in London’s Mandelsonian Labour.
Will he only come back with an extradition order?