INSIDE SUTTON: A council by-election in Sutton Central ward is imminent, following a six-month period when the area’s Liberal Democrat councillor failed to turn up for a single meeting.
EXCLUSIVE by BELLE MONT, Political Editor
Sacked: David Bartolucci was a high-profile casualty of Barry ‘Basher’ Lewis taking over as leader of Sutton Council last May
Less than 12 months ago, David Bartolucci was the £41,000 per year deputy leader of Sutton Council, and leader-in-waiting for the Liberal Democrat-controlled council where illness seemed likely to see long-serving leader Ruth Dombey step down.
But having been passed over for the top job by his party colleagues on the council a deeply embittered Bartolucci made a strange cameo appearance at Monday night’s council meeting in the Civic Centre, before storming out. It seems almost certain that a council by-election will now be called to fill the vacancy Bartolucci has left in Sutton Central ward.
Bartolucci is now seen as no longer a serving councillor, having failed to formally attend any council committee meetings since September 4 last year.
Elected councillors can be disqualified if they fail to attend any council meetings for six months. Monday night’s Budget-setting meeting was Bartolucci’s last chance to take part in a meeting as a councillor within the six-month period.
Extraordinarily, Bartolucci was actually in the building on Monday. He sat, with his two children, in the public audience for the Budget meeting, but he failed to take his seat in the chamber as a councillor.
Final appeal: Jayne McCoy tried to persuade Bartolucci to take his councillor’s seat
After the meeting had started, Jayne McCoy, a fellow LibDem councillor and the party’s pastoral care lead, left her seat and sat next to Bartolucci in the audience. Leaning in towards him, she appeared to be encouraging him to take his seat, to avoid disqualification.
But Bartolucci’s body language suggested he wasn’t listening. Some suggested that Bartolucci may have considered that simply being in the audience counted as attendance.
A short while later, Bartolucci stood up and talked to a council official with responsibility for organising the council’s committee business. Following a short but intense exchange, an angry-looking Bartolucci collected his children and left the meeting.
Bartolucci had already been given a generous period in which to fulfil at least some of his modest duties.
The meeting he attended in September was a planning committee, where he spoke against an application. Bartolucci was not a member of the planning committee. Council staff bent the rules to deem this to count as an “attendance”.
Two residents now have to call for a by-election, which will be a formality.
Attendance record: 0% present as expected – Bartolucci’s only meeting since September was to object to a planning application
Bartolucci has been totally estranged from his LibDem councillor colleagues since he was dropped as deputy leader last May, when Barry “Basher” Lewis replaced Dombey as council leader.
Lewis sacked Bartolucci as deputy leader and as the chair of the housing, economy and business committee, seeing him hit with a £30,000 cut in council allowances.
A senior source on the council told Inside Sutton after the meeting that despite many attempts to keep Bartolucci in the fold, he has ignored all forms of communication from his colleagues. “Many of his councillor colleagues are frustrated with his erratic behaviour, but we’re also deeply concerned about his wellbeing.”
Bartolucci, first elected in 2014, was predicted by Inside Sutton to be sidelined by the post-Dombey administration as long ago as March 2024, as a result of his championing of the procurement of the Beech Tree Place redevelopment in Sutton.
The appointed contractor, Real LSE Ltd, was undercapitalised, had no track record and was a front for the discredited Rydon group whose involvement in the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy was known to council officials. Real LSE went bust owing creditors millions, shortly after construction began.
Voting at the 2022 local elections: Sutton Central was a comfortable hold for the LibDems three years ago
Sutton’s LibDems, minus Bartolucci, hold 28 of the council’s 55 seats, but given recent polling and other council by-election results, they are thought likely to retain the vacated Sutton Central seat. The LibDems have never lost an incumbency seat in a by-election for Sutton council.
Their likeliest challengers, Labour, are already struggling in the opinion polls nationally and as they are the party of another absentee Sutton councillor, Señor Seldon Vestey of Hackbridge ward via Valencia, they may struggle to win over voters locally.
And however Vestey might dislike it, his absenteeism from Sutton is sure to be an election issue for whoever his party selects as a candidate.
Sutton’s Tories, meanwhile, are still smarting from losing both the borough’s MPs at the General Election last July, and they will be wary of shipping votes to Reform UK.
In the 2022 local elections, Sutton Central was a target ward for Labour, but Labour polled well behind the LibDems.
An independent candidate is also expected to stand.
Read more: ‘Greetings from Spain’: absent councillor suffers señor moment
Read more: The Help to Buy mortgage and councillor’s shifting interests
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They don’t hang around in Sutton Council. Bartolucci is no longer on the website page showing all of their councillors, but his appalling attendance record of late is still up there.
Sutton LibDems haven’t purged him yet, which given their “Working hard for you all year round” slogan, is a tad ironic in his case
Politics in Sutton can turn nasty very quickly. Sutton Liberal Democrats work tirelessly to maximise their incomes with no regard for the taxpayer.
Bartolucci must have been seen as a threat to their allowances and he was elbowed out.