INSIDE SUTTON: April 10 has been set as polling day, with the all-powerful Liberal Democrats picking a leader of the local Hong Kong community as their candidate to replace their absentee former deputy leader.
EXCLUSIVE by BELLE MONT, Political Editor
Standing up for residents: independent candidate Pamela Marsh
“I’m fed up with residents being sidelined and their money wasted on feeble projects and financial disasters.”
That’s what Pamela Marsh has told Inside Sutton are among her reasons for agreeing to stand as an independent residents’ candidate in the Sutton Central ward council by-election that is being held on Thursday, April 10.
Sutton Council confirmed the by-election date the day after Inside Sutton had broken the story that David Bartolucci, the former deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat group which controls the council, had been disqualified because he hadn’t bothered to show up for any council meetings for more than six months.
“The London Borough of Sutton has confirmed that a by-election will be held on Thursday 10 April 2025 to elect a new local councillor in Sutton Central ward,” the statement on the council website says.
“Information about the by-election, including deadlines to register and how to vote by post or proxy, can be found on the council’s Sutton Central by-election webpage.” Which is nice. Click here to visit the Sutton Council by-election page.
Marsh’s candidacy was the first to be declared.
Marsh, who stood for the council in 2022, has the backing of the three-councillor independent group on Sutton Council, led by Tim Foster and including Jillian Green and Nick Mattey. They are expected to run a forceful and direct campaign over the next four weeks.
Croydon-born Marsh has been living in Sutton for more than 25 years. “I love Sutton and enjoy being involved in community groups,” she says, having run a residents’ litter-picking group in Butter Hill and helping out in Hackbridge, too. She is a Neighbourhood Watch member and already regularly attends ward panel meetings in Wallington.
She said, “I am standing as an residents’ independent as I am fed up of residents being sidelined and our money wasted on the feeble projects and financial disasters that this Liberal Democrat administration is inflicting upon its residents.”
Multi-million-pound LibDem disaster: Beech Tree Place is the housing development where the council’s appointed developers went bust
Marsh cites the high-profile, multi-million-pound LibDem disasters such as the Beech Tree Place, the wasteful subsidy to the private cinema group at Throwley Yard where the business is in a state of collapse, the controversial sale of The Rectory at Carshalton, “and, of course, SDEN”, as prime examples of how the council has too often ridden roughshod over the residents it is supposed to represent.
Less than 12 months ago, Bartolucci was the £41,000 per year deputy leader of Sutton Council.
But having been passed over for the top job by his party colleagues when Barry “Basher” Lewis replaced Ruth Dombey as council leader, Bartolucci threw a hissy fit, and just didn’t bother to show for council meetings, to the obvious embarrassment of Sutton’s all-powerful LibDems, while failing to represent the interests of residents in his Sutton Central ward. Bartolucci still collected his basic councillor’s allowances all through his six-month abences, of course.
Voting at the 2022 local elections: Sutton Central was a comfortable hold for the LibDems three years ago
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 disastrous 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.
The chosen one: the LibDems already had Richard Choi lined up to be their candidate
Sutton’s LibDems, minus Bartolucci, hold 28 of the council’s 55 seats.
Sutton’s Liberal Democrats have never lost a council by-election in a ward in which they were the incumbents, and given recent polling and other council by-election results in London, they are thought likely to retain the vacated Sutton Central seat.
It seems that the LibDems were ready for Bartolucci’s disqualification: they had already selected a candidate for the by-election.
Richard Choi, a leader in Sutton’s Hong Kong community, has been named as their candidate. Sutton’s Hongkongers were prominent recently in a campaigning against the LibDem-controlled council’s use of a private security company – “bullies in hi-viz” – who are patrolling the town centre’s streets and issuing hefty fines for minor offences, and sometimes no offence at all.
Sutton’s Tories, still smarting from losing both the borough’s MPs at the General Election last July, are staging their selection meeting today.
Inside Sutton has not been able to have it confirmed, but it is believed that Labour’s selection meeting is being staged via Zoom from beneath a sun parasol from a beach in southern Spain.
Sutton Central residents who want to take part in the by-election on April 10 will need Photo ID when voting at a polling station. “Anyone who does not show a valid form of photo ID will not be able to vote,” Sutton Council warns.
Read more: The Help to Buy mortgage and councillor’s shifting interests
Read more: LibDems refuse council debate on £44m Beech Tree money pit
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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