INSIDE SUTTON: Mystery surrounds another missing tape of an important council meeting – coincidentally just as a council by-election is taking place. EXCLUSIVE by BELLE MONT, Political Editor
Vote LibDem: Sutton Central residents have received leaflets for today’s by-election written in Cantonese
The Liberal Democrats in Sutton have been accused of suppressing an official recording of a recent planning meeting in an effort to cover up their party’s support for an application to build a potentially explosive food waste industrial plant on Beddington Lane.
The planning meeting took place on April 2. But a week later, and the video recording of the meeting has still to make an appearance on Sutton Council’s website.
“Soon, Liberal Democrat Sutton will have more missing tapes than Richard Nixon’s Oval Office,” said one wag with a very long memory.
Given that the LibDems are today trying to hang on to a council seat in a by-election in Sutton Central ward, some opposition groups are crying foul, suggesting that the council’s £240,000 pa chief executive, “Hapless Helen” Bailey, is doing a favour for her LibDem chums by suppressing the video nasty from the planning meeting.
The planning application from Suez was rejected by opposition members of the committee, but not before senior LibDems such as “Calamity” Jayne McCoy weighed in with adoring praise for a project which, if passed, would have seen 100,000 tonnes of food waste trucked into the borough every year.
Unseen support: LibDem councillor ‘Calamity’ Jayne McCoy enthustically supported the Suez food waste plant – but the video of the meeting has gone missing
Earlier this week, Tim Martin, Sutton Council’s senior legal official, claimed that the video had not been posted due to “some technical issues”.
Martin wrote to one councillor, “It seems that because of these technical issues our providers are still trying to recover the actual recording of the meeting as it may not have been captured.”
Not everyone familiar with the workings of LibDem-controlled Sutton are convinced.
“History is repeating itself,” one Sutton insider has said.
The only previous occasion when a recording of a Sutton meeting “mysteriously” disappeared was after McCoy had helped to vote through an application to allow Viridor permission to burn hundreds of thousands of high-sulphur diesel fuel at their Beddington incinerator.
Tim Foster, the independent councillor for Beddington who raised the latest missing tape issue with Martin, today told Inside Sutton that the monitoring officer’s response was “weak”.
Foster said, “Since my election in 2018, I have only been unable to review two committee meetings – both in planning and both involving waste proposals for Beddington Lane.
“It is clear that council officials and the ruling Liberal Democrats are prepared to do anything to make Beddington the dustbin of the borough.
“Air quality, HGV erosion of the environment and resident health appear to be, in their opinion, acceptable casualties of a perverse business strategy.”
Gone missing: Sutton LibDems’ former deputy leader David Bartolucci failed to turn up for council meetings for six months
Today’s by-election is taking place only because former LibDem deputy leader David Bartolucci didn’t bother to turn up for council meetings for more than six months.
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 up. Bartolucci still collected thousands of pounds in councillor allowances all through his six-month absence, of course.
Sutton Council confirmed the by-election date the day after Inside Sutton had broken the story that Bartolucci had been disqualified.
The Sutton Central election campaign has seen what is believed to be a first in a south London council election – leaflets written in Cantonese – alongside a tried and trusted LibDem campaign tactic: deliberate deceit.
As the ever-excellent Andrew Teale notes in his preview of today’s Sutton Central by-election, “The LibDem majority on Sutton council has… slipped in recent years, and the 2022 elections… returned 29 LibDem councillors against 20 Conservatives, three Labour and three independents. One of the Labour councillors resigned last year and the Conservatives gained the resulting by-election in St Helier West ward.”
And Teale writes, “The fall in Sutton council’s LibDem majority in 2022 shows that not all is rosy here for the yellow team… It appears that Bartolucci basically stopped fulfilling his democratic duties… and he was automatically disqualified from the council last month for failing to turn up to any council meetings within the previous six months.”
There are seven candidates seeking to fill the vacancy, in a ward where in 2022 the LibDems won three seats with 39% of the vote, with Labour candidates second after polling 27%.
LibDem lies: in 2022, it was Labour who were second in Sutton Central, with 27% of the vote
Not that you would know that from reading one of the LibDem leaflets.
The LibDems are trying to “squeeze” the Labour vote by getting their supporters to vote to keep the Tories out.
“Remember!” the LibDem leaflet says in big, bold capital letters. “It’s LibDems or Conservatives here” Labour can’t win here.” Ed Davey must be sooo proud…
And there’s a bar chart, much-favoured in Liberal Democrat campaigning, that shows the LibDems on 40% and Labour on only 17%. The figures are taken from the borough-wide voting in 2022, deliberately misrepresenting how people voted in the Sutton Central ward.
The LibDems are so brazen about this deceptive tactic, the metadata on their leaflet’s artwork is even titled “Squeeze”.
The Cantonese leaflets are also from the LibDems, and address the area’s large population of exiled Hongkongers, with their candidate being Choi Ka Yuen (as he appears on the ballot paper), or Richard Choi as he is on the party’s leaflets.
Choi is a small business owner who moved to Sutton in 2008. The LibDems had already selected him before Bartolucci’s formal disqualification.
Battleground: the Sutton Central ward where tday’s by-election is being contested
The Labour candidate is Kerrie Peek, who stood for election in the ward in 2022, while the Tories have businesswoman Maria Arif standing for them.
Also standing are Peter Friel for the Greens, Joanna Bishop for Reform UK, Ashley Dickenson for the Christian Peoples Alliance and Pamela Marsh, an independent residents’ candidate.
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 seat.
Polling stations are open until 10pm tonight. Voters are reminded that they will need photo ID to be allowed to cast a vote.
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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martin wrote: “trying to recover the actual recording of the meeting as it may not have been captured.”
So if it wasn’t captured, how can it be recovered? Talk about logically challenged martin.
Great job on providing excellent coverage of Croydon and surrounding areas.
But here I am, as a pedant, providing extra information you don’t feel that you need to know.
Cantonese is officially a spoken dialect and the written form used in Hong Kong (and Macau) is Traditional Chinese (Simplified Chinese was introduced in Mainland China about 70 years ago).
So probably the leaflet was in Traditional Chinese and aimed at people from Hong Kong.