Sutton Council Block Residents’ Questions

Sutton Council refuses to hear residents’ questions that challenge the Lib Dem administration, while questions posed by their own Lib Dem activists are given the floor.

What’s going on at Sutton Council? There's a worrying trend that residents’ questions to Council committees are being blocked, refused or timed out by the Chair.

Every few months Councillors are obliged to open the floor to residents’ questions about local issues. However, the Council’s gatekeepers are using archaic rules, technicalities or plain dismissal to stop residents exposing weaknesses, mistakes or alleged corruption.

Whether it’s the Lib Dems making access to services for children with special needs (SEND) more difficult, ducking questions about maladministration over SDEN (their failed District Heat Network), or dodging questions about pollution breaches from their Incinerator, it appears that Councillors prefer not to give answers, perhaps in the hope that the issues will go away?

Residents are given a meagre 30 minutes every few months to question Councillors. Despite their comfortable majority, over recent years it’s been an uncanny coincidence that the more challenging questions posed by clued-up residents have been declined, pushed to last place on the list or not answered live.

The dubious excuses that have been used to block questions from local residents include:

Refusing a question that was supposedly received a minute past the cutoff deadline.

Informing a resident that their question is not one that a member of Sutton Council can answer - this is ironic considering the councillor who could answer is the vice chair of the committee itself.

A Committee Chair shouting down a resident whose follow-up question exposed the wilful ignorance of Councillors and Officers.

Announcing at the end of a long meeting that a pre-agreed decision had been taken to cut the number of official local committee meetings by 50% in a year!

Councillors are using technicalities to stop residents asking difficult questions - Councillors should be accountable to residents, and denying local people the right to ask questions of Councillors is a rotten practice which undermmines local democracy.

@WandleValet hints at what's under the veneer of local democracy.

Worse still, accusations have been made that Lib Dem activists from Lewisham and Merton have posed soft questions to support Sutton’s Councillors and Council policies, giving the Chair a chance to give lengthy and self congratulatory speeches!

Further accusations of situations where opposition Councillors in full flow during online meetings have been muted to shut down debates.

Recent examples of the use of long speeches to filibuster and time waste has forced votes to be rushed through without reasonable scrutiny.

These dud questions, denial of a voice to residents and a casual approach to fair play has infuriated opposition parties and the general public.

The 2022 local elections will be the chance for Sutton’s residents to replace the tired, corrupt Lib Dems with passionate, decent minded locals from opposition parties who have the interests of their community at heart, not themseleves or their party.