Our vision for Sutton's future

Every Sutton resident has been affected by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. 

Many families and individuals need direct support, which is why we will continue to provide that support with direct emergency payments, debt and housing advice. Meanwhile, through building council housing and paying and promoting a fair wage, the council is looking to boost budgets for all households.

Ultimately, to keep Sutton moving forward for everybody in our area we need to deliver fair economic growth. The London Cancer Hub is great news for residents, delivering jobs and investment and putting Sutton on the map. It is the key pillar of our economic growth plan which will make our borough an even more attractive place to do business, attracting external investment and supporting local enterprise too. Alongside this, as a Council we will work with local communities to develop ambitious plans for every one of our local town centres, ensuring that prosperity touches every corner of the borough.

Local people can’t be truly free to live their best lives if they’re worried that they can’t get the right treatment when they are sick. We can’t step forward into a brighter future unless we fix the crisis in our healthcare system.

Sutton is a great place to raise a family and to grow old - but we know that everyone will need support at some point in their life. That’s why, for families, we will work to ensure the quality of local childcare and expand our successful family programmes. Our ambitious plans to support older people include harnessing the power of community volunteers, key partners and technology to address loneliness and lack of care in old age. Meanwhile, we will promote and enable healthy lifestyles through new campaigns and initiatives, to prevent ill-health.

We also know that being able to rely on decent local healthcare is your number one priority. Years of Conservative failure left our NHS decimated and shook the foundations of social care, while the Labour government are failing to fix the mess they left behind. We’re challenging the government over their outrageous delays to the vital repair works to St Helier Hospital and campaigning for the expansion of A&E.

We’ve worked with local groups to promote prevention across a range of serious diseases. Most importantly of all, we’ve challenged successive governments over their outrageous delays to the vital repair works St Helier Hospital needs.

As we step forward, we will keep up the fight on all these fronts, and accelerate the shift towards preventive healthcare by recognising and using all the main drivers of prevention, including healthy lifestyle (diet and exercise) and tackling loneliness.

We believe nobody can be truly free to live their best life if they don’t feel safe. We’re proud of our record on delivering that safety; our years of working with local police and others culminated last year in TimeOut magazine naming our borough the safest place to live in Britain.

Crime is low in our borough, but we know that the work of keeping it low never stops, and that there are still far too many everyday crimes from antisocial behaviour to reckless driving that make everybody’s days just that bit worse.

Funding cuts to the Metropolitan Police mean we will need to continue to campaign for more policing so that we can finally get back to the community policing we know we need, with bobbies on the beat throughout our community. Meanwhile we will unlock the power of volunteers, communities and businesses to keep Sutton safe.

Going forward, a Liberal Democrat council will work with police to keep Sutton a safe borough, and take a firmer line on all nuisances, through more robust policy and innovation.

Tackling the housing crisis helps us unlock Sutton’s potential, secures Sutton’s finances and gives the thousands of local families security and hope.

From grown-up children unable to move out of the family home, to private renters being squeezed by rent rises, the housing crisis is affecting everyone.

Sutton Council under the Liberal Democrats has an excellent record of housebuilding. We have already built hundreds of high-quality, eco-friendly, council homes which benefit local people

We will use every innovation and measure available to us to continue this work and turn a corner on the housing crisis. We will also look to use new powers available to the council to improve life for renters, giving them security and preventing unaffordable rent rises.

Our core strategy is unchanged: we will concentrate development in our town centres while retaining our suburban heartlands and protecting our precious Green Belt, parks and green spaces.

We are unapologetically committed to making Sutton the green, clean and well-connected borough it needs to be to make sure local people can live their best lives.

As we all get to grips with the climate emergency, we’re dedicating ourselves to doing our bit to secure a liveable future for Sutton’s children, making sure the green transition is fair for everyone, and ensuring Sutton reaps the benefits in the form of better homes, enhanced green spaces and better public transport.

We will continue to stand up for a greener Sutton: lobbying for better public transport connections while improving those that are underperforming, reducing air pollution in residential areas, investigating misconnected sewers, and campaigning against pollution in the Wandle River.

The Liberal Democrats in Sutton have always been a community-first party. 

We believe in working with you, involving local people in the decisions that matter most to them. We think that nobody can live their best life without having the right and opportunity to get involved in the work of improving our area.

In these new and chaotic political times, we’re holding fast to that principle.

To keep driving Sutton’s great communities forward into a bright future, we will take a number of steps to ensure that all residents can play an active role in making Sutton a great place to live, through community and civic participation. Sutton’s charity, faith and community sector will be integral to this.

We also believe that being able to enjoy life locally is what fosters strong communities. We will protect the libraries, cultural venues, heritage, parks and sport facilities we already have, while developing ambitious plans to improve and add to them - involving Sutton residents every step of the way.