Keep Sutton Moving Forward

• Develop a District Centre Plan to revitalise every high street and town centre in Sutton. These will involve residents and businesses and encompass private investment, new businesses, culture, public realm and community safety.

• As part of the district town centre plan, encourage High Street traders associations and where appropriate, new Business Improvement Districts to be set up to support local businesses.

• Take a laser-focused approach to specific areas, both in town centres and smaller ‘parades’ that need improvement and investments.

• Continue the regeneration of Sutton Town Centre with a vision for a mixed-use high street including a council front door on the high street, and revitalisation of the St Nicholas Centre with a fresh mix of shops, restaurants, bars and leisure activities.

• Develop a Sutton Night Strategy which emphasises culture, public realm, transport and safety, alongside traditional night-time venues.

• Continue working to bring the London Cancer Hub to Sutton, bringing 3,000 skilled jobs and wider investment to the borough, and work with partners to lobby for the wider infrastructure, including transport, that this world-class facility deserves.

• Set up a new Sutton Economic Growth Unit bringing together the ambitions of our Economic Growth Plan.

• Provide comprehensive support for local businesses, including access to funding, training, networking opportunities, and advice on sustainability, via both the council and the South London Partnership.

• Support local businesses in our procurement process through a Local Supplier Database.

• Continue to support the Beddington and Kimpton industrial areas.

• Build a brand new modern hub with Sutton College for local skills and education in the Northern Gateway at the north end of Sutton High Street.

• Work with local FE colleges to provide qualifications and vocational training.

• Champion youth employment and apprenticeships in the construction sector, including those created through local development.

• Ensure we take the opportunity of the London Cancer Hub to develop science and technology skills in young people.

• Develop a Postgraduate Education offer in Sutton with education and private sector partners.

• Offer direct financial support for residents through the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, which includes crisis payments for household costs and housing.

• Fund vital debt and housing advice for local residents and work with charity providers to fund foodbanks in Sutton.

• Provide an updated map of Cost of Living support and foodbanks on the Sutton Council website.

• Pay the London Living Wage to all employees and all contracted staff, and set up a dedicated Living Wage Unit in the council to lobby businesses and charities in Sutton to pay the London Living Wage.

• Retain our council tax reduction scheme to support those on the lowest incomes.

• Stop unaffordable rent increases by enforcing new national legislation, ensuring landlords are compliant and responsible.

• Deliver energy upgrades across the borough to make homes and buildings more energy-efficient, saving residents money and helping the environment.

• Launch and promote a householder retrofit website to help residents make their homes greener and cheaper to run.

• Work to ensure leisure and cultural offers have free and concessionary rates.

• Continue to fight for a new hospital building for Sutton, and for the vitally needed improvements to St Helier - including the extension of its Emergency Department so that we can end corridor care and dangerously long waits.

• Improve our Transfer of Care Hub at St Helier ensuring that people are discharged from hospital once they are medically able to go home.

• Make Sutton a healthy environment, by restricting promotion of unhealthy food and drink, exploring the introduction of further School Superzones, and promoting healthy lifestyles via the council and community partners.

• Make it easier for residents to walk and cycle through promoting and enabling active travel, and provide fitness and swimming via our leisure partners across the borough.

• Tackle cardio-vascular disease with the Healthy Hearts and Know Your Numbers (blood pressure) campaigns, delivering checks across the borough.

• Expand the offer of help and support for families with young children from the Best Start Family Hubs across Sutton. These will provide a single point of access for midwifery, health visiting, parenting and child development support, debt advice, and other services, including our peer-to-peer parenting programme.

• Continue to fund health visitors so all families with babies are offered regular developmental reviews before their child reaches two and a half years old.

• Ensure every new parent is offered membership of a Sutton library for their child when their birth is registered.

• Actively seek to improve the quality and affordability of childcare in Sutton, including by promoting free childcare hours to all parents, improving support and networks for local childminders, and training local childcare workers at Sutton College.

• Introduce a new Youth Hub helping young people into work and providing wider social and recreational opportunities.

• Explore further pop-up youth centres in strategic locations.

• Provide more youth education opportunities at the new Sutton College

• Provide more youth employment opportunities on development sites in the borough.

• Explore ways to integrate youth voice into everything the council does.

• Work closely with the Charity, Community & Faith Sector to address the needs of young people and their mental wellbeing.

• Work with schools to mitigate the negative effects of mobile phone and social media use, and explore other tactics within the remit of the council to support the reduction of these harms

• Reduce the impact of  misogyny in young people as part of our Violence Against Women and Girls strategy.

• Promote healthy and positive relationships in schools and beyond.

• Deliver a more accessible offer for young people with SEND via the new hub at the Life Centre, including the Preparation for Adulthood hub.

• Use Family Group Conferences and other measures to prevent children entering the care system unnecessarily.

• Recruit and support  more  foster carers, so that Children Looked After have the opportunity to live in "family" homes in Sutton.

• Increase home safety and reduce loneliness through Life Links, a new partnership with Age UK and other partners, offering free at-home safety assessments and connections to local groups.

• Ensure adults with Learning Disabilities get support to live independent lives.

• Expand Sutton’s pioneering Tech-Enabled Care service so more older people can live independent lives, and develop new innovations from the scheme

• Support people with dementia and their families, through the new Living Well centre, and by facilitating the expansion of support groups.   

• Deliver improved respite care, support, and recognition for carers by delivering the Sutton Carers Strategy.

• Explore the development of a programme with Sutton College to help prepare for later life, including advice on downsizing, will-writing, home improvements and other associated guidance.

• Introduce a Community Toilet scheme, working with businesses and other providers, enabling good and reliable access to a public toilet throughout the borough.

• Campaign for a return to proper community policing for Sutton, with more local bobbies on the beat, and fewer abstractions which take police away from their neighbourhoods.

• Make it easier for the public to report anti-social behaviour hotspots to the council Community Safety team and receive progress updates on multi-agency work to address these.

• Deliver a brand new safe spaces programme: a visible, trusted, and trained network of local businesses and other organisations across Sutton where residents of all ages can go if they feel unsafe, distressed, vulnerable, or in need of support.

• Support a new Sutton Women’s Safety Charter - a partnership of the Sutton Women’s Centre, council, local businesses and residents - building a movement and plan to reduce Violence Against Women and Girls, increase feelings of safety especially after dark, and play our part in bringing about a wider culture change around gender-based violence and hate.

• Continue our ongoing partnership with Stop Hate UK to tackle hate crime in Sutton, and work more closely with schools to support their efforts to prevent hate and discrimination.

• Launch new consumer rights campaigns to educate residents, particularly vulnerable groups, about emerging scams such as illegal vapes, working with local community groups, charities, and council trading standards teams

• Work with residents to identify and fix at least 50 hyperlocal hotspots that need an upgrade - like neglected green patches in public spaces, dark alleyways or unused shop units - to deter antisocial behaviour and criminals exploiting them. We’ll explore using neighbourhood funding, council and partner resources to support these improvements, with residents encouraged to take a leading role.

• Improve the e-bikes scheme with dedicated parking bays to reduce inconsiderate parking whilst working with police to crack down on illegally modified bikes in Sutton Town Centre and across the borough.

• Continue to tackle rogue developers and run a strong licensing regime for HMOs.

• Ensure swift action is taken on abandoned vehicles with a more robust policy.

• Charge companies for digging up our roads and failing to complete works on time, reinvesting that cash into better quality road surfacing.

• Work with police to explore measures to reduce noise pollution from illegally modified cars and bikes.

• Explore a solution to inconsiderate school parking, developing a partnership between schools, parents and the council.

• Continue to build council and affordable housing, continuing Sutton’s excellent record through projects including Beech Tree Place and Elm Grove.

• Explore new modes of housing delivery and management, including Community Land Trusts and Intergenerational Housing projects, to increase the supply of housing.

• Explore innovative modes of reducing Temporary Accommodation, including Modular Homes and purchasing new build homes.

• Introduce a Rental Standards Charter, improving rights and standards for private tenants with a zero tolerance approach to irresponsible landlords and letting agents, using all the powers available to the council

• Explore the setting up of a Private Renters’ Forum to empower tenants and enable greater challenge to irresponsible practice.

• Embed Inclusive Design For All while embedding resident and tenant co-design.

• Encode protection of our precious Green Belt and our parks and green spaces in our forthcoming Local Plan.

• Campaign for necessary infrastructure for all housing developments.

• Fight the government’s plans to reduce Community Infrastructure Levy charges which provide vital local infrastructure, from zebra crossings to GP surgeries.

• Continue to make use of our powers under the “Article 4 Direction” to require HMO conversions to seek planning approval, and refusing to grant it where they would be inappropriate.

• Make Sutton a tree-friendly borough, planting at least 2,000 trees a year, alongside a new sponsor-a-tree scheme, and use developer contributions to fund local green infrastructure (like green screens, trees and planting).

• Reduce air pollution in residential areas by expanding School Streets to more schools (where supported by the schools, parents and residents),increasing the number of anti-idling signs outside schools and health centres and introducing more smart parcel lockers to reduce residential traffic.

• Publish Sutton’s most sustainable Local Plan yet, putting green principles at the heart of future developments in the borough.

• Work on several initiatives with residents, Friends of Parks groups, campaigners and key stakeholders in what will amount to a Community Green Movement, putting the environment at the heart of our agenda for Sutton.

• Campaign to protect the important Wandle River chalk stream, including lobbying the Environment Agency for stronger controls on pollution and encouraging residents to record and report signs of pollution. As part of this, where appropriate, we will investigate and resolve misconnected sewers that are dumping sewage directly into our watercourses from local homes and businesses.

• Support the formation of new Friends of Parks groups for parks where none exist at present.

• Keep pushing to extend the Overground from West Croydon into Sutton, as well as the construction of Crossrail 2 with Sutton on the route.

• Lobby for more reliable and frequent train services run by Southern Railway, South Western Railways and Thameslink, connecting Sutton residents with central London and with other South London centres via orbital routes. We will also campaign for the remodelling of the Croydon Bottleneck to support this.

• Campaign for new express bus routes which run from Sutton into central London and which connect residents in suburban areas with key rail links

• Monitor reliability of local buses via Sutton Bus Watch, a new function of the Public Transport Liaison Group - holding operators to account when services are not performing and ensuring residents are able to feed in their experiences of local transport.

• Make Sutton a cycle-friendly borough by introducing new north-south and east-west cycle routes, developing and improving the Sutton bike hire scheme with more management of cycle parking including the use of cycle parking bays, working with operators for safe and responsible usage.

• Use AI-enabled functions on council vehicles which can identify potholes and other road defects, so that they can be quickly repaired, and use cutting-edge resurfacing materials so that roads require less maintenance.

• Roll out EV charging points to reach every neighbourhood, including lamppost and gully charging.

• Improve pavements for pedestrians and wheelchair users, widening where appropriate, and take steps to improve the experience of getting around on foot - particularly in key pedestrian areas like town centres.

• Bring peer-to-peer car rental and car sharing to Sutton.

• Launch an ambitious new Environment Strategy to guide action on climate.

• Extend the successful Green Enterprise Partnership to the Community Sector

• Deliver community-wide schemes to bulk-purchase solar panels, insulation, and electrical upgrades.

• Deliver a climate budget to measure and report on our investments in reducing environmental impact

• Install solar panels on every practical Council building and enable community groups who want to deliver community energy schemes in their street - pairing them up with communities in other parts of London who’ve done it.

• Use every pound of developer contributions in the Carbon Offset Fund to reduce energy bills in Council owned and maintained buildings and save taxpayers money. Also expand the scheme beyond the Council so community groups can benefit too

• Deliver all future social housing to high energy standards so low-income families have high quality homes that cost less to run.

• Expand the Sutton Decentralised Energy Network to bring low-carbon energy to more Sutton residents.

• Democratise community funding giving new spending powers to local committees, unlocking hundreds of thousands of pounds for local projects, and giving residents more of a direct say in how that money is spent.

• Explore new forms of citizen engagement to give residents more of a say in the running of the council, drawing from deliberative democracy, digital engagement, and participatory budgeting techniques.

• Work with the charity, community and faith sector (CCF) to explore the greater use of the sector in delivering our objectives, while in turn recognising and empowering their contribution.

• Involve young people in borough decision making and service design through our Youth Matters Framework, as part of the new Sutton Youth Strategy.

• Develop greater community cohesion, targeting specific areas of the borough for focussed interventions.

• Continue to work with and reach out to all communities in Sutton and support cultural diversity, including through arts and culture.

• Ensure all council buildings and other assets are used to their fullest extent for the benefit of residents.

• Seize the generational opportunity of the new London Cancer Hub, maximising its benefits for all of Sutton.
 

• Foster business and investment opportunities in the sector, connecting young people with education and work experience opportunities related to the life sciences, building our reputation and civic pride as we make Sutton a global life sciences superpower.
 

• Continue to support the development of the wider hub for life sciences that is beginning to flourish in Belmont, working in partnership with all key stakeholders at the site, including the Royal Marsden hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research.
 

• Play our part in ensuring the strong delivery of the wider £1 billion investment that the London Cancer Hub district represents to the UK economy, that will support 13,000 highly-skilled jobs.

• Set up a new Arts and Culture Future Forum involving the sector, businesses and residents, to set Sutton’s arts and culture ambitions, and to inform our new Culture Plan from 2027

• Continue to work closely with local cultural institutions recognising their status and importance in our borough.

• Create a ‘Tudor Trail’, a heritage route which fully celebrates the exceptional history of Sutton, including Carew Manor and Nonsuch Park, and connect this with the established heritage sites in the Royal Boroughs of Kingston and Richmond.

• Continue to run all libraries, extending opening hours even longer, and looking to expand Play Libraries to all libraries through securing additional funding.

• Support a wide range of community cultural activities across the borough, like the Wallington Music Festival and commercial festivals like FeastyFest to make Sutton a cultural destination for all Londoners.

• Work with Sport England to explore new and creative uses of outside space for recreation, including in estates, so that young people in particular have more places to enjoy sport and games.

• Expand Play Streets scheme in residential areas.

• Increase the number of sports facilities in the borough including new 3G sports pitches and Multi Use Games Areas in local parks.