Lib Dems Challenge Tory Myths on Youth Provision

1.28.35pm GMT Fri 12th Feb 2010

You can tell when an election is coming - local Tory 'activists' suddenly start emerging from their slumber and begin delivering misleading leaflets about Sutton's Lib Dem Council.

For example, the first leaflet from their Stonecot ward 'candidates' claims three youth clubs have been closed in the past three years. Well, Club Constellation on London Road was closed, but because it was just not meeting its purpose and attracted very few young people. To replace it the council has introduced a very popular mobile service, the URBIE bus, which actually goes to places where young people gather, areas like Fairlands Park and Stonecot Hill. And the former club building is now being used very successfully for adult education through SCOLA.

They also say that Centre 21 has been closed. Yes, but the outdated and inadequate hut is currently being replaced on the same site by the Sutton Life Centre which will include a dedicated Youth Centre that young people have helped to design. The centre will include a range of other facilities for them, and for the whole community. In both of these cases Sutton's Lib Dem Council is reacting to actual need

And the third 'closure'? That's just a figment of Tory imagination!

They also claim the new Life Centre library will be smaller than Ridge Road library it is replacing. Wrong! The new library will be a quarter larger, will serve many more Sutton residents than Ridge Road, will be open for much longer, and will have far more facilities than the old library at edge of the borough - an expensive-to-run 1930s building nearing the end of its useful life.

So the conclusion for residents must be: same old Tories, making the same old untrue or misleading claims without any indication of what they would actually do for our borough.