Sutton’s Liberal Democrat administration is under fire for spending the equivalent of two households’ annual council tax on a pint-sized version of the controversial £8.5million Sutton Life Centre.

Hot on the tail of our Value for Money motion at Monday night’s Full Council Meeting, forensic questioning forced the project’s supremo, LibDem councillor Graham Tope, to reveal the cost of promotional material for the Sutton Life Centre. Conservative councillors and residents in the public gallery were aghast to discover that a scale model for the infamous pet project cost the taxpayer £3000.

The costly model now features in pride of place in the Civic Offices, St. Nicholas Way, ironically situated next to a new machine designed to make paying council tax easier!

The scale of the model looks like 1:100, unfortunately even at the sum of £3,000, the scale of the cost of the model is something like 1:2,800. It’s quite incredible how far the ruling Lib Dems will go to squander local taxpayers’ money. Two Band D households’ worth of council tax has paid for this scale model and we think this sends out entirely the wrong message.

In all seriousness, the model might be small but the principle is not, town hall bosses must stop treating the public purse as a plaything. When we debated value for money on Monday, our message was clear: a Conservative-run Council will cut waste, move heaven and earth to ease the burden on household budgets, and demand that every penny of council expenditure justifies itself.

This is the Conservative model for Sutton Council and all it will cost residents is a vote.