An independent is standing in the latest Brighton and Hove City Council by-election because “Queen’s Park deserves a councillor who is truly local, accountable and focused on community concerns – not party politics”.
Adrian Hart, 64, said that this would be his fourth attempt to win the seat – and his second by-election candidacy in just over a year in the same ward.
The former teacher stood in Queen’s Park in the local elections in May 2019, winning 500 votes – or 4 per cent of the votes cast.
At the May 2023 local elections, he stood in the ward again and doubled his share of the votes cast – to 8 per cent.
And in May last year, Mr Hart more than doubled his vote share – to 17 per cent – in the by-election that was called after the resignation of Labour councillor Chandni Mistry.
Mr Hart, a long-time community campaigner, said: “I’m standing as an independent candidate because Queen’s Park deserves a councillor who is truly local, accountable and focused on community concerns – not party politics.
“Since I stood as a candidate in 2019, I’ve highlighted the pattern of political parties parachuting in candidates with little or no connection to the ward.
“In 2023, Labour even admitted the main reason to vote for their candidates, apart from removing the incompetent Greens, was to ‘send a message to the Tories in Westminster’ – not to improve life in Queen’s Park.
“That gave us a Leicester-based Chandni Mistry, a councillor who rarely attended council meetings or surgeries, and it gave us Tristram Burden, who vouched for her and defended her absence.
“Both are now gone. Yet again, residents are being asked to pay for another election, vote along party lines and not for who will best represent them locally.
“This will be my fourth time standing. In each election, I’ve focused on the real issues affecting residents: housing, transport, education and basic accountability.
“As an independent, I’ve been free to speak openly – including on serious safeguarding failures in our schools that local parties have ignored.”
Mr Hart said that he had campaigned to protect children, including those who are autistic and same-sex attracted, who had been treated as trans despite the absence of a clinical diagnosis.
He said: “For this reason, I co-founded PSHE Brighton to support affected families and our concerns are now being taken seriously at a national level.
“NHS bosses have begun an urgent ‘rapid’ inquiry into how Brighton and Hove children were given harmful gender drugs.”
These concerns, he said, were not being taken seriously by Brighton’s political leadership.
Mr Hart added: “This by-election is another opportunity for Queen’s Park to choose a local voice, not a party mouthpiece.
“I’ve lived in the ward for 21 years. I’m not seeking a political career – I just want to represent the community I call home.”
Good for Adrian. Plus he lives in the Ward. National party politics are ruining Brighton and Hove.
Wasted vote, nice guy but use your vote for Reform or Lib Dems depending on your views
Will not win but voting Reform or Lib Dems most certainly is a wasted vote. This is another straight Labour v Green Kemptown fight. The other parties are simply making up the numbers.
Every vote is a wasted vote unless a candidate wins by one vote
Not at all. Trends can be really important. Might not win this time, but it can be an indication that thoughts and feelings are changing, politically speaking, and that can be a strong message even to those who win to prioritise the issues that matter to that voter base.
Voting reform in a by election on a labour controlled council is a truly wasted vote. Imagine a reform person suggesting anything at council, they would be laughed out the room. Id suggest if that’s the people you like, maybe move to Kent
Hardly! Local elections are about local issues—not about national parties and their agendas. Adrian lives in Queen’s Park Ward, knows the community, and understands the concerns of residents. While Labour and the Greens push party politics, Adrian will put people first—fighting for safer streets, cleaner neighbourhoods, and a council that listens. A neighbour, not a party machine.
How sad. Yet again he uses a platform to attack the trans community instead of focusing on actual real local issues.
If the Lib Dems view is that the state should encourage and facilitate medical transition in children without parental consent…perhaps your candidate (if you have one) can make that clear in language people can understand.
How sad. Yet again he uses a platform to attack the trans community instead of focusing on actual real local issues.
Robert – what really is sad is that you and your party insist on interpreting a serious safeguarding alert as “anti-trans rhetoric”. At last year’s by-election you were obliged to issue an apology to me for this. Please listen: pupils (including in Queen’s Park ward) who are not by any measure ‘trans’ (but often autistic and/or same-sex attracted) have found themselves moving steadily down a classroom to clinic pipeline. This is why a High Court case has triggered an urgent NHS investigation into the prescribing practices of Hove WellBN clinic (the GP at this clinic boasts that her clinic prescribes dangerous cross-sex hormones to 16 year olds and has expanded this racket beyond the city border and now has a list of 2,500 patients).
You will know, Robert, that my focus on ward issues dates back to fighting for genuinely affordable housing in 2018, facilitating a very successful community garden on White St/Edward Street the following year and organising residents against tagging. I care deeply about my neighbourhood.
That Bella Sankey and her cabinet join you in ignoring the growing schools safeguarding scandal in our city should provide a compelling reason for every candidate in this by-election to take the time to meet parents and verify that their claims are real. This used to be known as a ‘safeguarding first’ approach. Like the councils implicated in ignoring Britain’s rape gangs scandal, its truly astonishing that the political class in Brighton & Hove would choose to look away or worse (like you) choose to brand parents as bigots.
Your Facebook page would suggest you are as anti-trans as you are pro-Israel. Let’s see how well you do in the election.
Didn’t realise those two were mutually exclusive. Strange logic, Nick.
Giving gay children under 16 gender changing drugs… That’s pretty messed up man… Not sure how it’s an attack of the trans community to diagnose people correctly.
Excellent news. Best of luck from a fellow Independent.
I see that Adrian still doesn’t understand what safeguarding is.
Would you like to elaborate on safeguarding Alison?
Safeguarding means protecting the vulnerable from harm—not pushing the gullible or the coerced toward danger. True safeguarding protects children from confusion, manipulation, and harmful ideologies. Transgender ideology, disguised as compassion, tells children their bodies are mistakes and urges irreversible interventions. That is not safeguarding—it is betrayal. Real safeguarding defends innocence, shields from coercion, and upholds the objective truth of male and female as biological and healthy realities.
Protecting children from trans ideology does not mean denying, preventing or otherwise discriminating against adults who freely choose to live a trans lifestyle – whatever their reasoning. Adults are free to live as they wish – as far as the law allows. If they want irreversible treatments, HRT, sterility, lifelong drug dependency or surgical mutilation – that’s up to them. But it’s not for children who can’t understand the permanency and ramifications of such decisions.
Very well said.
Did Reform reject him? Too extreme even for them I suppose
Ha ha, no. I’ve never been part of Reform or even attended a Reform meeting. It’s disappointing that Reform, like all the other national parties, regard local elections in our neighbourhood wards as merely a moment to plant the Party flag. They want to win council seats as part of their march on Westminster but too often have no real affinity for the neighbourhood and no interest in the day to day governance of the city (but all eyes on Reform UK’s takeover of Kent County Council, let’s see what they do). However, when it comes to parachuting in dubious candidates at local elections the prize has to go whoever in Labour thought it a good idea to select Chandni Mistry in 2023 (indifferent to Queen’s Park, its turned out that she’s indifferent to Labour itself and now a member of the Tory party). The Mistry case (along with her aunt in Kemptown) was unusual but the shallow opportunism of smiling newbies sporting red rosettes is not. In springing another Queens Park by-election, Cllr Burden was at least honest with constituents about being a “career politician” though we imagined he’d complete his 4 year term for the CV before jumping ship (I guess a more important career opportunity knocked).
In the past there have been numerous Green, Labour and Tory party councillors at BHCC dedicated to their ward and one or two still hang on. But under Bella Sankey the demand to serve the Party (and her) first and serve the people second (if at all) is pronounced. I have spoken with Labour councillors who sit outside Bella’s hyper-loyal Cabinet and who know all about the safeguarding scandal in schools – they simply say words along the lines of ‘I agree with you but I’d be slaughtered if I spoke out’. How do they sleep?
FYI TomPaine when it comes to good local governance we’d do a lot better without the national parties using our neighborhoods as springboards for their ideological fantasies. At the local governance level I’m anti-Party, unimpressed with red, green and blue – and singularly baffled with Reform in Brighton. And if anyone’s interested, my inspiration is Flatpack Democracy, a grassroots west-country phenomenon (maybe look it up).
A neighbour who cares. A candidate who listens. Adrian is passionate, compassionate, and conscientious. He lives in Queen’s Park Ward, understands residents’ concerns, and knows the challenges facing all of Brighton & Hove. Labour and the Greens have run this city into the ground with failed policies and self-serving politics. It’s time to hold them to account. Adrian will fight for Queen’s Park—and for our whole city.
But, with respect, how effective can an independent really be, beyond casework?
Independents can be highly effective—often far more than people realise. In councils where no party has an outright majority, an independent can hold the balance of power, giving residents a decisive voice in shaping local policy. Even where one party dominates, independents still matter: they force scrutiny of decisions, challenge waste and complacency, and ask the awkward questions that party politicians avoid. Without a party whip, an independent councillor can work across divides, building coalitions on issues that matter most to the community. In this way, independents ensure that ruling parties are held to account—not only at election time, but week by week, decision by decision, in the council chamber itself.
Those are fair points broadly, but in Brighton, independents have always been more the exception than the rule. Right now, there are only a handful out, so their direct influence is pretty limited when it comes to budgets or city-wide policy.
For example, Cllr. Fishleigh is respected because of her long community ties, not because she can swing votes. Independents certainly add value by raising issues and keeping the big parties on their toes, but if residents want real delivery on housing, schools or bins, topics which Adrian is rightly talking about, it requires a group working together with the numbers to get things done.
A ward councillor’s role is very different from a scrutiny committee member in this aspect.
This is a useful exchange between JL and you Benjamin. I’m bound to say this of course but your comment on casework is both correct and poignant given our Labour Cabinet concentrates power to Bella Sankey’s ‘gang of ten’. And you are right to say that independent councillors have limited scope to force the policy changes that constituents want. However, even if it were the case that Queens Park had a Labour councillor with a seat at the Cabinet table, casework and other resident concerns which happen to conflict with Labour policy will receive zero advocacy. On the ‘back-benches’ Labour councillors in Brighton might one day have the courage to press Labour leaders on awkward resident issues (as we see in Parliament) but in our council, as it stands, would just bounce off and the dissenting Labour councillor will be ostracised and disciplined. For now the Labour troops do as Bella Sankey tells them (and tbh the Greens still follow a strict party group-think despite having no whip).
This being the case, right now in 2025, Queens Park would do well with a councillor who unambiguously serves the people and not the party. JL is right – this kind of councillor has only his or her electors to answer to and can indeed ask the awkward questions. This is why I keep raising the truly shocking schools safeguarding breach (JL articulates it extremely well on this comments thread). The issue is urgent in itself for QP and every ward but I also raise it in order to say to Labour and Green voters please think twice before voting-in a councillor who is so cowardly that – like every Cabinet member including the outgoing Tristram Burden – they’d prefer to stay silent. Every Cabinet member has refused every invitation to meet the PSHEBrighton.org parents, hear what they have to say, and come to their own independent judgement. The key word here is independent! (And, by the way, no Green councillor has taken up the invitation to meet parents either).
Benjamin – at the start of this year all 4 of independent councillors built an alliance with 2 other non-labour councillors to challenge some very damaging Cabinet-approved policy. True, one dropped out at the last minute causing the alliance (which needed a minimum of 6) to collapse, but this action came very close to being a successful ‘call-in’ of very bad policy. Short of a back-bench rebellion, no Labour councillor would ever challenge Cabinet decision-making no matter how much they agreed with the oppositional voice of their voters.
Adrian, I appreciate the thoughtful way you’ve put this across. You’re absolutely right that Cabinet structures concentrate power, and that backbench councillors often find their influence limited in public. I also take your point that independents can highlight issues without fear of discipline, which has real value, particularly with what we have seen with the whip being removed from quite a few MPs so far.
But where I’d still draw the distinction is in outcomes. Residents understandably measure effectiveness not only by who asks the difficult questions, but by who can deliver changes on housing, schools, bins and budgets. That’s where being part of a group with the numbers to secure votes makes a decisive difference. An independent voice can challenge, but without allies in the chamber, the power to change policy is minimal. Challenge comes quite often from the communities themselves, and I would respectfully suggest that one doesn’t need to be a Ward Councillor to challenge things; that’s the job of an activist.
I think residents are best served when there’s both strong casework and scrutiny, and also the organisational heft to actually push things through.
But like I mentioned the other day, it takes courage to stand up, even more so as an independent. And that is worth respect.