Six candidates are standing in a by-election in Queen’s Park for a seat on Brighton and Hove City Council (BHCC) on Thursday 18 September 2025.
The seat became vacant when Labour councillor Tristram Burden resigned, citing a conflict of interest in his new job as a local authority inspector at the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The candidates are Simon Charleton (Labour), Sunny Choudhury (Conservative), Rudi Dikty-Daudiyan (Liberal Democrat), Adrian Hart (Independent), Marina Lademacher (Green) and John Shepherd (Reform UK).
Each candidate has answered questions about local issues and why electors should vote for them.
Here are the responses from Green candidate Marina Lademacher, 28, a teacher and researcher who lives in Hanover and Elm Grove ward.
She is on Instagram @maz_lad and tweets @MarinaLademach1.
Why do you want to be a councillor?
I’m determined to fight for people like me in Queen’s Park who have been let down by a broken system.
People are angry that the Labour Party has betrayed them. I will not stand by while Labour makes shameful decision after shameful decision – above all, its complicity in genocide.
I am standing for election because I’m angry too. I’m furious that our streets are left dirty, that families in social housing are neglected, and that rents keep rising while the rich get richer.
As a councillor, I will always put local people first and speak up for what’s right.
Why do you want to stand in this ward?
As a teacher who lives just off Queen’s Park Road, there’s so much to love about our area: from incredible community projects in Craven Vale, Tarner, and Albion Hill to Queen’s Park itself.
But it’s clear people here have been ignored by their Labour councillors. I’m already working hard and getting things done for our community – from cleaning up our streets and park, fighting for rent controls, and listening to social housing residents neglected by Labour.
I’ve been working hard to ensure no one here is left behind, and I know I can do even more as a councillor.
What are the key issues specific to this ward?
Labour’s continuation of decades of Conservative cuts to local services is hitting Queen’s Park hard.
Locally, I want to fix the mess the Labour-run council left with bins and recycling, especially at the Pepperpot, secure funding to improve our park, and push for action to clean up our streets.
Above all, housing is critical. Rents have skyrocketed, which is why I’m fighting for rent controls.
Many social housing residents live in slum-level conditions – I’ve spoken to families with ceilings collapsing, rat and cockroach infestations, and nothing being done. People here deserve better – a visible, hard-working councillor who listens.
The number of primary and secondary age children is falling, resulting in a growing number of empty places and reduced funding for schools. What should the council do?
Any discussion of the crisis in our schools must start by recognising the damage done by decades of deliberate underfunding of schools.
Without funding, there are no easy answers – but it’s clear that locally, the council must listen to parents and teachers at St Luke’s School who do not want pupil numbers cut here.
Changes to schools have a massive impact, and it’s evident from recent big changes that the council’s approach to consultation must improve.
I want to see genuine, grassroots engagement, including the possibility of citizens’ assemblies to find solutions co-designed with parents, children, and residents.
Brighton and Hove has a housing crisis. Where should new homes be built?
We need to build more homes, and I’ll work with communities to identify sites for new, truly affordable housing.
The Freshfield industrial estate site must remain in public hands but, if used for housing, it must be council housing.
Our housing crisis goes beyond housebuilding. Labour have failed to tackle rogue housing associations and out-of-control landlords.
A third of Queen’s Park residents live in social housing. I’ve spoken to far too many with horrific stories about the situations they face.
I’m fighting not just for new housing, but for rent controls and real action to tackle unacceptable social housing conditions.
Local government is being restructured in Sussex. New councils will be expected to serve a population of at least 300,000 and possibly 500,000. Brighton and Hove has a population of about 280,000. Should Brighton and Hove expand to the east, west or both?
None of the above. These changes don’t need to happen. Labour’s “restructuring” is being done in all the wrong ways, for all the wrong reasons: a top-down approach that ignores communities here in Queen’s Park, elsewhere in Brighton and Hove and across Sussex.
Changes at local level must always mean listening to local people and involving them in decision-making.
Instead, this is yet another demonstration of how Labour are just not listening. And instead of funding councils properly, Labour have plucked numbers out of thin air – all so they can paper over the cracks of their broken system.
Who should be the first directly elected mayor of Sussex and why?
Like other Greens, I want to see genuine devolution to local communities, and I’m concerned that the executive mayor model takes power away from those communities rather than empowering them.
But that means it is vital to elect a Green mayor who would put these communities first and take genuine action on tackling the cost of living and the housing crisis, getting sewage out of our waters, taking public transport into public hands and fighting back against the disgraceful Labour government.
People are sick of more of the same – only a Green mayor offers a real alternative.
…
Polling day is on Thursday 18 September, with polling stations due to be open from 7am to 10pm.
The polling stations are at
- Craven Vale Resource Centre, Craven Road
- St Luke’s Church, Queen’s Park Road
- Barnard Community Centre, St John’s Mount, Mount Pleasant
- Millwood Community Centre, Nelson Row, Carlton Hill
To vote in person at a polling station, electors must bring photo identification (ID).
Marina is more grounded in local specifics than Adrian Hart, with a sharper focus on housing and services, but risks credibility as things like rent controls and big systemic change are not really deliverable at the council level, so it comes across as overpromising, which has been a big downfall for the Greens in Brighton.
Marina communicates well and I dont doubt her commitment. Out door knocking with dozens of Green Party supporters (including Carline Lucas), she has taken the trouble to talk with residents and even take on casework! As a lone independent without the resources party machines invest, the main thing I can do in this third election in as many years is hope that voters remember my work. Its true that I’m using this latest by-election to publicise the harms inflicted on children amidst the schools safeguarding scandal in our city (see New Statesman Hannah Barnes 25/08/25), but I hope voters remember the housing campaign I led and the thinking I’ve devoted to the real roots of our local housing crisis (See https://www.adrianhart.com/housing-held-hostage-a-2023-update/).
The housing issue came up in the ACORN questions to candidate the other day and it was a bruising experience to witness ACORN release false claims (now retracted as police investigate). However, the most troubling incident from the last few days erupted on Scenemag.co.uk. Marina and her party are fully captured by gender ideology. Their desire to attack the Labour candidate involved mining his X account and supplying a Scene writer with examples of what both Scene and the Greens regarded as transphobic tweets. Long story short is that their desire to damage Simon Charleton has worked (the similarly captured council Labour leadership seems to have forced him to apologise for these entirely reasonable re-tweets) but it was a low blow by Marina and co.
Marina, if you read this, you and your teams have twice been outside my house. Twice I’ve come out to introduce myself to you; twice you refused and walked away. Its a shame. We disagree but can we not exchange a few words if only as matter of courtesy? Your supporters came over – confused. One came by later – ‘its because you are anti-trans’ he said. “Its about safeguarding – nothing else”, I replied (as I always do), he shrugged. Looked confused, but had to go. Depressing.
Hopefully Private Eye will cast their investigations over the Green Party across East Sussex on former and current Green Party councillors who are landlords.
Two former BHCC councillors in Regency ‘retired’ to France after recent elections, yet still own a property in Whitehawk.
A ‘leader’ of a Green Party to the east of Brighton who’s ‘concerned” about a merger with Brighton, has a property within the parliamentary seat of Brighton Kemptown in Peacehaven but rents out a six figure house in central Lewes.
How can the Greens lecture on the evils of Angela Rayner and landlords in general when multiple elected members are cashing in on multiple properties.
Surely they have to disclose to the elections officers their main residence when sta ding in elections?
The flyer says we only have 2 choices on QP. That’s really patronising to us all. We can vote fir who we like, the message is fake. Hopefully she will finish last place, the Greens ruined our city through neglect and self-righteous ignorance.
Yet Labour have run the council for most of the last three decades.
If I remember rightly, Greens have only ever led the council as a minority council, meaning they would not have been able to pass ANY council policy or council policy decision without the support of one of the other parties. Guess it’s been convenient for other parties to peddle the myth of the control the Greens have had at the council, when the reality is is I don’t think they have ever run the council at a point that hasn’t been during the Tory austerity years, and even then, they needed to rely on Labour or Tory votes to pass any policy decision.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong and the Greens have ever been more than a minority administration at the council.
The Greens were in bed with Labour, we all know the story. Antisemitism caused a flurry of Labour expulsions and Labour handed the Greens the council with an “understanding” which as soon as their backs were turned Labour went in for the kill in early 2023 when they could smell blood after failure after failure of the Green council which decimated our city with neglect. Short memory dear, short memory,