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 Independent candidate and writer Adrian Hart, 64, who is not a member of any party and lives in Queen’s Park.
His website is www.adrianhart.com and he tweets @AdrianHartQuPk.
Why do you want to be a councillor?
Inspired by the “Flatpack Democracy” model (worth looking up), this will be my fourth time standing as an Independent.
Each time, I’ve wanted to offer voters an alternative to national party-political interference in local governance.
Too often, the party-tribes use local elections to advance their Westminster ambitions.
If they ever field a winning candidate, known to voters for their integrity and achievements, any commitment to representing constituents is sacrificed to the cabinet party line.
Exclusively focused on efficient city governance, we need councillors who serve people not party. I’d relish the opportunity to hold this administration’s feet to the fire.
Why do you want to stand in this ward?
In 2003, Queens Park became my home. I led the 2018 fight against a people-unfriendly development – the “Edward Street Quarter”.
Our objective of genuinely affordable accommodation and more public realm failed (no Labour administration/ward councillor support whatsoever) but the campaign galvanised residents leading to the formation of White Street Community Garden.
I stand in this by-election in solidarity with the many residents I’ve met across 20 years let down by a succession of smiling, rosette-wearing councillors who, once elected, are seldom seen again.
Whatever the result on Thursday 18 September, let’s hope it doesn’t squander our votes with another lacklustre Labour job-share.
What are the key issues specific to this ward?
Too many by-elections signal deeper issues: our democratic process is faltering. Councillor Milla Gauge demonstrates integrity and has helped residents. However, electoral fraud implicating Councillor Chandni Mistry (now a Tory) damaged trust.
Mistry skipped the 2023 hustings. Once elected, her absences became routine yet Councillor Tristram Burden defended her.
Meanwhile, central city wards face filthy streets, tagging, housing shortages and too many party houses.
Families, shops and cafés are left to bear the brunt. And Councillor Burden quits mid-term!
Right now, we need a councillor independent of party politics – someone committed, accountable, here to stay – for the sake of this living, breathing community.
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?
It should start by recognising the arrogance of its approach to the public.
As parents and school staff mounted Save Our School campaigns, councillors Bella Sankey and Jacob Taylor acted as though the public had nothing useful to say.
One head teacher told me: “Working with us rather than against could’ve achieved the same goal in reducing reception places but in a kinder and more compassionate way.”
The UK low birthrate and the city’s expanding student population are daunting factors.
But topping that is the indifference of our political class to the hostile environment causing families to leave the city.
Brighton and Hove has a housing crisis. Where should new homes be built?
Where? How about: “For whom?” Unless new homes are genuinely affordable or part of a national council-housebuilding programme the city will continue to body-swap its population (and especially families) with the new smart-set.
Thousands of students now occupy homes previously rented by families. Demand pushes up rents. The families move out.
In a city three miles wide and locked in by sea and downs, the damage done by alternating Labour/Green leaders (cosied up with their officer elite) has been profound.
Often members of the smart-set themselves, they can’t resist squeezing in those “luxury” developments that local people invariably cannot afford.
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?
What a mess. At a packed Peacehaven meeting on Tuesday 12 August, 200 residents opposed Brighton and Hove’s plan to absorb Peacehaven, Telscombe Cliffs and East Saltdean, demanding a referendum.
Many said they were never properly consulted, describing the process as a token “piece of paper” and feared losing local identity and control.
Some accused Brighton of chasing extra tax revenue rather than offering benefits.
The dispute reflects wider reforms pushed by former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, whose drive for unitary authorities and regional mayors ends with “mega-councils”, an eroded local democracy, the demos pushed to the margins. Exactly what Labour want.
Who should be the first directly elected mayor of Sussex and why?
If there has to be an elected mayor, I hope he or she will end the misguided wokery so fashionable at Brighton and Hove City Council – and stop i360-like vanity projects.
In the footsteps of Green leaders came Bella Sankey. In July 2023, she vilified my concerns about extreme gender ideology pouring into schools.
Sussex needs an evidence-led mayor who takes heed of our city’s pupil safeguarding scandal, notes the shocking New Statesman exposé of NHS Sussex on Monday 25 August and draws the obvious chilling parallel with local authority complicity in the monstrous harms wrought on children by grooming gangs.
…
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).
Making up some things to be angry about …….. if he gets in he will be the minister for using 30000 words when 10 would do ! Minister for shouting at the internet ! Not serious man is he !
Ha ha – well, I know I’m biased but in case you are a Queen’s Park voter who hasn’t heard of Adrian let me get you up to speed: he’s run as an independent candidate at each opportunity since 2019 increasing his vote share every time. Voters know him. At every hustings we see him alongside candidates who are mostly never seen again. Amidst a by-election that only Labour saw coming all the candidates have doubtless done their best to give B&H News answers to questions inside the 100 word limit and to the deadline (you’d prefer 10 word one liners?). This is not the upstart candidate you imagine. He’s angry alright but he gets out and campaigns – he won us White Street Community Garden, writes articles for the Brighton Society, blogs on housing and other issues. Do some research!
Did some research… read his articles ! Nearly fell asleep ! Needs an editor ! Council would have to be meeting 24 hours a day before he get to the point ! Ha ha !
Adrian seems to have clarity in highlighting the problems and frustrations he would want to face, but is certainly weaker in offering actionable solutions or a vision for delivery. I suspect he will likely appeal to protest voters but struggle to convince those seeking practical improvements.
While Simon has already been a Councillor, Labour have a surfeit of seats. Adrian coild make a great Councillor, and has shown his persistence and determination by standing again. I hope he gets in.
My work fighting for genuinely affordable housing is well known in my neighbourhood in the south west of the ward but its otherwise been forgotten. I led the 2018 campaign for a better solution to the Edward Street Quarter luxury apartment blocks when they were first promoted by BHCC/Labour and although the Scarp the Plan fight was lost the energy we built up sought out and won the opportunity to establish White Street Community Garden the following year. Our neighbourhood became galvanised and because the support from councillors had been weak there was great encouragement from the community to stand as an independent.
For several years I was part of the Brighton Society and the Living Rent Campaign. I contributed articles on housing to the Brighton Society, delivered Deputations to council and more recently, following attendance at national and local housing conferences, I wrote this piece: https://www.adrianhart.com/housing-held-hostage-a-2023-update/
Thank you Benjamin for your supportive comments here and elsewhere but on affordable housing solutions I’ve been far more involved and focussed than I’ve been able to get across. That ACORN (who I met and supported in 2023) recently forgot who I was and what I’ve done and unlawfully published false claims about me last week epitomises how frustrating it is to be heard amongst the noise which emanates, frankly, from the party opposition only too happy to ignore any positive contributions from pesky independent!
Adrian, I don’t doubt your passion or the contributions you’ve made over the years; they clearly show persistence and commitment. Where I struggle a little is seeing how that experience translates into the day-to-day work of a ward councillor. You articulate the general situation well, but, and I ask in good faith, how would you move things forward in practice?
If we think the Labour majority administration is doing a great job and it will help to have two rather than one Labour ward councillor in Queens Park then thats the way to go I suppose. If we want to add another Green to the opposition team, I get that. Vote Green. But Labour job-shares or more Greens waging tribal warfare against their opponents are pointless right now in the run-up to 2027 May elections imo. I genuinely think that a principled vote for a neighbourhood councillor unfettered by the party group-think would be worth while at this point (heck, if enough voters are sick of the red-green merry go round it might just work!!)
There’s been some filming of full council meetings from the gallery for a documentary and looking at the footage its truly shocking how asleep the party foot soldiers are. And moments come along where you think bloody hell is anyone going to stand up to the great leader and SAY SOMETHING! and its at those precise moments our reds and greens move in lock-step. The Tories always miss the moment too.
Change to housing policy is tough for any elected representative – its a quasi-judicial fortress. But when I delivered my Deputation (in May 2023) on the need for LAs to link forces and challenge central government on the big house builder oligarchy the response was silence. No-one cared, no-one was listening. It needed a councillor to look up from their afternoon daydream and shout ‘yes, why dont we do that?’.
Sorry to return to the safeguarding scandal again but this has the ugly feel of the grooming gang horrors when parents first tried to alert certain northern councils. On this alone we need independents happy to work in a bi-partisan way to shake councillors to WAKE the x@*x UP!
But I suppose it depends what things we think need moving forward.
yeah, no practical plans looks like he just likes to complain.
Wasn’t he with the “BRIGHTON & HOVE INEPENDENTS PARTY” last time he stood and the time before that? So now he has left them? Why? Not as independent as he makes out.
Happy to explain Sanderson: A few years after running as an independent in 2019 I co-founded Brighton & Hove Independents with Cllr Fishliegh. It was necessary to register as a party but the ethos was nonetheless fundamentally anti-party. We were dedicated to the principle of neighbourhood representation and an end to the national parties using local elections to garner political power with little concern for efficient city governance. As you say, I ran under the BHI banner in 2023 and 2024.
This year I quit BHI following a shocking failure within the group to take the pupil safeguarding breach in schools seriously (even though Cllr Fishleigh met the parents). There was an opportunity to call-in harmful policy underpinned by gender ideology and BHI led on this but then u-turned. Safeguarding is a core value in the BHI constitution so it was necessary to resign. It was a crushing experience but I wish the two BHI councillors (who are very hard working and responsive ward councillors) all the best and hope that they reinstate and act on their previous support for the parents caught up in this nightmare.
Ha ha ! Can’t work together with “independents !” Did they read your email… then fall asleep ! We need someone who gets things done not flounce out when they see disagreement !
We need councillors with the decency and integrity to recognise an unprecedented safeguarding breach when they see one. Councillors in Oldham have voted unanimously to demand a statutory public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town. The councillors in office years ago who told parents that they were racists and in any case fixing pot-holes and sorting out bin collections was their priority will be rightly shamed. My co-founder at BHI independents chose to join almost every other B&H councillor in a similar act of cowardice despite listening to parents disclose evidence of physical harms inflicted on children. This was a red line. You can mock Sandra but on principle and out of respect for the families I had to leave the group.
Sound like he will do his crusade ….. looking things up on the internet … let other councillors do the hard work !
Someone else blaming ‘wokery’ for whatever it is they don’t like.
Otherwise known as someone, with evidence, trying to sound a red alert on the gender ideology harming kids in our schools.
We have the information. Do some reading: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2025/08/health-bosses-failed-to-act-on-nhs-clinic-prescribing-gender-drugs-to-kids-for-five-years
Blaming ‘wokery’ on something you don’t like then.
he has turned brain into jelly