Unfortunately we have to announce the cancellation of the hustings on Friday 24th April. This is due to difficulty getting agreement from the candidates regarding who should be included and excluded from the panel.

Initially we had invited only the five candidates representing parties with more than 1% at the last general election to take part. We were pressured by a number of the candidates to extend this invitation to all candidates. Having done this, it then proved impossible to get all eight candidates to agree to attend the hustings due to the presence of a candidate from Liberty GB.

In addition we did not wish to place the local church and vicar in the situation of hosting and chairing an event with a speaker from a party that does not accept religious freedom.

We wish to apologise to all members of the public who were looking forward to attending the event.

Issued by Michael Abrahams, chair of the Forest Hill Society and Annabel McLaren, chair of the Sydenham Society.