Sutton voted 2019 champs

Sutton has scooped the most prestigious prize of 2019… in front of a TV audience of more than 300 million people

We won prize for best performance and floats at the London’s New Year’s Day Parade (Lnydp) in Piccadilly yesterday – as more than 8,000 performers took part in London’s 33rd New Year’s Day Parade.

Sutton Council’s Mayor, Steve Cook, collected the trophy for being 1st – along with £10,000 for the Mayor's charities: Sutton Home-Start and The Kidney Fund.

He said: “What an incredible achievement! Being a part of the parade and then collecting the 1st place prize on behalf of our borough was one of the proudest days of my mayoral term. well done to all concerned."

“Thank you to everyone who put so much in to make it happen. This was achieved with a lot of hard work by a great team of volunteers. I’m absolutely thrilled as well that our two local charities will be benefiting.”  

For the sixth year running, Christine Lindsay and the Gary Mason Charity volunteers and friends represented the Borough of Sutton by providing a float and entry.

The float included people walking, dancing and acting along the route to entertain the crowds.

Our entry was called ‘Sutton Welcomes the Children of the World’ and our song was ‘Welcome to the children of the world’ which says ‘hello’ in eight different languages. Each country was represented by participants dressed in National dress and carrying that countries flag with Hello across it. The float was made up of an aircraft, arrivals hall, passport control, duty free and baggage carousel with passengers from different countries arriving.

Christine Lindsay, Chairman, Board of Trustees at Gary Mason Charity, added: “Wow! Oh wow! I can't quite believe it. Thank you to everyone who has left messages of congratulations.”

80 people from Sutton aged between 5 to at least 85 years old took part in the parade! It took the teams five days to build up the float, and another full day to take it back down again! 

Conference Haul International provide their bright Yellow cad’ and trailer and a driver for the day. Subsea7 made a donation to the charity to help with costs. The rest was down to the generosity of the team who built the float giving their time and expertise free. Lizzie Atkins who was the artistic lead drawing and painting much of the float boards, her husband Ian who along with Roy Gough and Matt Nichols built up the structures needed, plus the 10 or so other helpers each day.