Councillor Armstrong has made just six Member Enquiries to Lambeth Council since he was elected in mid-2024 – and none at all between May 2025 and February 2026, according to data obtained from the council.

The figures raise questions about his role in the three-strong Labour team that represents his Streatham Common and Vale ward at Lambeth’s town hall in Brixton. Figures for councillors’ Member Enquiries vary greatly, but no other Streatham councillor has submitted fewer than 50 in this council term, and most are well into the hundreds.

Member Enquiries (MEs) aren’t the only way that councillors can connect with the council and represent their constituents. But other councillors told StreathamStuff it would be difficult to do the job at all – and effectively impossible to do casework properly – without making them, especially for someone relatively new to the role like Cllr Armstrong. Councillors are “expected” to use the system, the council says.

Lambeth Council’s democratic services department told StreathamStuff: “A Member Enquiry is the formal mechanism for elected councillors to communicate with council officers. It is primarily used when councillors seek information or assistance on behalf of constituents or to address ward-related issues.

“The purpose of the ME process is to enable councillors to obtain information or resolve issues relating to council services in a structured way.

“Councillors are expected to always use the ME system as this is the preferred route for formal enquiries.”

The next lowest number of MEs submitted by a Streatham councillor is 55, by Henna Shah, who resigned in early 2024 to work for the Labour party in Westminster.

The lowest by a sitting councillor is the 84 recorded by fellow Labour councillor Marianna Masters, in the Streatham Wells ward. Cllr Masters was not reselected by her branch to contest the upcoming elections, and has instead moved to Herne Hill, where the Greens won a by-election from Labour last year and are now targeting all three seats.

Cllr Armstrong’s six MEs were all made in the first few months of 2025. Two of them were about housing management, while the others went to adult social care, planning and transport, resident services, and Serco.

The ME data, requested by StreathamStuff under Freedom of Information regulations, extends to the end of February 2026. StreathamStuff also received an earlier version of the data – the two appear consistent with each other, and both show Cllr Armstrong with six MEs.

Cllr Armstrong responded to initial questions on what he had achieved since elected as councillor – with 46% of the vote, ahead of the Greens’ 22% – in a by-election alongside the July 2024 general election, and whether it was fair to suggest he did less than other councillors.

“I would disagree that I’m not visible or engaged in the ward or the area,” Cllr Armstrong said. “I'm routinely out speaking to residents on the doorstep and at my surgeries where I support residents with their issues.

“I've attended all of the committee meetings on which I am a full member and have routinely substituted on other committees that have gone late into the night where I have raised issues on behalf of residents in Streatham Common and Vale and to improve the Borough of Lambeth as a whole for all of its residents.

“I'm always seeking to improve as a councillor to better support the people of Streatham Common and Vale, but I challenge the assertion that I'm not present or do not have a role within the ward team.”

Cllr Armstrong’s fellow Labour ward councillors – Lambeth deputy leader Danny Adilypour and Sarah Cole – backed him, saying they work “as a team”.

Cllr Adilypour said: “We share all of our duties as a ward team between the three of us, including holding ward surgeries, picking up resident casework and attending community events, to ensure that we can cover everything we need to. This arrangement works well and we enjoy working together as a team.”

Data from the Open Council Network, cross-checked with Lambeth Council meeting minutes, suggest Cllr Armstrong has attended five council committee meetings since his election.

Three of those meetings are of the Children’s Services Scrutiny Sub-committee, of which he is a full member. He has also been at eight quarterly meetings of the full council.

He has made no minuted contributions in those meetings, although the children’s services committee doesn’t typically record individual members’ contributions in its minutes.

He was absent from the October 2025 children’s services meeting, and the minutes don’t report his apologies. Cllr Armstrong said in response that he had been “away for work”, that his apologies “should have been in the minutes”, and that he would seek to have them corrected.

In reply to StreathamStuff’s follow-up about his low ME numbers, Cllr Armstrong said: “MEs are an important part of representing residents and I do utilise MEs to raise residents' issues, but they are not the only route in which a councillor can represent their residents' issues and concerns.

“For example, residents might raise broader issues or points about the area where an ME might not be the right course of action or are looking for advice on a specific issue that I'm able to provide at the time of speaking to them. Different councillors will have different approaches to raising the issues or comments of their residents, but I do take your point though and I'll look to make better use of the ME system moving forwards.

“I believe that I'm a hard working councillor who, as I've stated, is speaking to residents across Streatham Common and Vale about their issues and what they love about their area and taking those forward as their representative on the council.”

Local visibility

In the party’s latest election leaflets, Cllr Armstrong says that representing Streatham Common and Vale is his “passion”.

“Locally, he’s spoken up for people experiencing homelessness, those in temporary accommodation, and the protection of local services and the environment,” the leaflet says.

Cllr Armstrong is one of only three of Streatham’s 13 councillors not to list a contact mobile phone number on his council web page. He holds his monthly surgeries upstairs at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple on Colmer Road. There has been no signage to indicate where in the building the surgery is held, on the two occasions that StreathamStuffhas visited.

He has little presence on social media, and has made few references to Streatham, at least since his successful by-election campaign. His last post about Streatham on X was in December, when like many Labour councillors he posted a picture of himself supporting “Small Business Saturday” – outside David’s Deli on Ellison Road, the same small business visited by his more senior colleague, Cllr Adilypour.

Cllr Armstrong has been entitled to around £31,000 in councillor “allowances” since election. Lambeth pays among the highest allowances of any London borough, since councillors voted for a one-third increase a couple of years ago. The allowances are in line with independent pay review recommendations, umbrella group London Councils notes, but they are considerably higher than almost all other councils.

Lambeth’s standard councillor allowance for 2026-27 is £16,359. Only the boroughs of Newham and Camden are also over £16,000. The average across the 32 London boroughs is around £12,650. Lambeth cabinet members – which in Streatham include council deputy leaders Cllr Adilypour and Cllr Rezina Chowdhury – are entitled to a further £31,592.

The number of MEs made by councillors varies depending on a number of factors, including how ward teams divide up their work, and councillors’ seniority. Cabinet members, and chairs of influential committees like Overview and Scrutiny, tend to submit more MEs, in line with their extra responsibilities.

Cllrs Adilypour and Chowdhury had made several hundred MEs each since 2022, by the end of February this year. Council leader Claire Holland, councillor for the Oval ward, had made more than 1,200. A Labour councillor for Knight’s Hill, Jackie Meldrum – who sits on the Corporate Committee and the Standards Committee – tops the list with nearly 1,600.