Littlehampton charity figure responds to claims made by Conservative candidate

Vicky Rhodes, who is hoping to be re-elected to Arun District Council, described herself in her election leaflet as a volunteer for Shopmobility.

However this was challenged on social media by trustees of the charity, who claimed she did ‘not currently volunteer for Shopmobility, in fact we haven’t seen her for about three years’.

Cllr Rhodes disputed this, saying she still managed the charity’s Facebook page.

But in a further twist, Littlehampton Shopmobility manager June Caffyn, who also represents Courtwick and Toddington as a Conservative, contacted the Gazette to ‘confirm and re-iterate that Vicky has had no involvement in the charity since she left sometime in January 2020’.

In a statement she said: “I confirm that Vicky (Rhodes) quit the charity sometime in January 2020 approximately - as I cannot recall the exact date.

“I also would like to confirm that Vicky had last put a post on our Facebook page in 2019 - again, I cannot recall the exact date as ‘old news’ is often deleted, but I would guess very roughly sometime summer/autumn in 2019.

“Vicky and I have always been on friendly terms, (indeed we are Cllr colleagues until May when I have no plans to re-stand for Council as I retire from local politics then) but once Vicky left sometime in January 2020, she rarely asked about Shopmobility and I did not discuss Shopmobility with her (apart from getting her to sign a letter to the charity’s Bank about having her name as a signatory removed from our Bank details). Indeed there was no point in discussing Shopmobility with her, as in my opinion the charity was no longer of any interest to her once she’d left.”

Mrs Caffyn described how Cllr Rhodes would occasionally pop into Shopmobility for a quick chat, but ‘there was no voluntary work being done by Vicky once she had left the charity for good’.

She herself put in her election leaflet back in 2019 that she was a manager of a local charity and passionate about championing disabilities as she was aware that Shopmobility as a charity has to be non-political.

All Arun seats are up for election on Thursday May 4.