The PCC said the theatre tour was not something he needed to mention to voters during the election campaign and he denied letting them down.
Speaking to Chris Goreham on BBC Radio Norfolk, Sutton said the idea for the tour was proposed in 2025, however, he did not commit to the plan and asked promoters to “hold fire” when the PCC by-election happened.
He said: “At the time I was being elected I had said I wasn’t going to do it unless I was confident….that it would not be incompatible with doing the job.”
Sutton added that since then, the promoters announced a number of tour dates. However he said the tour will now not go ahead in the format that has been published and he is talking with the promoter as to whether or not it should be cancelled entirely.
One of the solutions he proposed was stripping the tour back to venues only local to Norfolk.
He said: “My first priority is this role and to those people who live in Norfolk and I want to come out of my tenure being able to say I made a difference and made things better for them.”
He said within the first two months of the role there had been “a lot more work” including long hours, evenings and weekend working that he had not expected.
Sutton is due to appear at a Norfolk police and crime panel on 2 February, before being on stage in Leeds that evening.
“There are lots of people who do meetings like that by [Microsoft] Teams or across the internet now, which might be an option,” the ex-detective said.
“But it may well be that it’s a moot point now, because I’ve listened and I think I should make sure the people of Norfolk still have the confidence that I would do the job properly.”
Sutton admitted the reaction from constituents on social media and via emails sent to his office had caught him off-guard.
“That’s made me think about it again,” he conceded.
