Lambeth Greens will not report Lambeth Labour for 'dirty tricks' after Labour election literature was presented as a hand-written note from a neighbour.

The letters, which were delivered in Streatham and Coldharbour, were penned by two former Green supporters, one of whom is listed on council documents as endorsing the nomination of three Labour candidates.

The letters urged neighbours to vote Labour in the May elections, and sparked suggestions the letters could be breaching electoral laws, but Councillor Jane Edbrooke said the authors were genuinely former Green supporters.

Both letters had a Labour imprint at the bottom of the page.

Green Party councillor and leader of the Lambeth opposition, Jonathan Bartley, said the party had decided to "move on" and not take the issue further.

"These things are so time consuming – it's where you put your energies," he explained.

He said Lambeth Labour had made false claims about the party in the letter, including a claim the Green party supported Conservative cuts.

"Electoral law is incredibly weak and basically politicians can lie in election literature - unless it is libellous there is no real recourse," he added.

"We had a choice; either to get down in the gutter with them and rebut it, or trust people, and we made the call to trust the people and it was a big call.

"But as it went around people would open the door to us and say, 'have you seen this letter? This is completely disgusting' and actually it completely backfired. People just saw it as dirty tricks."

He said the claim indicating the Green Party supported Tory cuts came from a tweet he made which criticised Lambeth's budget.

"Because I had criticised their budget and said it was more right wing that the conservative budget, they put out in the election literature that I had supported the Conservative budget - which is a huge stretch," he explained.

"It's half-truths isn’t it, and it's a completely deliberate misrepresentation."

He said the party had "learnt some lessons" from the experience.

"We know now that if there is any repeat of that stuff we will come back very, very hard," he said.