Croydon is getting its own Bob a Job Week activity on Saturday with the people of Waddon invited to take part in what the council is calling a “community clean-up” event, centred around Houlder Crescent, “for all residents to come together and give the area a spring clean”, according to the website of local councillor Clare Hilley.

The day’s activities will include, “clearing gardens of unwanted rubbish and the local garden centre has kindly donated items such as plants, seeds, potting compost and pots for people to use in their gardens”, Hilley says.

Plus – presumably much of it provided at the Council Tax-payer’s expense – there will be free skips for rubbish clearance; refreshments at St George’s Church, Barrow Road; face painting (whoop!); and volunteers to help the elderly and disabled tidy their gardens.

Hilley offers no details of from where these volunteers are drawn, nor does she suggest how to volunteer to assist. Nor does she mention that essential detail: when it is all supposed to start.

Hilley also does not mention the Change: Croydon scheme run by Gavin Barwell MP, which suffered such a controversial launch last month, amid allegations of poor organisation and planning, as well as racist abuse of people attending a London Road mosque. So presumably the pet project of Barwell won’t have any role in Saturday’s activity in Waddon, which in any case falls outside his Croydon Central constituency.

Nor, of course, will any of Saturday’s events have anything to do with the use of Council Tax money to bolster the grasp on the three Waddon ward seats of the council’s ruling Conservative group. Why is our council not staging such a clean-up event in Broad Green? Why not Selhurst, or any other ward which has established Labour representation on the council?

According to the London Assembly ward votes, published this morning, in Waddon Labour’s Louisa Woodley polled better than Britain’s most overpaid local councillor, the Tory Steve O’Connell. That is clearly a warning shot for Hilley, Simon Hoar and Tony Harris ahead of the next scheduled council elections.

“I hope to see you at the clean up as it will be a chance for lots of residents to come together and help improve Waddon,” Hilley, the former reality TV “star”, says.

Those attending Saturday’s event might want to take the opportunity to ask Councillor Hilley why she and her two Conservative colleagues from the ward made election promises in 2010 to oppose any incinerator “in or near” Croydon. Yet come the most recent vote on the £1billion Beddington Lane pollution factory, all of them voted in favour of a scheme which, according to research on a similar urban incinerator published recently by King’s College, can increase potentially damaging air pollution by 700 per cent.

Fair-minded Waddon residents may also be curious to hear Councillor Hilley’s views on the blatantly racist blog posting on her husband’s extremist political website, for which he admits to being forced to apologise, and why her Tory youth body, Conservative Future, has failed ever to take any disciplinary action on the matter.

Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on Councillor Hilley’s parade.

• Inside Croydon: Living life on the fringes of Croydon. Post your comments on this article below. If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

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