Simon Hoar: £300 for a sidewalk sign? Cushty!
#thatissocroydon BBC London reporter Angela Walker yesterday nailed Croydon Councillor Simon Hoar over proposals to charge shop-owners and other small businesses a £300 stealth tax over five years for placing boards and banners on the pavement.
According to Hoar, looking as shifty as a latter-day Del Boy, these boards cause unwelcome clutter on our streets and create a health and safety risk. Unless, that is, the shop owners cough up 300 sovs to the council. Cushty.
As well as displaying our council’s utter lack of awareness of the travails of small business, in adding yet another additional cost to their already struggling bottom line, the report also confirms the sad demise of yet another Croydon business, the Mamma Mia restaurant on St George’s Walk, doubtless another victim of Nestle’s decision to quit the borough when Hoar and his colleagues on the council failed to find a satisfactory offer to keep Croydon’s biggest private employers in south London.
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