Taberner House: There’s a consultation going on, but Croydon Council doesn’t want you to know about it
Yesterday, Inside Croydon published this, a report about the poor handling of the publicity for a public consultation on the future of the site of Taberner House and the neighbouring Queen’s Gardens public open space, which together with their property developer chums Laing, our council wants to build on for high-rise, high-price yuppie flats for an estimated £100 million.
According to the council’s own contractors, no leaflets had been distributed about the council’s consultation to 12 of the borough’s 13 public libraries.
According to the council’s own contractors, they printed a total of 2,300 leaflets, for a borough with a population of 360,000.
And according to the council’s own contractors, they managed to attract a total of 53 people to attend two consultation sessions.
It all looks as if they were trying, deliberately, to keep this public consultation from as many people as possible.
Such are the wonders of the interweb, Inside Croydon is pleased to be able to inform you that, as a result of reading our article yesterday, more of our loyal readers clicked through to the council’s official online consultation than had managed to attend the council’s self-publicised consultation sessions.
In just one day.
Without costing a single penny of Council Tax.
That would seem to be proof, of sorts, that Croydon Council has gone out of its way to avoid engaging residents in its own consultation process over the plans for the Taberner House site. It would seem to be proof that Croydon Council has spent thousands of pounds of Council Tax-payers’ money on an utterly bogus consultation, to pretend to consult, when they have no intention whatsoever of considering the views and opinions of the Council Tax-payers of Croydon.
The motto over the door into Fisher’s Folly, the council’s £140 million new offices, rally ought to state “Proud to Self-Serve”.
Coming to Croydon
- Rent at the Secombe Theatre: Oct 9-12
- Debate the future of arts in Croydon: Oct 10
- Stanley Lives – open day in South Norwood: Oct 12
- Trafficked – slavery on the screen: Oct 14
- Crystal Palace Concerts – “I have a dream”: Thu Oct 17
- Lakes Playground group’s fundraising Zumba-ween: Oct 26
- PJ’s enterprising look at Black History Month: Oct 29
- Inside Croydon: Croydon’s only independent news source, based in the heart of the borough – 262,183 page views (Jan-Jun 2013)
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Today’s sub-Standard has a piece about ‘Starchitects’ – the likes of Norman Foster – queueing up to transform the City Road area into a cluster of buildings designed by world-class architects. Meanwhile, in Croydon, we’re getting this pile of crap.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve just completed and returned the questionnaire.
The design won’t win any prizes’ but it’s a improvement on Taberner House (not saying much, I suppose) and I like the addition of a cafe. BUT the land grab is unacceptable. There’s at least one building too many: I suppose that’s the price we pay for a so-called ‘free’ Fisher’s Folly!
Apparently, Taberner House was meant to be Croydon’s answer to Milan’s Pirelli building.