Paul Scott, the controversial chair of Croydon’s planning committee, ducked out of attending the start of last night’s full council meeting, when a demonstration was staged outside the Town Hall against the Brick by Brick overdevelopments across the borough, which he is on a personal mission to push through.
Paul Scott, right, canvassing last night with Jane Avis and Fairfield candidate Chris Clark
Scott had been picked out for particular attention by the protestors, who carried banners that read “Stop Scott!”.
Other banners featured Jo Negrini, the council’s similarly unaccountable £185,000-a-year chief executive.
Negrini, who in her time working at Lambeth Council had been involved in the beginnings of the estate “regeneration” of Cressingham Gardens, was accused on one of the demonstrator’s placards of social cleansing.
Negrini turned up on time for the meeting, and therefore had to walk through the rather polite demonstration on the Town Hall steps.
Scott, in contrast, went off canvassing with at least four other Labour councillor colleagues.
These included Jamie Audsley, the councillor for Bensham Manor ward who has been investing thousands of pounds of public money from his ward budget in helping to support an astroturfing news sheet in Thornton Heath which, conveniently, parrots the council’s own propaganda.
Also giving a miss to the beginning of the council meeting in order to canvass for Labour in the Fairfield target ward was Jane Avis. It is the second time in less than a week that Avis has been missing from the Town Hall chamber when her ward’s residents might reasonably have expected her to be there.
Last week’s planning committee (chaired by Scott) included a Brick by Brick application on Avenue Road which had been objected to by residents, and by Steve Reed OBE, the local Labour MP. Avis and her ward councillor colleague, Patsy Cummings, had met the residents to hear their concerns.
Protestors turned out at the Town Hall last night to get their message across. Scott bottled it
But when Avis’s support was needed at the planning committee to object to the scheme, she was no where to be seen. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she was got at,” a Katharine Street confided to Inside Croydon.
Last night, Avis and Scott were shoulder-to-shoulder, cheerily canvassing for votes while the last full council meeting before May’s local elections took place.
An hour into the meeting, and Scott returned, seen by residents skulking into the chamber, hoping no one would notice.
“I was in the chamber, on the ground floor, and he arrived before the public questions and hid in the area under the balcony until after the public questions had finished,” said one of the protestors.
“I’m not really surprised, and not very happy, I would have liked him to answer some questions himself. I would have liked him to be there, at least, to acknowledge them.”
Instead, in this latest egregious example of the council placing itself above any kind of accountability, Scott and his colleagues opted to swerve a legitimate protest from the people who pay their generous allowances.
Scott works for a firm of architects in central London. He is married to Alison Butler, the cabinet member responsible for housing, and Brick by Brick. The couple own two properties in Croydon. Scott is a councillor in Woodside ward. The Labour Party branch there automatically re-selected him and the council leader, Tony Newman, as candidates for the Town Hall elections.
The local elections are on May 3.
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Scott is only comfortable operating in the rarefied planning committee environment where he is king pin, Labour has a majority table and its members jay walk to his unsubtle prompts.
However, I question his abilities to operate effectively here too. The 8th March Committee meeting had an application for a Spray Shop in Seldson that had already been built without planning permission, it’s fumes were impacting the environment of local homes – ie it had no noise of fumes attenuation. The owners clearly could give a damn abiding with planning law or its neighbours.
99.9% of Planning Committees in the UK would have refused Consent.
What does Cllr Scott do? Yes, he bends over backward to allow this business developer to get away with it. To the point that the Borough Solicitor had to remind Scott of his legal duties.
This was a sham. Scott is clearly out of control, he’s not acting in the interests of Croydon Council and judging from the 8th March, he is struggling with with some of the basic prerequisites of Planning Legislation.
Westminster Council recently had a Chair of a Planning who went rogue and was removed from Committee. Watch this space.
Jamie Audsley hasn’t given a penny to support an astroturfing news sheet in Thornton Heath (otherwise known as The Thornton Heath Chronicle)
The Chronicle doesn’t have any political allegiances/influences. As for parroting the council’s own propaganda feel free to read it and make you own decision. Copies of the newspaper are available in Thornton Heath or email editor@thorntonheathchronicle.co.uk and I’ll send you the pdf of the latest edition.
Andrea Perry, Editor