Kids will be able to bring their bikes, trikes and scooters to the High Street play street on Saturday, thanks to residents and this website
Inside Croydon has made a difference, yet again, after Croydon Council was forced to drop its ban on scooters and bikes from the play street it has planned for the High Street this Saturday.
Inside Croydon yesterday highlighted the imbecility of the killjoy council organising a play street for under-11s, but telling them not to bother to bring their bicycles to the event – on what is supposed to be a celebration of World Car-Free Day.
Within hours, someone in Fisher’s Folly saw sense, dropped the ban and changed the notice on the official council website.
Alerted by Inside Croydon’s report, Woodside community volunteer Emma Hope-Fitch, one of the organisers behind the award-winning Love Lane play street and community gardens, got on to the council over their fun-free press release.
Although the play street had been planned for weeks, the press release was only issued late on Tuesday (and far too late to make the print edition of at least one of the local newspapers).
And accordingly, Inside Croydon noted the absurdity of a council event supposedly for World Car-Free Day which banned small children from riding their bicycles.
A couple of hours later, the council amended its website page.
“You’re right bikes and scooters are welcome,” the anonymous council flunkie behind the @YourCroydon Twitter account admitted.
“Excellent,” Hope-Fitch, pictured right, noted on Twitter. “Now don’t let it happen again. Play is a very serious business.”
There has been no apology from the council for the wrong information being widely circulated by its press office (which operates on a budget of around £500,000 per year). Nor has the council said who was responsible for signing off on the misleading information as a press release or posting it to the website.
But here at Inside Croydon Towers, we’re happy to have helped…
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