THE YEAR IN REVIEW Part 1 – January to April
Late response: the Allders building got a clean earlier this month. But plans of how to redevelop it have been delayed, again
The parlous state of the council’s finances would remain a thorny issue throughout the year, after Tory Mayor Jason Perry issued a Section 114 notice of his own in November 2022 and then sprung a 15% Council Tax hike on the borough in March.
But 12 years after plans for a £1billion (later £1.4billion) redevelopment of the town centre had been unveiled by private developers Westfield and land owners the Whitgift Foundation, the saga over the on-off-on-off-again shopping mall scheme would be a significant feature throughout 2023, as would the collapsing finances of the church-linked charity.
Here, through some of the better-read articles of each month, we’ll attempt to re-tell the story of the past 12 months…
January 2023
Home owner’s victory after four-year battle with planners
The council’s dysfunctional planning department was caught out yet again after the collapse of a developer’s appeal case – but only after incurring huge and avoidable costs as a determined resident fought their case. The head of the council planning department, despite serial examples of failures of her and her colleagues, remains in post.
Golden tickets: customers queued around the block to get a sight of the new Marks and Spencer on the Purley Way. But what might this mean for the retailer’s town centre store?
M&S’s Whitgift future questioned after shift to Purley Way
The uncertainty created by Westfield’s lengthy silence over its promised regeneration of Croydon town centre has prompted countless rumours about the fate of existing traders renting space in the increasingly run-down Whitgift Centre.
Westfield non-developers facing £5m fine for failed supermall
As was established long ago, beyond being uncritical cheerleaders for the £1.4billion scheme, Croydon Council is pretty much powerless when it comes to the private development that has been blighting the town centre for more than a decade. But a contract signed with Westfield included a penalty clause for the developers’ inaction, which the council (reluctantly?) decided to activate.
February
When Minster was the venue for an Anglo-Saxon peace treaty
Golden history: this coin, with the head of Coenwulf, provides a link to Croydon going back more than a thousand years
As you might expect, Inside Croydon strongly refutes all suggestions that we ever “re-write” history. But in one of his regular columns for this website in February this year, Croydon Minster archivist David Morgan updated history, with a discovery that the town is at least 150 years older than had previously been recognised.
This. Is. Important.
“It’s long been understood that there has been a significant church in what is now Croydon since Saxon times,” Morgan wrote. “There is a record of ‘a priest of Croydon’ from 960, although the first record of a church building is in the Domesday Book, from 1086.”
Morgan’s contacts had discovered coins from the time when Wulfred was Archbishop of Canterbury, between 805 to 832, and these marked the signing of a treaty at Croydon Minster. “The coins may help to show that a church and settlement existed in Croydon more than 150 years earlier.”
New owners plan re-opening of Selsdon hotel for late March
Expansive and ambitious plans for a new “lifestyle resort” where there used to be the Edwardian grandeur of the Selsdon Park Hotel drew thousands of interested views of our report on the latest update. What could possibly go wrong..?
Croydon’s 15% Council Tax hike: now is the time for action
Figure of ridicule: Jason Perry is now widely known as Mayor 15%
After breaking the news that Tory Mayor Jason Perry wanted to hike Council Tax by a punitive 15%, petitions started by Inside Croydon drew more than 30,000 signatures.
Mayor Perry, who says he is “listening” to the people of Croydon, ignored them and went ahead with the tax hike, thanks in large part to the borough’s Labour councillors who didn’t put up much of a fight and abstained at a key Town Hall meeting held in March.
March
MP warns over town centre stabbings: keep your kids at home
As the number of knife crime incidents soared, including fights between armed gangs of 14-year-olds outside McDonald’s on Church Street, the best that Croydon Central MP Sarah Jones could offer was the suggestion that no one’s children should be allowed out…
By the end of the year, there had been more murders recorded in Croydon – the majority the consequence of knife attacks – than in any other borough in Greater London: 11.
Council’s once-prized listed building Heathfield House left to rot
There’s a problem for a local council with no money: nothing gets done. A public-owned listed building, Heathfield House, at the top of Gravel Hill, has been neglected so long that it is at serious risk of being lost for future generations.
The council stands accused of “civic vandalism”, and is described as “an organisation as bankrupt of imagination as it is of money”. In December, thanks to the lax security on site, squatters were able to break in to the building, and it took the council two days before they managed to evict them. Promised announcements and plans to secure Heathfield House and its once prized ornamental gardens have… you’ve guessed it… failed to materialise.
Croydon put in special measures: ‘Worst of all possible worlds’
In charge: Michael Gove
When the announcements were made, by Whitehall and in Westminster, it was hardly a surprise. But the fact that Mayor Jason Perry had been in on the deal to hand effective control of the borough to unelected bureaucrats demonstrated the self-serving hypocrisy of those running the council.
Secretary of State Michael Gove authorised the Government to take control out of the hands of Perry and the council’s chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, by announcing an “intervention” and assigning greater powers to its improvement and assurance panel. The move was made despite the 15% Council Tax hike, while Perry has failed (still) to secure the £540million debt write-off he claimed to be negotiating with his Conservative colleagues in government.
Croydon’s special measures are to last until 2025. “It’s the worst of all possible worlds,” one Katharine Street source told Inside Croydon. “It’s Commissioners, but it’s not… They will be sitting in the corner of the room at every meeting, determining what decisions the council can take, and what they cannot.”
April
‘Anarchy in Croydon’ fears as Mayor axes 22 safety officer jobs
Anyone could have predicted what happened next. As Mayor Perry goes ahead with his Government-backed cuts, Croydon’s streets have become more dangerous.
Centrale’s owners set to sell-up to Westfield in cut-price deal
After 12 years, the failed Croydon Partnership between Hammerson and Westfield was dissolved when Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield bought out the struggling mall operators, at a bargian-basement price, too. The promise at the start of the year was that this would help accelerate the speed of the town centre development. By the autumn, Westfield officials were saying it could all take another 15 years…
What will the ‘new’ Westfield deal really mean for Croydon?
You were warned: Westfield’s conduct in Bradford 10 years earlier ought to have been a lesson for Croydon
This “reax” piece of analysis, drafted in the days after Westfield swallowed Hammerson, turned out to be the most-read article on this website in all 2023.
Inside Croydon’s version of Mystic Meg predicted “Flats, flats and more flats”, little if any infrastructure improvements provided by the profit-hungry developers, and … oh… that “It won’t be quick”.
500 shoppers queue for 3 hours for Purley Way M&S opening
Open all-hours: the Purley Way M&S will be open 12 hours a day Monday to Saturday
Our readers’ interest in retail news and Croydon residents’ desire for a bargain made for a happy fusion over this report, as Marks and Sparks opened their new-style store on the Purley Way (where John Lewis had had their “At Home” outlet until the covid lockdown).
There has been similar interest in a more recent report, about another M&S, this time seeking planning permission on a site closer to Purley, on Brighton Road. None of which is necessarily good news for the ailing Croydon town centre.
- Click here to read Part 2 of our review of Croydon’s 2023 – covering the Coronation month of May through to August, going from the artful to the artless
- And click here for Part 3, September to December, and some of the biggest news stories in Croydon in 2023
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
