Site icon Inside Croydon

‘Thorton’ Heath: council spelling error is latest embarrassment

insidecroydon

Sign of incompetence: one of the misspelled ‘Thorton’ Heath PSPO signs

Croydon’s cash-strapped council’s capacity for ballsing up even the simplest of tasks has been exposed yet again, after the authority ordered and installed dozens of signs to warn of its latest PSPO – Public Space Protection Order – and managed to get the spelling of one of the borough’s most famous neighbourhoods, Thornton Heath, wrong.

The signs, which were put in place on lamposts and other street furniture this week, have all spelled the area’s name as…

THORTON HEATH

Seriously.

“What a shambles and a waste of money,” said one resident. “Can’t this council get anything right?

“It’s an insult to Thornton Heath residents.”

The council’s hurriedly-scrambled-together excuse, pushed out on social media yesterday evening, was less than convincing, as they sought to pass the buck and blame their contractors.

“We arranged for the new PSPO signs to be manufactured by contractors,” the council tweeted.

“The layouts were supplied correctly, however, the signs included a spelling mistake made in error by the contractors. The contractors will remove and replace all signs at no additional cost to the council.”

There was no hint of any apology for the error.

But as amused members of the public pointed out, any print or manufacture process will see contractors provide their client with a proof for checking and approval before final production.

And besides, had the council even noticed that there was the spelling error on the signs that they had commissioned, then why did they go to the trouble, time and, no doubt, public expense of placing these faulty signs all around Thornton [sic] Heath?

The mistake was spotted by Thornton Heath community volunteer Graham Mitchell, who has also expressed his concern that the £400million-a-year budget civic authority has still not bothered to carry out all of the necessary checks and consultations for the PSPO, which has been revised to include the area around Thornton Heath Pond.

Passing the buck: the council still put up dozens of the misspelled ‘Thorton’ Heath signs

PSPO’s are a controversial means of trying to limit anti-social behaviour, street drinking and vagrancy in an area. The police already possess plenty of legal powers to move people on or make arrests, but local authorities like Croydon have introduced PSPOs to enable them to appoint private security firms to patrol trouble hot-spots and hand out on-the-spot fines.

Croydon town centre has a PSPO, which Mayor Jason Perry has expanded, where littering, cigarette stubs and discarded gum can attract £80 fines from a privatised police force’s bounty hunters.

Part-time Perry’s council is now rolling out a similar scheme in Thornton/Thorton Heath, but with added incompetence…

“Someone at the council should have checked these signs before they went up to make sure they were right,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell also highlighted that the maps used on the signs are different from that which was approved at council meetings last year, when in another Croydon Council cock-up, a “revised area” map was incorrectly produced at a cabinet meeting in September. Mitchell has accused the council of a breach of the Equalities Act but failing to make its PSPO area information available to all.

“The map on the signs hasn’t been seen before, because the map presented to cabinet on 27 September was the old one and the addition of [Thornton Heath] Pond has seen many other roads added, too

“The revised map should have been advertised before the signs went up,” Mitchell said, “and the council needs to publish a map [that] everyone can access, so blind and deaf have to have access to a format that suits them.”

Mitchell says that he has been told that this will be done – the thing is, it ought to have been done long ago. There’s no knowing when piss-poor Perry’s council will get around to fulfilling their legal duties.

Others have highlighted that the PSPO, in any case, is an imperfect way of trying to influence human behaviour, with anyone likely to be affected by its measures simply picking up their can of high-strength lager and strolling across the road, to the safety of another street that is not within Mayor Perry’s “Thorton Heath” forbidden zone.

Read more: Perry’s PSPO will just move ‘problems’ out of town centre
Read more: Council admits error and promises refunds over its PCN Fiasco
Read more: BINMAGEDDON: Mayor’s secret plan to charge £5 per new bin

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

FREE ADS: Paid-up subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free ad for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information about being an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page

PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our near 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: click here for more details


Exit mobile version