Our monthly news-wrap podcast, The Croydon Insider, is back as premium content exclusive to paid-up subscribers to this website.

Our guests for this episode are TV pundit and newspaper columnist Andrew Fisher, former Olympic athlete Donna Fraser, charity sector worker Lee Townsend and joining us for the first time is Neil Bennett, the former BBC television news correspondent.

It is half an hour of detailed discussion on how Council Tax in Croydon has reached record highs, and what can be done to fix the finances of our borough and local authorities across the country.

Plus we look at how a town centre bookshop has been inspiring thousands of youngsters to read, and how a local community sports club has gone from strength to strength since being bought by Stormzy and Wilfried Zaha last summer.

The panel also looks back to the famous visit to Croydon of the great American singer and reform campaigner, Paul Robeson.

And we reveal how secret service agents have been inhabiting some of central Croydon’s best pubs, apparently keeping a close eye on Inside Croydon editor Steven Downes (with a little help from the Home Secretary).

The Croydon Insider is an Under The Flyover podcast production – premium content available on Spotify and Patreon for subscribers to Inside Croydon, the borough’s only independent news platform.

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• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine