Public reacts with contempt and derision at more empty promises from Croydon’s Mayor over a project which has now cost £37m but still has no completion date agreed
Bridge to Nowhere: Mayor Perry still can’t provide a completion date
Residents who have been kept waiting for nearly 12 years for the promised pedestrian link from Addiscombe to Croydon town centre by the Bridge to Nowhere at East Croydon Station have described Mayor Jason Perry’s latest public intervention in the matter as “pathetic”.
Inside Croydon reported last month how, although the link to Cherry Orchard Road was at last ready to be opened after a decade of delay by private developers Menta, Network Rail now has no budget for ticket machines at the long-promised entrance to the station, and maintenance work on the bridge could take until 2025 before it is safe to open.
A well-attended meeting of residents held last month, attended by Menta and Network Rail, was told that no party has yet to take financial and legal liability for the belated opening of the bridge’s Addiscombe entrance.
The bridge cost £22million to build in 2013, with Croydon Council contributing £6million.
No one at the council at the time managed to include in the planning conditions for Menta’s residential blocks any deadline for delivering the entrance link and access for the bridge – thought to be one of the reasons the developers were able to take their time over delivering their promised public infrastructure.
The council’s cabinet member responsible for planning and development back in 2013 was… Tory councillor Jason Perry.
Powerless: Croydon Mayor Jason Perry
Now the £82,000 per year Mayor of Croydon, piss-poor Perry has taken almost six weeks to chip-in with his take on the latest delays in delivering a properly functioning bridge and station access point to say… well, nothing much at all, really.
The council issued a statement on the situation last night, claiming that Croydon, Menta and Network Rail “have restated their commitment to collaborating”, to ensure the bridge – built at huge public expense in 2013 remember, “is opened to the public as quickly as possible”.
The council said: “A new planning consent and agreement was put in place in 2019, which has now been built. As part of this Menta has committed £15million to deliver the link piece to connect the new step and lift access to the existing bridge, together with significant new public realm for the wider Addiscombe community, all of which has now been completed.”
That suggests that the Bridge to Nowhere has now cost a total of £37million, but still fails to deliver on the basic function of a bridge – to provide access from one side of the tracks to the other.
According to the council, “A timetable of how and when the bridge will be completed is being developed.” Which is nice. Though it does make you wonder why such a timetable was not in place in 2013…
“These discussions include the need to complete outstanding repair works to the pedestrian through route side of the bridge, the completion of the connecting works to the Menta link piece and public realm and introducing the necessary CCTV, lighting and monitoring arrangements to ensure the bridge offers safe passage for residents.”
Left hanging: 11 years after the ‘grand’ opening of the bridge at Caithness Walk, the eastern end is still inaccessible
Croydon’s impotent Mayor blames “complications” for the delay in Menta completing its link. “The vital pedestrian route connecting east to west needs to be open as soon as possible,” said Perry, who has been in office as Mayor for nearly three years. “I am determined to get the job done,” Perry said, as if he could actually get anything done.
Jerry Fitzpatrick, a former Labour councillor for the ward affected by the lack of access to the bridge, Addiscombe West, said: “Perry was cabinet member responsible in 2010 and proudly announced the project. Given the lapse of 14 years since the project was unveiled, the community will want to see deeds not words.
“They are entitled to treat words with great scepticism.
“There should have been a detailed Section 106 agreement between Menta and the council when the revised 2011 planning application was granted.
“Unfortunately, the meaning of commitment has been weakened to vague promise, and ‘as quickly as possible’ to a time-frame between 18 months, at best, and at worst, never.”
Public responses to Mayor Perry’s pronouncement were a mix of contempt and derision.
“So the Bridge to Nowhere is going somewhere, sometime as yet unspecified, after a decade’s wait,” wrote one resident.
“Ten years after they opened the other side and a major announcement: We’re talking to others about it. Pathetic,” was the view of another.
And another wrote on social media: “A shambles all round.”
“This tells us nothing,” one resident observed. “‘As soon as possible’ means nothing.”
Someone presumably with long experience of the failings of Croydon Council, and Perry, when it comes to getting developers to deliver on promises, said: “Yeah.. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Read more: No one can afford ticket machines for the Bridge to Nowhere
Read more: Developers must finish station bridge, residents demand
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Everytime I walk past those steps I just look at it in disbelief, amazing that a half opened basic little bridge and some steps has cost £37m. I wouldn’t be surprised if the total cost ended up being north of £50m by the time it opens, whenever that is. Now I’m just imagining some of the stunning things that could be built for £50m. Perry’s political career will probably be over by the time we see any timetable put forward, just like the Westfield ‘masterplan’.
Steps? No disabled access?
Yes Di, there’s a lift. Where it’s been ever since the lift at the other end was installed 12 years ago.
The point is there’s no access whatsoever.
The Conservative way of doing things. Complete and utter ineptitude in their service to the people who live in Croydon. Complete and utter subservience and the provision of public funds to private developers without strings. It makes you wonder how the local Tories think they are detached from the disaster that has befallen Croydon over the last fifteen years when they commenced the descent. If you want more evidence of Perry being the Liz Truss of Local Government you just have to look at this disastrous chapter of the never ending Chaos in Croydon.
Be fair, Jason No-achievement Perry has outlasted Liz Truss and her lettuce by a long way.
A different choice of vegetable is needed to make the comparison at all viable. My suggestion is a mangel-wurzel “the root of poverty”. Mangels are conical in shape,with a red or yellow root the shape of a large, fat carrot that sticks halfway out of the ground, inactive when stored in Town Halls, s very sensitive to frost, and must be lifted and stored by November.
That fits better, does it not?
The Liz Truss of Local Government does have a certain ring to it.
And when you think of how, less than six months after being elected on a promise to “fix the finances”, piss-poor Perry was issuing a Section 114 notice of his very own, since when he has hiked your Council Tax by 21% in 12 months, there are too many, worrying parallels.
I see that Starmer has ripped off Perry’s “it’ll get worse before it gets better” mantra, just before he puts up our taxes
This was such a waste of money. The old subway made it far easier to get between platforms.
True, the subways were great for coping with last minute platform changes, and should have been kept. But they didn’t provide any entrances from or exits to Dingwall Road or Cherry Orchard Road.
As design consultants Hawkins Brown put it, “East Croydon Station Bridge is two links in one. The elevated station concourse is also a public footbridge that knits together the areas situated to the east and west of the station, previously split by the railway track. Now, communities that are minutes away as the crow flies are no longer worlds apart.”
The 270 metres distance “as the crow flies” from the Lansdown Road roundabout to Oval Road isn’t quite “worlds apart”, but 11 years after the bridge was installed, you’re still faced with an 800 metre walk between the two locations.
It also means that people who live in the Cross Road area are forced to make an unnecessary detour through the station’s crowded main entrance when travelling by train.
It’s yet another Croydon balls-up
My recollection of the subway was that there was a steep slope to get down there that got slippery when it rained, it was generally packed and really narrow so no good for anyone with a disability and didn’t it flood from time to time?
To be a station entrance, platform connector and a pedestrian throughway would probably need a complete redesign (£mmmm) for it to be wide enough and safe enough. The ticket machines can’t obstruct a throughway as they would now, and there would need to be sufficient distance between the machines and the stairs to the platforms. As a public throughway it will also need far more security and maintenance. No wonder the financial and legal liability is too hot for any of the parties.
I can’t image the slapstick that was the planning and development of the bridge to nowhere back in 2013.
Oh how ridiculous those new steps will look a few years from now – a comical monument of the Perry years. If only he had the common sense and guts to bang heads together now and to be honest with Croydonians – what you’d think is the point of a people’s mayor?
Be honest? Perry be honest? But he’s a Tory. They are always honest. Just look at what they are saying about the broken and dysfunctional economy they have bequeathed to the new government.