CROYDON IN CRISIS: Tory Mayor ignored call for his council to act with ‘respect and compassion’ after they issued threats of legal action against one of the borough’s leading volunteer groups.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Royal recognition: Croydon Nightwatch’s hard work has won admiration and recognition, just not from Tory Mayor Jason Perry
Croydon Nightwatch, the charity which for almost 50 years has been providing hot meals and other help and services to homeless people in the town centre, is being threatened with being sued by the Conservative-controlled council.
“There are officials working in the council who are a law unto themselves, they are out of control,” a Katharine Street source said today.
“And Mayor Perry has no interest in looking after vulnerable people. In fact, it’s obvious that he wants to clear Croydon’s streets of rough sleepers, who he sees as an inconvenience for his mates in big business.”
Tory Mayor Jason Perry was asked about the threat of legal action against the volunteer-led charity at Wednesday night’s council cabinet meeting, but instead of an answer, he responded with a word soup of attempted justification for the heartless action. There was no indication that Pompous Perry would act to have the legal threat against Croydon Nightwatch withdrawn.
This was the same meeting in which £82,000 per year Perry had just sealed the fate of four of the borough’s public libraries – Broad Green, Shirley, Bradmore Green in Old Coulsdon and Sanderstead – despite 66% of respondents to a public consultation saying that they oppose the closures.
‘Access’ Croydon: the long line of people seeking help from Nightwatch, who only use the area outside the council offices in the very worst weather
Croydon Nightwatch, with more than one hundred volunteers, is among the borough’s largest and most active charity groups. In 2022, Croydon Nightwatch volunteers received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service “for their tireless work for the homeless and otherwise vulnerable people in Croydon”. The charity has even won Croydon Council’s Voluntary Organisation of the Year in the past.
But this is not the first time that the council has bandied around threats of fines or sanctions against Nightwatch – it happened 11 years ago, when the Conservatives were in power previously, and the then Councillor Jason Perry was cabinet member for development, working closely with Westfield.
Back then, Perry and his Tory mates found the presence in Queen’s Gardens each evening of Nightwatch and their queue of clients a bit “inconvenient” for their plans to demolish Taberner House and build blocks of “luxury apartments” over the public open space (which has hardly worked out perfectly, either).
In 2013, once news got out about the heartlessness of the Tory council, a quick U-turn was ordered.
This week, offered an opportunity at the Town Hall public meeting by Labour councillor Stuart King to consider actions in “a respectful and timely manner”, with “respect and compassion”, petulant Perry spurned his chance.
Pompous: Tory Mayor Perry spent much of Wednesday night’s meeting reading from carefully scripted notes
Nightwatch and their nightly service have been shunted from pillar to post over the last decade, sometimes allowed to set up their stalls under the cover of the steps area in front of the council offices, Fisher’s Folly (an area named as “Access Croydon”, without any sense of irony), and sometimes persuaded back into the much-reduced public park.
Nightwatch maintain that through all this, they have acted properly, responsibly and, above all, legally, setting up only on the public highway and in public open spaces.
Jad Adams, Nightwatch’s chair, had approached council officials earlier this month to try to progress long-running discussions about the possibility of providing some kind of shelter from the elements for the charity’s volunteers during their nightly shifts in all weathers in Queen’s Gardens.
What he got back as a “somewhat intemperate” threat of legal action. Any court order taken against Nightwatch, Adams says, “Would be a considerable waste of public money, it would be fiercely contested by us and would generate a deal of bad publicity.”
The council email was written by the “interim director of commercial investment and capital”, someone who styles himself “Huw Rhys Lewis BSc, BArch, MSc, MRIBA, MRICS, MAPM”.
It was Huw Rhys Lewis BSc BArch MSc MRIBA MRICS MAPM who last year kicked the borough’s credit union out of their office space in Fisher’s Folly.
Huw Rhys Lewis BSc BArch MSc MRIBA MRICS MAPM’s email this week to charity volunteer organisation Nightwatch begins, “I would remind you that the Council a request [sic] to you back in April 2024 asking you to relocate due to public health Grounds [sic]. You have again chosen to ignore our request.
“We would restate that permission was rescinded for public health reasons, specifically regarding litter, public health matters and antisocial behaviour.
“Although we acknowledge that every effort was made to clean up after the evening service, it was often difficult for your team to collect all the rubbish as you could not confirm which rubbish was ‘yours’ and which was caused by other members of the public.
Threatening email: Huw Rhys Lewis BSc BArch MSc MRIBA MRICS MAPM
“Additionally, the absence of nearby public toilets means that visitors to the Nightwatch stand started using the pavement areas as lavatories, resulting in defection [sic] on the payments and roads around the entrance to [Bernard Weatherill House] as well as the public park adjacent to BWH. This includes a children’s play area.
“These are still an on-going issues [sic] given your current operation.
“Given the severe financial challenges faced by the Council we have neither space, land nor funding we can offer Nightwatch. Given the continuing issues we have with your operation on the grounds of public health and antisocial behaviour – we would again request that you relocate to another site.
“The next [sic] would be for the Council to seek a court injunction prohibiting you from operating in and around Queen [sic] Quarter and BWH – costs the Council can ill afford.”
Adams disputes the council’s position, saying that Huw Rhys Lewis BSc BArch MSc MRIBA MRICS MAPM’s email “is inaccurate in almost every single particular”.
Adams told Inside Croydon: “We have received no request to relocate except at a meeting on November 30, 2022, when we were asked not to use the awning at the back of BWH because the council wishes to let part of the building and (as we fully understand) our nightly presence would not be attractive to prospective tenants.
“There was no question of ‘public health grounds’.”
“We moved, eventually to the corner of Fell Road and Katharine Street where we now are and hope to erect a shelter. We revert to BWH only in severe bad weather; we hope to avoid doing this by the erection of a shelter.
“There is no litter issue, we clean up so thoroughly that we pick up litter which was there before we arrived and was left by other people.
“The absence of public toilets is an ongoing problem in this as in, I imagine, every other borough. It has nothing to do with us.
“We have not asked for funding, we will pay for the shelter on land which would stay in the council’s ownership.
“Our queues are orderly and we would argue that, far from ‘antisocial behaviour’, we produce a calming presence in the town centre.”
Read more: No money, no plan, no honesty: Mayor still closing 4 libraries
Read more: Perry ducks scrutiny over council financials that don’t add up
Read more: ‘The council is dismantling our borough, service by service’
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What a nasty little shitehawk. Anyone can become homeless. Its not a choice. Nightwatch has been proven to save lives, whilst this tosspot saves reputations. I say this to Herr Perry – I dare you to take that legal action. He is obviously bad as well as mad. What an utter arsehole.
This is truly disgraceful. The officer(s) responsible should be disciplined and Perry should resign.
How dare the Council complain about litter when they are the ones failing to clean our streets and empty public bins.
How dare the Council complain about people not using public toilets when it is the Council that has failed to provide toilets.
Nightwatch provide support and a sense of humanity for some of the most downtrodden people in Croydon. To threaten this charity with legal action over such trivial matters is really disgusting and shows the contempt that some in our Council have for people left with nowhere to live and those who try to help them.
Nightwatch is something Croydon should be proud of. The leaders of Croydon Council are just an endless source of shame
The threatened attack on Nightwatch will be a step too far by this administration and Council Managers. This charity puts people in need of support first!! The administration seems to be putting reputation and possibly £ first.
Apart from the Charity its supporters and Community Leaders there are children and their parents in schools in the borough that fund raises and donates food.
Remove the threat give support and help the needy. If this administration does not you will not have any luck in Mayoral elections
‘“There are officials working in the council who are a law unto themselves, they are out of control,” a Katharine Street source said today.’
Having a Directly Elected Mayor can empower the person elected by the popular vote of all of Croydon to impose the will of residents upon officers.
However Jason did not offer an such interventionist approach to electors and, to be fair, such an interventionist option lost at the ballot box in 2022.
Jason’s political literature in 2022 offered stability after the crisis rather than a more radical approach to sort things out. That, to be fair, is what voters voted for.
The promise to ‘fix the finances’ was the biggest 2022 offer by the current incumbent and has not been delivered.
As you well-know, Andrew, it is the senior council staff who run this borough.
The Town Hall politicians provide them with convenient cover for their unaccountable operations.
A big part of the solution to Croydon’s woes is a big clear out of senior council staff and replaced with competent and capable staff. It would take some balls to actually do it though, but more importantly someone competent and capable to oversee the process and there lies the problem.
To accept that it is inevitable that senior officers run the show is to give politicians a free pass.
Politicians must exhibit the gumption to first seek and then impose their democratic popular mandate on the running of the council.
No one would suggest that Mayor Livingstone did not pursue his electoral mandate through the policy goals he set out at election time.
In Croydon Peter Bowness directed the show through good officers who put the Borough’s interests first. Officers who under performed or who tried to be dominant were removed.
The officer structure that will work at Croydon will be the recruitment of younger officers keen to make their mark in local government in the challenging environment that Croydon offers. That we have an even bigger cadre of very highly paid officers than before the council went bankrupt is a tragedy for those in need who see yet more money denuded from vital caring services and support.
Devolving power to communities would also dilute a concentration of power with officers.
You need to go back 20 years and more to provide your examples, Andrew. Which makes the case: Croydon’s politicians “go native” within minutes of coming anywhere near the illusion of power
Yes, I think the troubled culture of the local authority is deep rooted, dating back thirty years and the town’s mixed economic performance a little further back than that.
He’s got massive experience IC, so I tend to listen to his informed analysis. Where are your examples of politicians, presumably of all colours, going ‘native’?
Watch any council meeting… you can quickly see who really is in charge.
Councillors are supposed to keep directors and officials in check and determine policy. Instead, they read from carefully prepared scripts, from reports prepared for them. They do the officials’ bidding.
Voters voted Conservative. They didn’t vote for savage cuts to public services, the closing of libraries or an attack on a charity helping people in dire need. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Conservatism means all those things and worse and that rich people in the leafy southern parts decided that Perry’s brand of class war is something they could back
Well we know that! Specially since Queen Thatcher’s attacks on public services, the Conservatives HAVE become known for heartlessness!
Nightwatch should refuse to budge and instead call Perry’s bluff. Unlike him, they’ve got the public’s backing.
He says he listens but how tone deaf do you have to be to waste our money on trying to get a court injunction against helping homeless people? If he was stupid enough to go for it, there’s no saying he’d win either, which would be a fantastic own goal.
“We shall not be moved”, as the old song goes.
Anyone wanting to help Nightwatch continue their valuable work can visit https://www.justgiving.com/nightwatchuk and give them some money
He has a lot of letters after his name but cannot write a letter (email) in proper English. I’d be embarrassed to put my name to that email. As an aside, Officers were stopped from putting their qualifications in correspondence and on documents towards the end of my career with Croydon so they must have changed the rules. However he’s hardly a shining example of the institutions of which he states membership.
People who put a lot of letters after their name may feel the need to put them there as they have little else to show for themselves. I’ve seen it many times before. Noticed there’s no qualification listed for spelling and grammar.
Awful spelling and grammar aside, there are departments in the council that work alongside nightwatch, how can the council be so shortsighted as to threaten them with legal action when they’ve decimated the housing service?
Contact Mr Perry on mayor@croydon.gov.uk
“Additionally, the absence of nearby public toilets…”. When it was opened Queens Gardens had a purpose built public toilet in the North East corner. It has been boarded up for 30 years because the Council were too lazy to maintain it. There was also one in the Fairfield carpark. They’re both still there and probably in perfect working order but padlocks were attached in the 1990s and no one’s graced a cubicle since. There are still some well maintained public toilets in Surrey but Croydon Council long ago seems to have decided it’s people don’t need to poo anymore. They don’t even use these spaces for anything else. I suspect they’re perfectly preserved time capsules of the time before everyone was expected to hold their poo in. Perhaps one day archeologists will unseal them in search of hidden treasures… The only places you can poo for free these days are the Clocktower Library & the Whitgift Centre and those close at 8 or 9 pm…
The public toilet on the triangle has been closed for well over a year, the Council’s reasoning that the toilet paper gets stolen. So it isn’t uncommon to find people urinating onto lamp posts on the high street and defecating in the parks
Lack of public toilets is an equality issue apart from anything else, there are whole groups of people who need to plan their excursions away from home around access to them. The Victorians knew this, humans haven’t evolved significantly since.
Why don’t Nightwatch start providing their services in Castlemaine Avenue? Sure it will catch the full attention of those in charge then.
The council’s claim that because there are no public toilets in or near the Queens Gardens, fir people to use, leads tonpeople urinating in public places, is actually THE council’s IWN fault. There ARE (closed) public toilets at the end there, which could be open when Nightwatch operates!