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 There was no indication that Pompous Perry would act to have the legal threat against Croydon Nightwatch withdrawn.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
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Read more: ‘The council is dismantling our borough, service by service’
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