‘People have been killed crossing here’: the council sign on Wellesley Road, close to where the council has closed the pedestrian subway. See John Jefkin’s wish-list below
What do you want for Croydon, and Sutton, in 2025? We approached a wide range of figures, including loyal readers, religious leaders, educators and business people for their thoughts – and hopes – for the New Year
Ken Towl
Addiscombe resident and iC’s culture correspondent
Fairfield Halls continues to be a disappointment. Under the unimaginative management of BHLive, what was an iconic south London music venue has consolidated its status as glorified end-of-the-pier showhouse that even an injection of £70million of our money couldn’t help.
Apart from the pantomime, the current programme all sounds rather desperate.
It’s not rocket science. Bournemouth-based BHLive book tribute acts because that’s what goes down well with the superannuated holiday crowd on the Dorset coast. What Fairfield needs is an events booker with a roster of contacts in the music business in their back pocket. A potential local name might be Esther Sutton, who has done such sterling work in creating a real living arts hub out of The Oval Tavern. In the end, the Fairfield Halls need to start booking bands that will draw people into Croydon from all over London.
Concert night: the Fairfield Halls needs better arts programming, says Ken Towl
For my second wish, I wish that Labour would get its act together and run a selection process for its candidate for Croydon Mayor. The election will be in 2026 and a year is really not a long time in politics even if a week, famously, is. The Conservatives have their ineffective Jason Perry who, though not really in power in any true sense of the word, is at least in position and so has the benefit of incumbency. The LibDems have kickstarted their process and may well end up with the impressive bomb disposal expert Richard Howard.
Labour underperforms in Croydon anyway, and Labour nationally is haemorrhaging support, so a Labour candidate is no sho0-in to win in Croydon next year. That means that Labour needs a strong candidate in place – and one untainted by association with the previous Labour administration – as soon as possible, so that they can establish themselves and start building momentum. This wish may have some chance of coming true – presumably someone, somewhere in Labour would like a chance to win in Croydon.
The Rt Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett
Bishop of Croydon
I wish for peace here in Croydon and Sutton, especially on our streets, and for increased work and apprenticeships opportunities for young people.
I hope for a decrease and cessation in crimes against women, including domestic abuse and violence and trafficking and for better response to the reporting of such crimes.
I would love to see more reporting of the good that people do for others and for the community, especially some of our great faith and community groups in Croydon.
Finally, could we have a Croydon award for outstanding service to the community?
Chris Myers
Kenley resident and loyal subscriber to iC
When viewed through the prism of Inside Croydon – my sole source of local news – 2024 looks to have been a pretty depressing year. I’d call it our annus horribilis, but fear that would be misunderstood by iC’s algorithm…
New hope: Chris Myers wants a new generation to come forward to seek election to our Town Hall
So, I’d like to look back at 2024 as the year we all learned lessons and iC’s unflinching exposure of our politicians’ failings will inspire the powers-that-be to start putting things right.
And, in the same vein, I’d like to hope that the chasm between our political class and the communities they are supposed to serve will inspire bright, capable young people in our benighted borough to think about taking a meaningful part in making things better, and so consider joining a political party with a view to representing their community on the council.
I want 2025 to be the year that starts to change, because sitting on the sidelines yelling insults isn’t going to change a damn thing.
I would also like 2025 to be the year we all stopped chucking litter all over the place and took more personal pride in our neighbourhoods, without blaming others.
As a long-time Kenley resident, I’d be pleased as a dog with two d1cks if motorists respected the 20mph limit, especially on the pavement-free part of Hayes Lane on my evening walk to the Wattenden Arms…
I would like to see more folks at my local church, whatever their reasons for attending, and pray that we can all start being kinder to each other.
Donna Fraser
Olympic track finallist, awarded Freedom of the Borough and Croydon Insider podcast regular
My three wishes for 2025 are…
Give my athletics club, Croydon Harriers, some tender loving care so they can host quality athletics competitions at Croydon Arena once again.
Second: it would great to see more events staged in the borough showcasing Croydon talent to inspire our young people.
My big wish is to revive the Allders site in the town centre with a focus on getting kids active while having fun. I’d love to see a swimming pool with indoor water park for kids and adults. Reasonably priced to help parents in the school holidays.
David Morgan
Croydon Minster’s archivist and iC’s Sunday Supplement history writer
Arts school: David Morgan suggests turning the Old Palace site into a singing or music education centre
Wouldn’t it be marvellous for Croydon to have a new small theatre, akin to the former Warehouse Theatre.
Create a hub for writing and performing.
Perhaps if we made part of the soon-to-close Old Palace School a music school to encourage and develop singing, while another part of the site could be developed for a drama hub?
Maureen Levy
Community volunteer with East Coulsdon Residents’ Association
New builds: too many of the new blocks of flats are simply ugly, says Maureen Levy
The one wish I would like most to come true is that they stop building all these ugly flats, that are usually built in place of solid family houses. What is needed is two- to three-bedroom houses with a little garden for children to grow and blossom in, instead of being surrounded on all sides by concrete.
We also need infrastructure to be part of the planning permission when granted, so that that builders contribute the neighbourhoods. And that money should be ring-fenced so that it cannot be used in any other way.
Johnny Dobbyn
Business journalist and iC’s rugby correspondent
I expect my dreams for Croydon are the same for many loyal readers: can we get some signs of competence in local government, and some meaningful steps towards the regeneration of Croydon – in the town centre and hinterlands.
The Westfield fiasco has been often rehearsed here already, yet it is hard to describe how dispiriting the walk from East Croydon Station to either the Whitgift Centre (not that one can get under Wellesley Road these days) or The Standard or the Bull is. One sees dereliction and degradation at every turn – from the neutron-bombed St George’s House to the hollowed-out husk of what was once one of Britain’s most vibrant retail centres.
Dispiriting: the old Nestlé building has been left hollowed out for almost five years
It’s not all Westfield though: as a result of that shitshow, it is easy to forget how Croydon Council presided, for decades, over an unprecedented destruction of economic and social wealth as Nestlé, Direct Line, Brooke Bond and any number of other major corporations fled the borough thanks to civic neglect.
Not to mention its own Brick by Brick shambles and the Town Hall’s other disastrous forays into the development and property shark tank.
I have no real hope for progress in Croydon in my lifetime now, thanks to the low calibre of our local politicians (MPs included) and I certainly do not expect any of the political parties (including the Greens for these purposes) to bring us anything other than malfeasance, hubris, obfuscation and more commercial naivety and incompetence.
My wish for 2025: God Save Croydon!
Jerry Fitzpatrick
Former councillor in Addiscombe and retired lawyer
My hope for Croydon, the nation and the world is that the destructive forces of far-right populist nationalism and religious fundamentalism begin to be challenged effectively. For that to happen, the vision and values of those of us on the political left need to be refreshed. They need clearer expression. They need to ring out and resonate.
When this grandiose hope is realised – maybe by December – I further hope that the Trump Memorial Foundation for the development of international political, social and economic cohesion will be established on what used to be the Whitgift Centre.
My third hope is easy-peasy by comparison. Crystal Palace to win the FA Cup in May.
Anna Arthur
Co-director of the Croydonites arts festival, and guest on The Croydon Insider podcast
Another Croydonites Fringe Festival, this time staged in July, catching shows that are heading to Edinburgh as well featuring local artists
Some good news about the town centre and it’s regeneration. We know Westfield is coming but how long does it take to breathe some life in to it!
More live music in the town centre and surrounding areas: The Oval Tavern and Riff Raffs are doing a great job, but we used to be a Mecca for live music and up-and-coming bands.
Peter Underwood
Environmental activist and Green Party election candidate
I don’t believe in just wishing, because real change usually only happens when you work for it.
But if I had three magical wishes for Croydon in 2025, I would first wish for a lot less violence, both physical violence and the violent aggressive attitudes that also cause lasting harm.
Second, I would wish that everyone could have a safe, affordable and secure place to live.
And thirdly, I would wish for more people to support (and join) those who are already working to make Croydon a better and happier place to live – literally, the more the merrier.
Deborah Bowen
Director of Croydon campus, London South Bank University
My 2025 wish for Croydon would be that the long-promised regeneration comes to pass.
I came to work in Croydon in April 2024 and it is evident that people have been let down on past promises for regeneration in the area.
My second hope for the people of Croydon is that they can rise up and be proud of the borough once more. I really feel like Croydon gets a bad rap where in fact it’s a vibrant, spirited and inclusive community – an exemplar in many ways.
Healthy options: LSBU is providing blood pressure and breast cancer monitoring projects in Croydon
In terms of what London South Bank University in Croydon can contribute, I hope that we can extend and broaden the work we are doing on addressing health inequalities in the area. There’s a lot to be done to support people in the borough in improving their health and wellbeing and that’s something I think we have a responsibility to work towards.
We are working with a researcher in Italy, the NHS and our REACT Innovation Centre on a Mammowave early detection, low radiation, breast cancer screening programme that we hope to go live with in the spring of 2025.
The screening will be open to all residents of Croydon at any age – currently the NHS only screens women over 50 and up to 70.
And we continue to deliver a barbershop blood pressure service where we work with barbershops training and equipping them to test the blood pressure of their clients (where both are happy to).
Nick Mattey
Independent councillor for Beddington and anti-incinerator campaigner
Dirty protest: Sutton Council’s SDEN heat network is deeply flawed, says Nick Mattey (left)
The main problem in Sutton is that there is an unhealthily close relationship between senior council officials and the ruling Liberal Democrats. So when we have a debate on the council budget, nobody mentions the fact that upwards of 20% of people’s Council Tax is spent on council staff’s generous pension scheme.
It’s an unwritten rule that if you don’t criticise them, they won’t criticise you. This is not good for democracy and this is what makes Sutton a travesty of local government after 30 years of LibDem rule.
I wish for more transparency. I wish for planning meetings where decisions do not follow party lines, especially when the council puts before the planning committee a project which has been dreamt up by officers.
I also wish that the council was not so subservient to Viridor. Its latest plans to expand SDEN, its heat network, are purely there so that Viridor can operate for another five years, raking in enormous profits. It would be nice if the officials who dream up these plans lived next to the incinerator, rather than miles away.
Andrew Fisher
Former Labour Party policy director, now Inside Croydon columnist and host of The Andrew Fisher Interview podcast
My three wishes for Croydon for 2025 would be:
1, Car drivers start noticing and respecting zebra crossings.
2, Dog owners clear up after their mutts.
3, Croydon Council finds £100million behind the sofa and restores some public services.
Maybe a bit too fanciful?
Claire Bonham
Councillor for Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood
First, and most importantly, Croydon (and London) are at the centre of a housing crisis and desperately need help from the government, especially with the cost of temporary accommodation. I would like to see the government, councils, landlords and local communities working together to tackle this.
Under pressure: Cllr Claire Bonham wants more support for small businesses on the Crystal Palace Triangle
Residents in Crystal Palace love and value the Triangle, but shops and small businesses have really struggled over the last year both financially and through some acts of local vandalism. I wish for thriving local high streets that residents can take pride in, and where small businesses are supported and feel safe.
Road safety is one of my residents’ biggest concerns, whether that is through speeding or dangerous driving, or creating safe walking routes for our children on their way to school. I wish for the council and police to work collaboratively on road safety and for residents to have better routes to make the case for speed cameras or other traffic calming measures where there are problems.
Tim Coombe
Inside Croydon reader and environmental volunteer
One of the organisations I’m involved with is Croydon Community Energy, a society run by volunteers.
Along with low-cost clean energy projects to help local community organisations, we run energy advice sessions to help people navigate rising energy costs and home heating challenges.
I’d like to see a more proactive and positive approach from the council than we’ve seen to date. These initiatives are something that should be actively encouraged and could be good news stories for everyone involved! I’m sure other volunteer-led organisations may have had similar experiences.
I’d think that many of your readers are tired of Croydon being generally thought of, even among some of its own residents, as somewhere to be avoided and derided. It’s become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when there could be so much to celebrate about Croydon as a borough. So, I’d like to see some sort of vision of what Croydon could be, and how that vision could be rolled out over five to 20 years. And this vision shouldn’t be something that comes from council offices or politicians in the form of a “Local Plan”, but actively imagined and worked on by all residents who want to take part.
Final wish: Croydon Council declared a “climate emergency” in 2019. I’d like someone in the Town Hall to engage with reality, realise what a dire situation we are in and act, whether that involves a mitigation strategy based on the findings of the Croydon Climate Commission, or a serious plan of how to adapt to forecast flooding and heatwaves in the borough.
John Jefkins
Vanguard Way Association chair and electric car enthusiast
My wishes? Sort out our town centre. It looks like a war zone in places like Park Street. Closing the Wellesley Road pedestrian subway to block Christmas access to Whitgift Centre shops was utterly incompetent.
Open that subway until a safer surface crossing replaces it.
Right now, central Croydon is a place too few want to go to. So – yes to more homes. And yes to piecemeal development to get it at least started, but use Section 106 money and Community Infrastructure Levy money now for crossings and landscaping. After all, nobody will buy those homes until central Croydon becomes an attractive place to live or shop in.
Second wish: Improve maps and signage to inform people how to walk out and around Croydon on local trails and paths.
No-notice closure: closing the Wellesley Road pedestrian subway just before Christmas was ‘utterly incompetent’, says John Jefkins
Croydon actually has many great footpaths and open spaces, leading from it’s centre to the countryside. I’m the chair and route manager of the Vanguard Way footpath that runs from our plaque outside East Croydon Station, on through Lloyd Park, Littleheath and Selsdon and south to the coast at Seaford, by the Seven Sisters.
I’m also a member of Croydon Ramblers – our nation’s most active local group.
Yet our local trails are curiously omitted from maps in Croydon’s parks. We want Croydon Council to add routes onto lampposts and on to the existing maps in parks like Lloyd Park.
I’d also like to see a link from the Vanguard Way across Croydon to the Wandle Trail, which follows the River Wandle through Sutton and Merton to the Thames.
My third wish involves electric Car charging from people’s own homes.
Plugging the gap: Croydon Council has been slow to roll out charging points across the borough
Half of Croydon’s people don’t have off-street parking. Those people will want to use their own domestic power instead of paying six times more for public charging. So they’d be willing to pay our council to install gullies across pavements to allow them to save thousands a year on fuel.
Many could make money by selling their own power to others (using ZapMap’s Zap-Home), with the possibility of the council taking a share for rental of their pavement and road space for the other six nights a week.
No one charges up their mobile phone by going to a garage or a lamppost. They do it by using their own, cheaper electricity supply from their own homes: 5,000 Croydon people will want to do with their cars, too, in less than five years’ time.
So, Mayor Perry, take note. You could be installing thousands of these each year soon.
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What a great article. So much food for thought! Interesting how united the contributors seem in many aspects – hopefully a good omen.
There’s a lot of food for thought in this article. Well done to all who contributed. I would like to add the following further wishes:-
1. Croydon Council to abolish all its ceremonial functions. The post of Civic Mayor can go – Croydon doesn’t need two Mayors. Abolition of the purely ceremonial Annual Meeting, and dressing up in 18th century costumes, would not only save money but also concentrate councillors’ minds on what they should be there for – serving the community.
2. Wellesley Road currently cuts the centre of Croydon in two. The closure of the pedestrian subway exacerbates this problem. I would like to see Wellesley Road made into a park or attractive boulevard, with the existing traffic largely directed underground. This should be paid for by developers as “planning gain” from development of the Whitgift Centre.
Totally agreed about Wellesley Road. Some inspiration could be drawn from Boston when they moved their highway underground over 20 years ago, to see the before and after photos is quite some contrast. It would add the much needed green to central Croydon that would give more aesthetic appeal to an incredibly grey, unattractive area. Given that the road already goes underground it makes the feasibility of such a project in the future a far more realistic one in terms of cost.
I’m afraid though that Boston paid BILLIONS to do that.
Planning gain would be lucky to pay a few millions.
Adding a couple of surface crossings at existing traffic lights is much more feasible. After all, the Whitgift Centre is going to become basically a big new housing estate instead of shops.
A few food shops and restaurants under rather a lot of flats.
My wish for 2025 is for all the remaining car parks in Croydon to be closed. If people can’t abandon their fume-belchers anywhere, they won’t use them. There is masses of public transport in Croydon (not to mention cycling), so no need for people to have a half-ton box as a fume-belching personal transport device.
Are you surprised with people like ‘Mayor’ Perry in charge of things!
Terrific variety of ideas here. But what really made it for me was putting faces to familiar names. Disappointed not to read contributions, with mug shots, from Ken Lee, Walter Cronxite and Arfur Towcrate however. I have to admit, fool that I am, that I always assumed ‘Ken Towl’ was a witty construct. But, here’s the proof – he exists. Happy New Year all
Sandra Stead sent her apologies
Happy New Year, Chris!
And you!
Bridge-to-Nowhere to start being a bridge connecting Addiscombe with the rest of the town and providing access to train platforms on the Addiscombe side. It is, frankly, unbelievable that after so many years it remains unfinished. How can one speak of improving the quality of life here with the station remaining dangerously overcrowded and of helping Whitgift businesses without this vital piece of infrastructure.
Totally agree about getting something decent at Fairfield hall and getting rid of the awful mayor Perry
Ken Towl eloquently describes the problem with Fairfield Halls, also the big picture is the reputation of Croydon can be helped changed by restoring the reputation of it’s cultural venues