Rubbish contractors Veolia have been handed a very generous, £40million reprieve to remain Croydon’s domestic waste and street cleaning gig for another seven years, but there’s been little sign of any improvement in the service they provide.
Rubbish contractors: after this fly-tip was reported on Dec 31, Veolia failed to clear it because they claimed it was on private land
In fact, according to Croydon Council’s own figures, they are just getting worse.
Research by Tony Hooker, the resident campaigner behind Litter Free Norbury, shows that the number of reports of fly-tipping having to be logged more than once to get a satisfactory resolution continues to rise.
In the last two months of 2024 alone, residents had to make nearly 3,000 additional reports due to the council, or Veolia, closing cases without proper resolution.
That amounts to 15% of all reports made.
Croydon Council continues to claim that its “proactive fly-tipping clearing service clears 98% of reported fly-tips within 24 hours”. Proactive! Ha!
That 98% success rate is the sort of stat you would normally expect to come out of Pyongyang.
“Our streets will be tidier and residents will notice a better service,” Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, claimed when announcing the new deal for Veolia last October, around the time Croydon was being declared “London’s filthiest borough” with the worst rates for bin collections across the capital.
Hooker has obtained his data from the LoveCleanStreets app, the council’s own crap app – the one that has never had a category for reporting missed bin collections.
‘98% success rate’: reporting fly-tips to Croydon Council can be a Kafkaesque experience
The council’s own figures show that for the last two months of 2024, there were 19,062 reports submitted by concerned residents who want their streets and neighbourhoods kept clean (they all pay enough Council Tax, after all). Of those reports, 10,000 of them were submitted in December alone, which Hooker says is a record high.
Bensham Manor ward was where the most reports were submitted to the council, with 3,635.
Norbury and Pollards Hill came next, with 2,033 reports.
Of all the reports, 61% were for fly-tipping – 11,705 across the borough in November and December.
These bald facts contradict the up-beat messaging coming out from the council’s propaganda bunker in Fisher’s Folly, where just before Christmas they claimed, “We’re cracking down on fly-tipping in Croydon.”
The council was celebrating a single prosecution of a fly-tipper, Steven Bassett, who was found guilty under Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and fined £3,000 and ordered to pay £6,000 in costs and a £1,200 victim surcharge for illegally dumping waste in Croydon.
Bassett was caught out only because he and his white van were caught on a resident’s CCTV.
Ask Conservative councillors or council officials how many other successful prosecutions have been brought against fly-tippers – remember, 11,705 instances reported in November and December – and they are slow to provide any figures. You can guess why that might be.
“The council encourages anyone who sees dumped waste to report it through the Love Clean Streets app,” the council says. What they don’t say is whether they, or Veolia, will ever actually do anything about it.
Residents determined enough to persist in trying to work within the system find themselves entering a kind of Kafkaesque world of petty bureaucrats and jobsworths, where nothing is ever actually done, but 98% success rates are claimed.
Graham Mitchell is a community activist in Thornton Heath – he was even given a civic award gong by the council in 2018 to recognise his hard work. Mitchell has been fighting to get his neighbourhood cleaned up for years.
His experience of dealing with the council, and Veolia, over a fly-tip reported on New Year’s Eve provides one example of why quite so many residents have tired of the excuses with which they are being fobbed off. And also why there has been an increase in repeat reports of fly-tips when no effective action is taken.
“The fly-tip was outside Elliott House on Elliott Road in Thornton Heath,” Mitchell told Inside Croydon.
Blocked pavement: Thornton Heath resident Graham Mitchell had to report this fly-tip three times
“I reported via Love Clean Streets that the fly-tip was on the footpath and blocking the footpath. My report was closed [by the council] on January 1 with our council and Veolia disagreeing with me and saying the fly-tip was on private property,” Mitchell explained.
The council said that they would write to the land owner. “Fat chance,” Mitchell added.
A report being closed, as an action completed, goes down in the council’s and Veolia’s stats as a successful outcome, one of those 98% of fly-tips that Mayor Jason Perry and his chums at Veolia claim are cleared within 24 hours.
But in this case in Thornton Heath, the rubbish was still left strewn over the pavement.
On Thursday last week, Mitchell reported the fly-tip again. It was, says Mitchell, “partially cleared”.
“But I have to report the mess left again,” he said. So that’s one fly-tip, and at least three reports before getting anywhere near resolved properly.
“It’s going to be a long 2025 if Veolia keep insisting this fly-tip is not on the footpath,” Mitchell had tweeted, hoping to shame the council and its well-paid contractor into doing their jobs.
“Hopefully, commonsense prevails… but how do they think they can get away with this nonsense?
“It’s a reporting issue. My complaint is that Veolia or the Council are telling me this isn’t on the footpath… which it clearly is!”
Mitchell and Hooker are community champions simply because they doggedly pursue the council, and its contractors, to do what they are paid to do. The sort of things that you might have expected ward councillors to do…
Hooker says he is digging down into the data for the whole of 2024 which “will provide further interesting (to me anyway) info in due course”.
Inside Croydon hopes to report his findings once they are available. It may well be quicker than trying to get an answer from Croydon Council.
Read more: Two-year search to replace Veolia hands £40m deal to… Veolia
Read more: BINMAGEDDON: Mayor’s secret plan to charge £5 per new bin
Read more: Croydon and three other boroughs to bin Veolia rubbish deal
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What needs to happen is this: Each day several Veolia cage trucks automatically drive around the north, centre and south of the borough picking up dumped rubbish where they see it there and then and separately from the normal bin collections.
Farcical – do these Veolia people have eyes ?