CROYDON IN CRISIS: The borough’s part-time Mayor got all excited at the weekend over a newspaper report that made some exaggerated claims about business growth, but which overlooked official data. By SANDRA STEAD
Easily pleased: Mayor Perry is desperate for any hint of good news, however flaky
Small-time businessman and part-time Mayor Jason Perry got himself in a bit of a lather over the weekend, when a dodgy press release was swallowed hook, line and sinker and regurgitated by one sub-standard publication.
“Croydon ‘could become the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley’, data shows,” was the rather exaggerated claim made on a quiet news day by a diminishing circulation weekly newspaper. This was carried alongside a dramatic drone shot of Croydon town centre, taken from a sufficiently high altitude that the multiple closed-down shops and general dereliction of North End could not be seen.
The article’s intro claimed that small firms in Croydon “are growing at a faster rate than almost anywhere else”, and that the borough had seen a 24% “spike in microbusiness numbers during the past 12 months, greater than the rest of London and third in the UK overall”.
Which all sounds impressive. Trouble was, there was precious little evidence offered to back-up the claims.
There was a reason why Perry was creaming his pants over this “good news” non-story. He was quoted in it. At length. At last, the borough’s elected Mayor had found someone who would take what he thinks seriously!
Business guru: Jason Perry’s appearance on the sub-standard website
The virtual newspaper gave the game away a bit, though, by flagging up how the Tory Mayor is a mere part-timer: “Mayor of Croydon Jason Perry, who owns a family-run firm himself…”.
Perry is supposed to have said: “Our entrepreneurs and small business owners are a vital part of our local economy, bringing opportunities and jobs, and it’s encouraging to hear that Croydon has a lot to offer in return.”
“It’s encouraging to hear”? Did Perry not know this already?
And he’s also supposed to have said: “Croydon has all the ingredients for small business owners to say yes to success.” As if any SME business owner has ever said “No” to success…
The newspaper report was a facts-lite zone when it came to any real details to back up its claims, beyond informing readers that they had got their “data” (of which there was vanishingly little) from GoDaddy, the website builder, and a report compiled for them by an organisation called Venture Forward.
Unduanted, on his own Twitter account, Perry doubled down on the report. “This growth underscores the dynamic and energised spirit of our entrepreneurs and small business owners, who are vital to our local economy,” piss-poor Perry wrote.
“With our rich cultural diversity, excellent transport links and affordable housing, Croydon offers all the ingredients for small business success. Let’s continue to build on this momentum and make Croydon the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley.” As if.
Not everyone was as gullible and taken in by a press release designed to garner a few column inches for a company whose business is with start-ups.
“Stop gaslighting people,” someone tweeted back at piss-poor Perry. “No big tech AI companies have any interest in the dump of London that is Croydon.
“Everything you do is cosmetic. How about fixing the real issues? Maybe get bins collected, maybe clean block stairwells, catch drug dealers, stop youths carrying knives?” It was a point well made.
And whatever glee-club that Go Daddy had been speaking to in compiling its figures, it hadn’t taken into account the official figures for business start-ups as compiled by the Office of National Statistics.
Number crunching: figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest a somewhat less rosy picture for businesses setting up in Croydon than Mayor Perry would have everyone believe
For 2024, they show that for the whole of the UK, there were 306,990 new businesses established.
In London, there were 66,920 businesses set up.
In Croydon, the total number of new businesses established in 2024, according to the ONS, was …
2,010
That represents just 0.6% of all new businesses established in this country last year. Or just 3% of total start-ups in London.
Most sobering, though, are the ONS figures for the number of businesses that folded in 2024.
Across the UK, that figure was 297,760.
In Croydon, according to the ONS, the number of companies to close down last year was
1,890
Hardly Silicon Valley-type performance.
And any notion that Mayor Perry, small businessman that he is, has had anything to do with even a modest level of business growth is, at best, clutching at straws. At worst, it is denying the facts.
Records at Companies House, another respected and official compiler of these details, show that in 2024, the total number of companies of any kind – new or established – incorporated with registered office addresses in Croydon was
3,849
That doesn’t mean they were based in Croydon, and of course, Croydon companies could have registered addresses outside the borough. But it’s a good overall indicator.
The 2024 figure is lower than the number of companies registered in Croydon in 2023, where the total was 4,342.
In 2022, the number of Croydon-registered companies was higher still, at
4,670
So according to official figures, there are
821
fewer businesses trading in Croydon in 2025 than there were in the year that Conservative candidate Jason Perry became Mayor.
It would seem therefore that, based on real figures and hard facts, Croydon’s plastic guttering salesman has some way to go before he can claim this part of south London is anything approaching Silicon Alley, never mind Silicon Valley.
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
