CROYDON IN CRISIS: ‘Mayor Perry must really hate Croydon’s children’ says one local politician who criticises recent Town Hall pay hikes while the council was planning to axe school road safety patrols to save just £58,000 per year. By our Political Editor, WALTER CRONXITE
End of an era: Croydon’s last remaining lollipop safety signs risk being put away a final time next month
Croydon’s opposition political parties, BBC London, non-local news outlets, and even far-right TV station GB News, have all followed up Inside Croydon’s exclusive report about Mayor Jason Perry looking to axe the borough’s lollipop school roads patrols – all to save the cash-strapped council a modest £58,000 per year.
Perry trousers £84,000 per year as Croydon Mayor. He recently hiked the salary package paid to council chief executive Katherine Kerswell by £12,000 a year, to £204,000. Politics, it is said, is all about choices…
“Mayor Perry must really hate Croydon’s children,” Peter Underwood, the Green Party candidate for Croydon Mayor in 2026, said today.
Inside Croydon has discovered that Kerswell and Perry’s increasingly secretive council, unwilling to face any challenge to its often dodgy decisions, didn’t even bother to advise the schools affected by the cuts of the decision they had made to axe the road crossing safety service.
This worked for a while, since it delayed any of the six schools from contacting their local councillors to raise their well-founded concerns.
Parents with children at the affected schools are furious that Mayor Perry’s cuts are going to put their children’s lives and limbs in danger.
Campaign to reverse the cuts: there are now at least three petitions opposing Perry’s lollipop cuts. One of them was set up by a concerned parent
“This decision leaves me worried for the future safety of our children,” said a parent of children attending one of the affected schools.
“The council is prioritising budget cuts over the safety of our children.
“The role of lollipop men and women may be considered non-statutory, but their presence is undoubtedly essential.”
As originally revealed by Inside Croydon, the six schools which are about to lose their lollipop patrols are Cypress Infants and Juniors (South Norwood Hill), Norbury Manor Primary, Orchard Way Primary (Monks Orchard), Oasis Academy Ryelands (Woodside), Greenvale Primary (Selsdon), and Monks Orchard Infants and Juniors.
The six patrols in 2025 compares to the 22 patrols that there were in 2011 when a previous Tory administration cut the number by half. Jason Perry was in the Tory cabinet that approved those cuts, too.
Under the anti-democratic Tory Mayor, the decision to axe the road safety patrols from the end of the summer term has not been discussed or debated at any meetings of full council. There won’t be an opportunity to hold a debate in the Town Hall Chamber until next month, when Croydon’s road patrol lollipops signs will be about to be put away for a final time.
Once the news was out there, the best that the council has been able to do has been to get absentee cabinet member Scott Roche to do his impersonation of the Green Cross Man in a little social media video, claiming that the council is doing its bit to keep the borough’s children safe on the streets with a few visits from the local police.
Absentee councillor: Tory cabinet member Scott Roche is paid £40,000 a year. For what?
Councillor Roche, it is worth noting, is paid £40,175 as a cabinet member for “streets and environment”, where his role is usually just to nod through everything that Mayor Perry tells him to. Despite being unemployed since last July (he had another public-funded job, as a Tory MP’s gofer at Westminster), Councillor Roche has missed one-quarter of the council meetings he was supposed to attend in the past year.
The council claims that children’s safety “remains a priority”. The council’s own record contradicts that statement.
Asked to justify making the journey to school more dangerous for pupils at six Croydon schools from September, the council’s propaganda bunker put this out: “Most patrols were phased out many years ago and risk assessments have been completed for the six remaining sites, with one now earmarked for a permanent crossing and three located on Healthy School Streets.”
Ahhh, healthy school streets.
Healthy school streets limit motor traffic on surrounding roads to schools during school drop-off and pick-up times. According to the council, school streets “improve road safety around schools and encourage pupils to walk, cycle and scoot more often”.
School street: this plan was dropped because it would divert traffic down Castlemaine Avenue
They also generate a considerable income for the cash-strapped council through motorist fines. Provided, that is, our incompetent council remembers to switch on the correct camera equipment…
There were advanced plans to introduce a healthy school street for Melville Avenue in South Croydon, which had a stronger case than many, as it is the site of three schools, including one large secondary and a special school.
But those plans were suddenly pulled by Mayor Perry’s council. The reason given was that turning Melville Avenue into a school street might divert traffic on to neighbouring streets, such as Castlemaine Avenue.
It is obviously just a coincidence that Mayor Perry owns a £1.2million house on Castlemaine Avenue.
There are now at least three petitions opposing Perry’s lollipop patrol cuts – one set up by LibDem councillor Claire Bonham, one by Rowenna Davis, Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor in 2026, and a third which has been raised by Upper Norwood parent Dom Lacovara.
Councillor Bonham has described the planned cuts as “penny-pinching”, and has written to Mayor Perry to oppose the cuts.
Councillor Davis described the cuts as an “outrageous decision”.
Candidate: the Green Party’s Peter Undrwood
Removing the lollipop patrols “puts children’s safety at risk for the most minor financial savings imaginable”, Davis said.
Peter Underwood, the Green Party’s Mayoral candidate, told Inside Croydon: “Croydon schools who’ve been successful in supporting children to walk to school are now seeing their lollipop crossings taken away. And they only found out about it through reading Inside Croydon.
“Mayor Perry must really hate Croydon’s children.
“It’s no surprise that parents are furious about this.
“In February, Labour and Conservative councillors voted to give themselves a pay rise, rejecting the Green Party plan to cut councillors’ special allowances, so they could put the money into protecting frontline services instead.
“So it is a surprise to see some of those same councillors now claiming to be ‘horrified’ by the cuts to frontline services and setting up their own petition.
“Why didn’t they just agree to cut councillors’ allowances and support services when they had the chance?”
- Change.org has a petition established by a local parent which calls for a U-turn over the removal of Croydon’s school crossing patrols. You can join the 300-plus signatories by clicking here
THE CROYDON INSIDER PODCAST: Hear our readers discuss the latest local news – and one of them even explain how they were once a ‘lollipop lad’ – in our latest round-table news panel podcast thingy by clicking here for our Spotify feed – subscriptions and episode payments apply
Read more: They voted to raise your Council Tax, then to increase their pay
Read more: Croydon schools left trailing other boroughs over active travel
Read more: Contractor repaid £3.25m to council over school streets failure
Read more: Council’s healthy school streets have no ANPR protections
Read more: Council Tax hits £2,500 per year as debts continue to mount
- 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
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Who said “There is no point in consulting if you are not prepared to listen to what residents are saying.” and “To be listened to you first need the opportunity to speak!”?
That’s right, Jason “listening” Perry.
He didn’t ask the schools or the parents. He didn’t want to ‘listen’. He just went ahead and did it. By sending out the useless Scott Roche to bat for him, he is cocking a deaf ‘un.
There’s plenty more of that rubbish where it came from: https://www.jasonperry.uk/manifesto
Instead of cutting children safety and social services funding why don’t Mayor Perry and his deputy resign now and go? It’s costing Croydon council more than lollipops staff.
Croydon reckon that this decision will save £58,000 per annum. Those working in Road Safety will tell you that estimates of the costs of a road accident fatality are in the range of £2-3million. The personal/emotional costs are immeasurable. Perhaps those making this decision might reconsider.
”Most patrols were phased out many years ago and risk assessments have been completed for the six remaining sites, with one now earmarked for a permanent crossing and three located on Healthy School Streets.”
Has anyone actually seen these Risk assessments? Have they been based on evidence or assumption? What has been the outcomes? Where is the actual data backing up the decisions?
Cameras have a purpose and do deter those that legitimately drive into areas. They do little to deter those that always drive or park illegally. We have a lot of that in this borough.
Perhaps some actual data from Fisher’s Folly would be useful?
Ahh. Data. And records. Now would Fisher’s Folly be putting such risk assessments in the public domain, when they have done their best to keep the decision to axe the lollipop patrols a closely guarded secret?
Go to the wonderful What Do They Know website and put your three questions to Croydon Borough Council. Then wait for them to ignore you. Then chase them. And again. Until you get the answers they don’t want you to have
By which time, the end of the school year will have been and gone. The lollipop ladies and men will have been signed off, and it will no longer be a problem as far as Perry and Kerswell are concerned.
Perhaps there’s need of an FoI for road traffic incidents on each of the six affected crossings, for the past three years, to provide comparative data once the road safety patrols are removed?
So, TFL publishes quite detailed data on reported accidents that led to an injury – going back to 2005 and with the location and severity of each accident shown. The data lags by nearly a year, so we’ll be waiting a while before we’re able to see the impact on these 6 schools….but it would be very interesting to look back historically at sites that had their school patrols cancelled and see what what the effect then was on accidents. Does anyone know the details of any school patrols that have been cut in the past – eg school name, location of the patrol and dates active?? I’ve put in an FOI to Croydon to ask them for this…but have a feeling I may be waiting a while for an answer…
I’ve never understood why this country doesn’t have school buses collecting and drop off school children. It would lessen the amount of vehicles on the roads at certain times of the day.