CROYDON IN CRISIS: Mayor Perry’s council tried to block protest petition over proposals to axe school safety patrols from being presented at next week’s Town Hall meeting. By STEVEN DOWNES
Clear message: the council has been accused of ‘penny-pinching’ over the planned lollipop cuts
Parents and children from Cypress Primary School in Upper Norwood yesterday stopped the traffic, briefly, at the junction of Auckland Road and Sylvan Hill, in protest at the latest Croydon Council cuts.
The parents and pupils protest was also a sign of support and solidarity with their school road safety patrol – their lollipop man, Robert, who has been helping youngsters across the road at this busy junction for 23 years.
As one parent told Inside Croydon: “Our children’s safety is being compromised to make a token saving for our bankrupt council.”
The large group of parents and children joined hands and formed a ring around the lollipop man, chanting: “Don’t stop our Lollipop!”
Inside Croydon broke the news of the axing of the school safety patrols, the last six in the borough, and discovered that Croydon’s increasingly secretive council, under chief exec Katherine Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry, didn’t even bother to advise the schools affected.
Since then, the council has even tried to block Councillor Claire Bonham from presenting a petition at next week’s Town Hall meeting. At first, council officials claimed that they could not verify the hundreds of signatures, as the Croydon public expressed their disquiet with the decision.
Officials eventually backed down and the petition will be presented to full council on Wednesday, when the issue will finally be debated.
Show of support: road safety patrol Robert has been helping children to cross the busy junction at Auckland Road for 23 years
The lollipop ladies and men may be on their final days of service as the summer term comes to an end, as their part-time positions are being axed by Croydon’s cash-strapped council to save a modest £58,000 per year – about one-quarter of what the council chief executive Kerswell receives in pay over the same period.
The lollipop patrol at Cypress Primary has been told that they will be needed when the school returns in September – but only until the autumn half-term break.
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 place in 2011 when a previous Tory administration cut the number by half. Jason Perry was in the Tory cabinet that approved those cuts, too.
Until Wednesday’s council meeting, Mayor Perry has not allowed any debate over the decision to axe the road safety patrols.
The majority of the borough’s elected councillors, from Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat parties, were unaware of the axing of the lollipop patrols until Inside Croydon reported Mayor Perry’s plan in May.
Cross-party: Green Peter Underwood and councillors Patsy Cummings (Labour) and Claire Bonham (LibDem, right) joined yesterday’s parents protest
Bonham, a Liberal Democrat councillor for Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, which covers Cypress Primary, has described the planned cuts as “penny-pinching”.
Friday’s protest received cross-party support, with Labour councillor Patsy Cummings and Peter Underwood, the Green Party’s candidate for Mayor, also joining the parents’ picket.
“I was proud to stand alongside parents and children to show their support for our lollipop man, Robert, who has been helping children safely cross the road for 23 years,” Councillor Bonham told Inside Croydon.
“Parents at Cypress Infants and Juniors are rightly concerned that this will have an impact on their children’s safety. Despite multiple requests to Croydon Council, they have been unable to share with me any equality impact assessments and risk assessments to show that these cuts are safe and justified.” Such impact assessments are usually a legal requirement on a council before it makes any change in its services.
“This feels like penny-pinching from the Mayor – at a cost of only £58,000 per year for the six remaining school crossing patrol officers, there are surely better ways for the council to save money.
“No one should ever put saving money ahead of our children’s safety.”
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Read more: Council failed to tell affected schools about their lollipop cuts
Read more: They voted to raise your Council Tax, then to increase their pay
Read more: Council’s healthy school streets have no ANPR protections
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What is the likelihood of the Government’s commissioners (whenever they finally arrive to spare us any more suffering at the hands of Piss-Poor Perry and The Kerswell) reversing any of the council’s recent cost-cutting measures, even penny-pinching ones like stopping school crossing patrols(?), or will we be in for years more austerity as the commissioners just say that there be more pain while they try to right the council’s finances (£1.8bn in debt?)?
For comparison, that sum works out to 2 weeks of work for an assistant on £724 per hour.
Why doesn’t the school just have a teacher on a rota? If it was a big issue, every school would have one.
Probably because, as any teacher reading this will confirm, teaching staff are already busy, often over-burdened, doing the work teachers are trained and paid to do.