Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on how Croydon’s £84,000 per year Mayor is ignoring parents and pushing through cuts on road safety patrols for little children to make a saving of £58,000
Making walks to school more dangerous: Tory Mayor Jason Perry
Whatever the “review” was that Jason Perry’s council promised over the cuts to the borough’s remaining “lollipop ladies” and men it did not last very long, nor did it change the failed Mayor’s decision.
Mayor Perry has confirmed that he is going ahead and axing the six remaining school safety patrols, starting at the beginning of the new school year in September.
The failed Mayor, who allows council contractors to dump hundreds of library books on the street, has pushed these cuts through without consultation and without having notified the schools concerned. Many of the schools affected, their parents and staff, first heard of Perry’s cuts from reporting by this website.
The cash-strapped council’s own figures show that cutting the six safety patrols will save just £58,000 per year. Failed Mayor Perry is paid £84,000 per year, after presiding over a £30million budget overspend in 2024-2025. Croydon Council is now under control of four government-appointed Commissioners.
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 £204,000 per year chief exec Katherine Kerswell and Perry, didn’t even bother to advise the schools affected in advance.
The six schools 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.
Clear message: the council has been accused of ‘penny-pinching’ while putting children’s safety at risk with its cuts to lollipop patrols at six schools
The council’s Labour opposition had failed to raise concerns about these cuts when the matter came before the scrutiny committee, chaired by Councillor Rowenna Davis, and they only joined parents’ campaigns against the cuts following Inside Croydon’s reports.
Parents across the borough, angry at the unnecessary cuts being imposed that will risk the safety of their children, collected thousands of signatures opposing the penny-pinching move, but Mayor Perry even tried to block the petitioners from being allowed to speak at a Town Hall meeting.
When that anti-democratic move failed, Mayor Perry got one of his henchmen, Councillor Scott Roche, to mumble his way through a couple of minutes of platitudes to the Town Hall Chamber last month. Roche appeared to suggest that the lollipop patrol cuts might be “reviewed”. It was all very vague and unclear. Deliberately so.
And it appears, as feared, to be just another deception practised by Mayor Perry over his latest ineffectual move to address the council’s finances. Piss-poor Perry pushed through the lollipop patrol cuts after awarding himself and Kerswell massive pay rises earlier this year.
July’s council meeting was the only time that Mayor Perry had allowed any public debate over the lollipop cuts. Perry himself dodged having to address the petitioners himself, putting Roche forward in the firing line.
Lisa Castagner, one of the local mums from Upper Norwood who staged the protest outside their school and presented a petition at the Town Hall, explained that Councillor Roche and the council had ignored her and other parents’ appeals for two years, without a single response to emails expressing concerns about speeding drivers, vehicles crashing and a lack of enforcement on the area’s roads.
The propaganda unit at the council is now claiming that removing staffed road safety patrols is some kind of “road safety improvements”.
The council website published an article last week which, for the first time, saw Croydon acknowledge that it is to oversee “the end of the school crossing patrol service”.
A decade ago, Croydon had 22 lollipop patrols. That service was severely reduced under a previous Conservative administration, when Jason Perry was a senior member of the council cabinet.
The council’s announcement when to great lengths to stress how school crossing patrols are a “non-statutory” service – meaning the council is not obliged by law to provide such a service.
They also did their best to try to insinuate that Croydon is not alone among London boroughs in cutting lollipop patrols – although they provided no evidence or figures to support such a claim.
Lost lollipops: Oval Primary, in Addiscombe, is one of six schools in Croydon affected by Mayor Perry’s cuts
“Ahead of the school crossing patrol service ending,” the council statement reads, “the council commissioned an independent traffic management company to complete road safety assessments for the six remaining schools to identify any recommendations to improve road safety in the areas.”
The secretive council has refused to release these road safety reports.
The recommendations for “improved” safety, the council claims, involve limited measures, such as trimming trees and bushes (something the council’s roads department ought to conduct regularly and routinely in any case) and extending crossing zig-zag markings, in the hope that all vehicle drivers behave responsibly and follow road signs and speed limits.
And at one school, the council is to provide lessons for parents about using zebra crossings. Which is nice.
Piss-poor Perry was quoted in the council article, using the opportunity to try to spread the blame for his cuts to the council’s scrutiny committee. Councillor Davis, who was then chair of scrutiny, is Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor in 2026.
“Very few London boroughs now operate this non-statutory service, particularly with the implementation of healthy school streets, which have improved road safety,” Perry said, providing zero evidence to support his claims.
When in opposition on the council, Perry and the Conservatives opposed the introduction of healthy school streets. Some healthy school streets have operated without the use of ANPR – automatic number-plate recognition cameras – making the measures unenforceable.
In one instance – Melville Avenue, where there are three nearby schools – the council, with Perry as Mayor, blocked the introduction of a healthy school street which would have restricted vehicle access to the road. Mayor Perry lives in a £1.2million house on Castlemaine Avenue, the road next to Melville Avenue.
“Road safety remains a priority for me and for the council,” Perry lied.
“We will continue to provide safety advice and education to schools as well as involving them in initiatives such as junior roadwatch and healthy school streets.”
THE CROYDON INSIDER PODCAST: Hear our readers discuss local news – and one of them even explain how they were once a ‘lollipop lad’ – in our round-table news panel podcast thingy by clicking here for our Spotify feed – subscriptions and episode payments apply
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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No week on Inside Croydon is complete without a Jason Perry article!
He’s supposed to be the Mayor. Of course we will report on what he is up to (which is usually no good).
I’ve seen a couple of Tory councillors claim that the lollipop patrols were all funded externally and once that funding was removed, the council decided not to add it to the budget. Everywhere else I’ve seen it reported as a Croydon Council budget cut, implying that the council directly funded them. Is there any evidence for the Tory claims or are they just liars?
They are just liars, Jon. Surprised you have to ask…
They might not be liars. They might just be stupid. They could even be stupid liars.
As penny-pinching Perry gets rid of Croydon’s school crossing patrols, on the other side of London, Havering council have 62 sites where they still have them, along with 15 school street schemes.
If “road safety remains a priority for me and for the council” Perry wouldn’t have prioritised £58,000 over child safety.
Let’s look forward to Wednesday, 22nd October, 2025 when at 6.30 pm, the next full Council meeting takes place. We’ll then see what the agreed minutes tell us what Scott Mumbler Roche said last month about reviewing these cuts