Piled high: the scene on George Street in Croydon town centre, just a short walk from the town hall. ‘Perry’s Piles’ have become commonplace in Croydon under the Tory Mayor
PERRY’S PILES: Council bosses accused of making Croydon’s fly-tipping crisis worse with their ‘banded’ collection system. ‘The council has completely lost control,’ says one campaigner.
By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE
The lights are on but no one’s at home: Mayor’s little video nasty shows him talking to… no one
Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, has given up on Veolia, barely six months since handing the rubbish contractors a £40million long-term contract to keep the borough’s streets clean and tidy.
Perhaps he’s seen his Conservative Party colleague, Chris Philp, become something of a “video star”, with social media clips showing the Tory MP making a nuisance and a fool of himself, thrusting microphones into the faces of random individuals he confronts in the streets.
More likely, piss-poor Perry will have been spurred into action after seeing another video nasty, with Rowenna Davis, his Labour rival for Mayor of Croydon next year, pedalling her bicycle around the borough and pointing at piles of rubbish here and there.
Yes, we are into the peak local election campaign period, and can expect another nine months of this puerile nonsense, which some describe disparagingly as “pothole politics”.
In Perry’s little triptych of tweets, he rants and raves about piles of crap left to fester on the streets of Thornton Heath.
Another ‘shameless’ fly-tip: a Veolia roadsweeper’s cart, dumped on Sycamore Way, spotted by Litter Free Norbury
“On London Road we found a shameless fly-tip – with a local resident’s personal correspondence dumped in it,” says Perry, the Mayor notorious for presiding over the mass dumping of library books by council contractors in Broad Green.
“This is lawlessness. We will not allow Croydon’s streets to be treated as dumping grounds.
“Residents are furious at ‘disgusting’ fly-tipping outside their homes. They are right. It is disrespectful and unlawful – and action will be taken,” Perry said.
But this is political grandstanding of the most disingenuous and cynical kind. The failed Mayor knows that in most cases, no action is ever taken.
Perry’s piles have been getting much worse since 2022. Croydon is among the country’s worst local authority for fly-tips, yet in the first three years of Perry’s term in office, his council brought just four prosecutions for fly-tipping.
Compare that to 2017, when Croydon Council logged 171 prosecutions for fly-tipping.
Litter-strewn: Croydon High Street has stained and sticky pavements with rubbish spread over the street
Perhaps out of desperation, because Veolia and his council’s enforcement team have proven to be so useless, Perry has now had himself video’d on the phone, calling someone whose number he has found among the pile of rubbish on the street*.
This is Jason Perry as Perry Mason, hot on the trail of a wrong ‘un, a podgy man of action (although the CPS might have a thing or two to say about the poor quality of his “evidence” of wrongdoing here).
“It’s not good enough,” Perry (Jason, not Mason) says to camera. “If necessary, we’re going to prosecute them.”
Yet everywhere you go in Croydon today, the pavements are stained and sticky with dried “bin juice”, bins in our parks are full to overflowing (it’s a Bank Holiday weekend – you don’t expect the contractors paid by our Council Tax to bother with any collections during a period of high usage of the parks, do you?), the streets are rarely, if ever, swept, and there are piles of rubbish wherever you go.
Full to overflowing: Big Belly Bins, like this one on North End on Saturday, were an expensive stunt and no longer work
The Big Belly Bins were an extravagant “new tech” solution paid for by the council under Labour to make Veolia’s job easier (and cheaper, for them).
They now stand stuffed with uncollected rubbish spillng out on to the pavement. The public tries to use the bins provided, it’s just Veolia’s collections system is not fit for purpose.
The Big Belly Bins have solar panels to power a small communications device which is supposed to transmit a message whenever the location needs to be emptied. Except the council binned off the contractors who were supposed to maintain the Big Belly Bins, so now none of them work properly.
One of the root causes of the piles of rubbish left along the edge of Croydon’s pavements is often the “banded” collections system, an idiot idea brought in when Steve Iles was in charge of the council’s street-cleaning regime, and one which Mayor Perry has doubled down on, having it included as part of an “enhanced” service in the new Veolia contract that came into force in April this year.
Most Croydon residents have a weekly bin and recycling collections by Veolia, with general residential waste being taken once every two weeks. But people living in flats above shops are encouraged by the council/Veolia to stick their black bin bags out on the pavement every night.
What could possibly go wrong..?
Banded collections: the council’s system encourages people to dump their rubbish on the street
The theory is that residents who live in flats over shops don’t have anywhere to store their refuse (even though many actually do).
Rather than make such a situation an issue which private landlords need to deal with – by providing suitable bin storage for their tenants – our council has effectively allowed the residents permission to fly-tip outside their front doors every night.
This is obviously a massive (costly) task to undertake for Veolia, and it does not work. In fact, it has made the state of our streets much worse.
One person’s black bin bag is another person’s excuse to dump their own rubbish. Perry’s piles grow quickly overnight. Foxes and rats tear into the rubbish sacks in search of food, used nappies and worse spill out over the pavements.
Tony Hooker, the citizen campaigner behind Litter Free Norbury, has taken issue with the Time-Banded Waste Collection, or TBWC, system. He, too, questions the need for such a system when many flats do actually have access to back yards and alleys.
“We understand that in implementing this system around 2018, the council appears to have taken the decision to place most of the flats onto the TBWC system, regardless of whether they had access to outside space or not. This resulted in many properties that previously had bins having them removed!
‘The worst I’ve ever seen’: this eyesore was outside a bookmakers on London Road, Norbury, last week. It includes some bags left outside a charity shop, another example of the council’s failed system
“We have long since campaigned to the council that this system has caused many issues, with bags being left out overnight ripped open by foxes and vermin… Other residents that don’t know about the system just think the residents of the flats are acting illegally and are to blame.
“Confusion abounds as to where waste is to be placed – with the occupants of those flats with rear access leaving the waste at the end of the service roads. We had understood that these were ‘collection points’, and indeed some residents and businesses have stated they were informed by council staff to leave the waste away from the main road.
“The upshot is that Veolia lorries frequently don’t pick this up, sometimes for days on end, despite their own staff informing us that they should.
“It is clear that the council has completely lost control of the system it has implemented. This may be in no small part to having no staff to actually manage it – we understand that this system was under the remit of the public safety team. When the Neighbourhood Safety Officers were made redundant, nobody was seemingly responsible for managing compliance or enforcement with the system.” Doh!
Take your litter home with you: rather than get its contractors to empty park bins, the council passes the buck to the public
“Presumably this was accepted by Mayor Perry when the council took the decision to cut the staff… With no enforcement or management, fly-tipping at these spots has just got completely out of control.
“The council takes no responsibility or accountability, instead putting all the blame on residents.”
And Hooker smells a rat, too. Not out on Norbury High Street, but in the council offices: “We have asked for documentation on this system, but none has been forthcoming, which makes us suspect that none actually exists!”
*And Perry’s phone call to the person he thinks might be a fly-tipper?
The Mayor got no answer, so he left a threatening message. We’re not sure, but we don’t think he left his own number for someone to return his call…
Read more: #Binmageddon: Now Croydon named worst in UK for fly-tipping
Read more: Croydon’s fly-tip prosecution record is 2nd worst in all England
Read more: Perry’s Piles: Council refuses to act on 30 dumped mattresses
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Perry Mason? Frank Cannon, more like it.
It would be great if Tony Hooker and other community leaders would work their way through the processes laid down in the Environmental Protection Act and its Litter Code of Practice, and take Croydon Council to court for failing in its duty to keep our streets and parks litter-free.
Next time you see politician virtue signalling on social media when doing a litter pick, ask them why they aren’t taking the Council to task that way, and why they are doing the job that Veolia – a global corporation making huge annual profits each year – are paid to do by us
I’m sure it would be great if Inside Croydon put up the legal fees for an organisation like Litter Free Norbury to take the Council and a global corporation, Veolia, to court.
Perhaps you could help in that endeavour, Li, by signing up as a paying subscriber?
It’s interesting how Chris Philp has suddenly found his voice on grooming gangs and boat crossings, yet he was silent when the actual enquiry recommendations into child exploitation were ignored. Silent too when Boris Johnson dismissed police funding for these investigations as “spaffed up the wall.” And let’s not forget it was his own party that pulled the UK out of the Dublin agreement – a key mechanism for returning asylum seekers – which directly contributed to the massive rise in dangerous Channel crossings.
Given the selective outrage and the increasingly frantic tone of his posts, I genuinely worry about his wellbeing and memory. It’s important to hold people accountable, but it should be done with honesty, consistency and perspective – not revisionism and hysteria. Rowenna might also want to take note and remember her party’s contribution to the current state of Croydon.
Is Croydon the next Birmingham ?
No. Veolia aren’t on strike. It just looks like they are.
“We’re not sure, but we don’t think he left his own number for someone to return his call”
He’s probably not clever enough to mask his own phone number.
Hope someone called him at 3am!
I was walking past Thornton Heath ponds and saw the mayor doing this. So I stopped to ask him, and ended up standing next to him when he did the phone call.
He found the registration of a vehicle in the fly tip, then one of his team found the vehicle, which was a trader with his number on the side of the van.
Was nice seeing the Mayor in action
At £84,000 per year, must make Perry the best-paid street sweeper in the country.
Or the most overpaid…
Funny how Perry, after over 3 years as Mayor, has suddenly realised that Croydon’s streets are in a disgusting mess, and decides to get some publicity about it, less than 9 months before election day
It is another admission of failure on his behalf.
They let him go on the telly this morning. Not a pretty sight.
I bet Castlemaine Road is nice, clean and tidy. No pride, no basic rubbish collections, no wanting to improve things – Croydon looks as bad in 3D as its reputation suggests. Worse in fact. Perry must see it is time to for the nitwit to bugger off. He wouldn’t travel very far if he was thrown out.
bring back #cleanstreetstu !