Croydon residents have an opportunity to take part in an historic and important event later this month – one of the first public meetings of the Croydon Safer Neighbourhood Board to be held for six years.
There’s supposed to be regular Safer Neighbourhood Board meetings held in every borough in London, paid for with public money from MOPAC, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and supported with organisational services provided by the local council.
But according to the council’s own published records – which, it is acknowledged, are not always 100% reliable – Croydon’s Safer Neighbourhood Board has not had a properly convened meeting since November 2019. Indeed, the council hasn’t even bothered going through the pretence of scheduling any meetings of the SNB since 2021.
The council has still been receiving funding from MOPAC, of course.
What they have done with that money remains unclear: sources at Fisher’s Folly say that the council, under former chief exec Katherine Kerswell, was unable to account for the MOPAC grant, and therefore provided no budget to pay for members of staff to give admin support for the Board.
All in it together: Mayor Perry (top right) with the council’s ex-CEO Katherine Kerswell (centre), and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (left), together with Anthony King, of My Ends (second left). There were no meetings of the Safer Neighbourhood Board, though
Instead, they carried on almost as if the Board did not exist.
Each year, at the time of the council’s Annual Meeting, lists of committee and board members would duly be distributed, with two councillors – one Tory, one Labour – said to be members of the Safer Neighbourhood Board that never met.
No one, Labour or Conservative, ever raised the lack of meetings as a matter of concern.
Which all makes perfect sense in a borough such as Croydon, where there’s absolutely no issues whatsoever that the public might be concerned about around the levels of crime, sho-lifting, youth knife crime, anti-social behaviour or police conduct.
Over the period when there’s been few, if any, public meetings of the Safer Neighbourhood Board in Croydon, the borough has received significant funding from MOPAC.
Since 2021, MOPAC has granted £1.5million for youth services and anti-knife crime initiatives. Details of how that money has been spent are sparse – MOPAC, when asked via a Freedom of Information request, basically said they have no idea.
What is known is that in that period from 2019 to 2025, MOPAC has been providing money to organisations such as My Ends.
My Ends would hold weekly chats with members of the community and the local police. Once or twice a year, they would stage a football match between teams of Croydon youth and police officers. And that was about it…
MyEnds in Croydon has been run by the self-described “Community influencer, award-winning event host, comedian and Master of Ceremony [sic]” Anthony King (who also has a degree in public policy and an HND in social care, apparently). It was King who would appear from time to time on local TV bulletins, offering the usual platitudes following the latest fatal youth stabbing in the borough.
Another £2.5million of MOPAC money was allocated to Croydon between 2022 and 2025 across a range of schemes, including a Violence Against Women and Girls “Prevention Toolkit”, a “Disproportionality Challenge Fund” and a “Shared Endeavour Fund”, for projects combating racism, hate and extremism.
Vacancy: Donna Murray-Turner was the chair of the Croydon Safer Neighbourhood Board that rarely chaired a SNB meeting
None of these grants, or the way the money is being put to use, ever got to be discussed or questioned by the Croydon public at meetings of the Safer Neighbourhood Board between 2019 and this year.
There were some reports of online meetings being held, but these were poorly promoted and drew small attendances. They also do not appear on the council’s public record.
This period coincided with the chair of Croydon’s Safer Neighbourhood Board being Donna Murray-Turner.
Murray-Turner has never been a councillor or held any public office. She did attempt to set up a Community Interest Company, but this flopped when she did not attract much in the way of business, or public grant funding.
Murray-Turner was hand-picked for the SNB role when Tony Newman was the council leader and Hamida Ali was the council cabinet member responsible for community safety issues.
As chair of Croydon’s Safer Neighbourhood Board, Murray-Turner often made herself available to appear on regional broadcast programmes or to be quoted in press reports about levels of knife crime in the borough. She was less available, though, for public meetings of the publicly funded body which she was supposed to chair.
Murray-Turner had been a Labour member who applied, but was not selected, as the party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor in 2022. By 2024, Murray-Turner was a General Election candidate for the fringe Taking The Initiative Party (plot-spoiler: she lost her deposit).
Murray-Turner even had an election rally event in June last year at which the MC was… Anthony King.
Community work: Croydon BAME Forum’s Andrew Brown
Not long after her failed bid to become an MP, it was suggested that Murray-Turner was standing down as chair of the SNB.
There was a hiatus of several months while Kerswell’s council searched around for a suitable replacement. Among the less credible candidates considered was Croydon’s answer to Hyacinth Bucket, Elizabeth Ash, another unelectable figure who has been behind a bogus “community” group that was so stuffed with racists and gammons that one borough commander wisely banned police officers from attending its meetings.
Eventually, Andrew Brown, the chief exec of the Croydon BME Forum, was persuaded, or volunteered, to take on the role.
And within weeks of that appointment, the Croydon Safer Neighbourhood Board has announced it is to have a public meeting.
“The upcoming Croydon Safer Neighbourhood Board open meeting,” we are told, is “where local police, partners and community members come together to discuss safety, policing, and crime prevention in our borough”.
The meeting is to take place on Tuesday, November 25, from 6.30pm at St Mildred’s Church, Bingham Road (CR0 7HR), close to the Addiscombe tram stop.
The organisers say, “This is a valuable opportunity to hear updates from your local policing teams; raise concerns or ask questions about issues affecting your neighbourhood; and to learn about ongoing community safety initiatives.”
All the kind of things that have been shrouded from this type of public scrutiny in Croydon for six years.
“All residents are welcome to attend.”
There’s a suggestion that yet another function of Croydon Council has been, in some way, outsourced. Those wishing to attend or submit a question in advance are asked to email info@bmeforum.org – the email address of Andrew Brown’s BME Forum organisation, rather than going through an administrator at the council.
So goodness knows what they are doing with the money they get from MOPAC for the purpose… It being Croydon, we almost certainly will never know.
Read more: Has Labour already lined up its candidate for elected mayor?
Read more: Council puts £5,000 grant repayment at top of its Bucket list
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“All residents are welcome to attend.”, but with approx 390,000 residents in Croydon, I suspect that St. Mildred’s Church won’t be able to accommodate everyone, so if you think it will be busy (as if ?!), turning up early is advised….
Good point (for once) Jim. Nothing to stop the organisers making the meeting open to the public via Teams, Zoom or some other such platform
The last public meeting of the SNB drew 12 people.
So don’t get your hopes up.
Great timing. Is there an election due soon? Good for Andrew Brown to getting things sorted out though. Makes you wonder why we’re paying £40k a year to Councillor Ola Kolade, the Cabinet Member for Community Safety whose committee appointments are Appointments & Disciplinary Committee (Reserve), Cabinet, Council and, er, Safer Croydon Partnership and Safer Neighbourhood Board. He’s another leech in piss-poor Perry’s gang of spongers on the public purse who do nothing to earn their allowances
Unsure that this has anything to do with elections (there were no meetings prior to 2022), and more to do with Andrew Brown being a more competent administrator than Kerswell, or Elaine Jackson, or Perry or Kolade.
The GLA and Mayor should conduct an audit of Croydons spending (or rather lack of) relating to grants such as this and the climate fund.
These are pots of public money given out for designated purposes and not to prop up the councils budget or left in reserves.
Yet GLA have no idea how £1.2million of their money was spent when Croydon was Borough of “Culture”, either