‘A hole where its heart should be’: Labour candidate Rowenna Davis tells Andrew Fisher how she would work to repair Croydon’s broken heart
EXCLUSIVE: Labour candidate issues public apology for ‘some things that my party has done in the past’ in crashing Croydon Council’s finances
Rowenna Davis has revealed how she has been talking to a consortium of around 12 potential investors and is “prepared to use every legal power available” to try to fix what she calls “the hole where Croydon’s heart should be”.
Davis, the Labour and Co-operative Party candidate for Croydon Mayor in the local elections in May, was speaking to Inside Croydon columnist Andrew Fisher in the first of a series of podcast interviews with mayoral candidates between now and election day on May 7.
Almost six years on from the council’s finances being crashed under a Labour-run council, leaving debts of hundreds of millions of pounds and seeing hundreds of council staff laid off, interviewer Fisher addresses the core issue when he asks Davis, “Why should we trust Labour?”
Davis, a former teacher and councillor for Waddon ward since 2022, responds with what is thought to be the first real apology issued by any senior Labour Party figure since the council was bankrupted.
Davis even suggests that she would have liked to see those responsible face criminal sanctions – perhaps in the realisation that any possibility of legal action was dismissed by the Met Police and other agencies some time ago.
Fisher has conducted a wide-ranging interview, in which the Labour candidate lays out her three priorities if she were to become Mayor, and how she has been talking with “a consortium” of investors who want to get Croydon town centre back on its feet again.
And Davis says, “I want to apologise to everyone in Croydon for some things my party has done in the past.
“Those people let down our town and they let down everything that Labour is supposed to be about.”
The Andrew Fisher Interview is premium content for paying subscribers to Inside Croydon, available via our Patreon page, or which can be paid for on our Spotify channel. Sign up today for special reader offers, prize competitions, and to access our complete podcast archive, including Fisher’s recent interviews with Paul Holden, Jeremy Corbyn and Ian Dunt
Read more: The Fraud: how Reed’s Labour spied on Croydon councillors
Read more: Labour’s Davis looks to CPO the ‘hole in the heart of Croydon’
Read more: ‘No records’ after council hired Starmer ally to advise leader
Read more: Labour’s task looks tough amid finance and membership woes
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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It’s ok apologising six years on, from a time when she was not a councillor, but those long standing councillors who were complicit in bankrupting Croydon, creating slum housing through neglect and reducing services such as Grass Cutting and ceasing various front line staff such as enforcement and Neighbourhood Wardens in our Estates. THEY HAVE NEVER APOLOGISED nor have the MPs Reed and Jones.
I was a loyal member and supporter of Labour for over 50 years but resigned my membership at the time of Labour’s dark arts. I do not trust Croydon Labour to run Croydon they should never again be elected to any position in authority
On the other hand, Les, your endorsing piss-poor Perry this weekend has all the appearance of a favour in return for you being found a lovely and spacious council home…
Les is Perry’s stooge. He is only standing up for himself as Jason Perry’s gift of that spacious council home has closed his eyes to Perry’s total failure
Those “long standing councillors” responsible for the collapse of Croydon are still members of the Labour party, and are still taking part in its decision-making
Davis brings to mind the disgraced Peter Mandelson in that revolting picture of him in his underwear. Why? Because Labour are total pants! Vote Green in the May election!