Regular eyesore: the approach road to Mayfield Road has become a frequent destination for fly-tippers, safe in the knowledge that they will evade any enforcement, while costing Stormzy’s football club thousands in clean-up bills, as van-loads of rubbish have to be taken away, as pictured above
With Croydon featuring on local television news tonight – for all the wrong reasons as usual – PAUL LUSHION, environment correspondent, reports on how more groups are beginning to doubt every word that comes out of Croydon Town Hall or Mayor Perry’s mouth
Prime-time TV: BBC London has been filming Croydon’s fly-tips. They have plenty of choice
It’s not just politicians from opposition parties who have started to call out Tory Mayor Jason Perry and Croydon Council for their lies.
Now volunteers within community groups are challenging the veracity of statements being published on social media by the cash-strapped council’s press department, as public money is being misused by Perry to pump out political propaganda in the weeks before local elections in May.
Tony Hooker, of the community group Litter Free Norbury, has taken the council to task for using its social media channels to spread misinformation.
Earlier this month, the council, through its Love Croydon Twitter account, posted two images: before and after shots of a fly-tip site in Thornton Heath.
“The clearing of waste on private land is the landowner’s responsibility to clear, not the council’s,” was the virtue-signalling message from the council.
“When we hear from residents about eyesore issues like this one in Thornton Heath, our teams get in touch with landowners to get it cleared up.
“We think everyone would agree, it looks so much better without the rubbish,” the council’s press officers said, stating the bleedin’ obvious.
“Report dumped rubbish on private land via Love Clean Streets.”
Caught out: the council’s social media account was claiming that the public can report fly-tips. Yet the council’s Crap App does not have a category for reporting tips on private land
But the well-informed and ever-vigilant Hooker was having none of this.
“The category to report ‘Waste on Private Property’ was removed from the Love Clean Streets app in August 2023,” Hooker said. So Croydon Council officials were not being truthful.
Croydon’s Crap App has been used by the council for many years to give the appearance that they are acting, doing something… anything to improve the tatty, uncared for look of so much of our borough. But the Crap App is badly flawed in so many respects.
Hooker described the bogus fly-tip tweet from the council as, “More misinformation by Croydon Council”.
It is Hooker’s view that the facility to report fly-tips on private property was erased nearly three years ago because “there was no one at the council to the job any more to investigate these issues!”
As Hooker observes, the council’s public safety team was made redundant in 2023, under Mayor Perry’s administration. It was from around that time that the volume of fly-tips in Croydon began to soar.
Someone has been quoted by BBC London’s environment correspondent, Tom Edwards, as saying: “If organised criminals who charge the public for ‘waste clearance services’ know that they can dump lorry loads of rubbish in Croydon without incurring any costs and with no risk of enforcement, that’s exactly what they will do.”
Hooker has been on the case of the vanishing ‘Waste on Private Property’ category on the council’s app. “I asked the council why it had been removed and how residents should notify the council of these issues.”
He has also questioned the council’s claims to have a “proactive fly-tipping clearing service [that] clears 98% of reported fly-tips within 24 hours”, the sort of exaggerated claim that would make officials in North Korea blush.
Putting the case: Thornton Heath volunteer Graham Mitchell was interviewed by BBC London
On the absence of a private land reporting category on the app, Hooker addressed the matter to the Mayor: “I first raised this with your cabinet member (Councillor Scott Roche) in July 2024 and I have sent your office numerous emails about the course of the last year.
“It seems that no one involved in your administration, from your office, Councillor Roche or the Head of Waste Services are willing to provide an answer as to how residents are able to report this issue to the council – despite assurances you make in your social media comms.
“You are clearly not listening.”
Hooker and Graham Mitchell, a volunteer campaigner from Thornton Heath ward who has been equally frustrated by council inaction and misinformation, both appear in a BBC London news item on the local news from 6.30pm tonight to talk about how Croydon has become a dumping ground under Mayor Perry.
According to DEFRA, on Perry’s watch, Croydon had 53,268 fly-tips in 2024-2025. The government figures relate to rubbish illegally dumped on public land.
Even the DEFRA data could be under-reporting the severity of the fly-tipping issue in Croydon, as their figures are significantly lower than the number of reports made via the council’s Crap App. That suggests that the council is removing a large number of fly-tip reports from what it submitted for DEFRA’s report.
Rubbish Mayor: Jason Perry can’t deal with his lack of credibility
The BBC London film tonight homes in on a lorry-load of rubbish that has been dumped near Mayfield Road – on council-owned land. The road provides access to the home ground of Croydon Athletic, the football club owned by Stormzy and Wilf Zaha. The venue has been plagued by repeat, industrial-scale fly-tips – which has cost the football club thousands of pounds to have cleared up.
It is only this week that Croydon Council has upgraded the security gate to the access road and had CCTV cameras installed – despite being asked for these straightforward measures for several years.
Which exposes the “zero tolerance” position of the council and Mayor Perry for the grandstanding and empty rhetoric that it truly is.
As Hooker told Inside Croydon earlier last month: “The combined effect of weaker oversight, poor contract management and reduced enforcement has created an environment where non-compliance flourishes.
“These decisions have not merely coincided with rising fly-tipping — they have clearly helped drive it.”
Read more: Croydon has worst fly-tipping record in whole of England
Read more: Kafkaesque world of contractors clearing 98% of fly-tips
Read more: Two-year search to replace Veolia hands £40m deal to… Veolia
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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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My experience of reporting fly tips in Croydon is that you usually get a closed notification the following day with the comment that it is on private land. This is even the case last week when a large fly tip was dumped in the middle of the public highway near Happy Valley. Same response when fly tips near Happy Valley
Are clearly on council land. Normally after reporting twice mores they are finally cleared. My guess is that the contractor is quick to say it is complete (even when it isn’t) to give the false impression that they are meeting the 98% target. One such fly tip I reported a couple of years ago, the council lorry was parked next to the pile of rubbish with the driver eating his lunch. He then drove off leaving it. Usual excuse, private land. They cleared it the next week as it was on the public highway.
I watched the item on the BBC London news. It was the first item on the programme and ran from 6.33 to 6.40pm, and the presenter was Tom Edwards, their long-standing transport and environment reporter. They spoke to Charlie Baker, Head of Rubbish (or some such job title) at the Council, Tony Hooker of Litter Free Norbury, Thornton Heath resident Graham Mitchell, and the grinning idiot Piss-Poor Perry pumping out the usual council lies. Then they spoke to litter clearing vigilante, Graziano, who clears lot of litter every day, but as he picks up litter one piece at a time with a litter picker, it is a slow process…!
In 2022, Perry’s campaign manifesto included these words:
“Fly-tipping remains a blight across Croydon. We need a three pronged approach to this made up of:
– Zero tolerance enforcement. CCTV cameras for the regular ‘hot spots’ and improved reporting and tracking to allow for the fining of those who do the fly-tipping.
– Faster Clean-Up. We constantly hear from Labour that fly-tips are cleared quickly but what we see doesn’t match this. We have a contract with set clearance times which must be kept to. Allowing fly-tips to stay in place encourages more to appear.
– Easier Disposal. Most people don’t want to fly-tip but the system doesn’t help. We need to make it easier for people to dispose of their waste responsibly. Better access to recycling and waste centres is key as well as looking to reinstate the free bulky waste collection service as soon as practicable will make it easier for everyone to play their part.”
Four years later, Perry has done sod all about fly-tipping. He doesn’t deserve a second chance. Vote him out