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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