Cheeky truckers: the rules banning pavement parking don’t seem to apply to Veolia. But then, there’s many rules that don’t seem to apply to Croydon’s rubbish contractors
CROYDON COMMENTARY: In 2023, Croydon’s Mayor cancelled the borough’s contract with rubbish contractors Veolia because of “significant and ongoing concerns” over performance. In 2025, the council handed a new £40m deal to Veolia. A year on, the Town Hall has refused to release details of the services Veolia is supposed to deliver.
TONY HOOKER, of the voluntary organisation Litter Free Norbury, pictured, wants to know why
Nearly a year after Croydon’s new waste collection contract came into force, the council has still not published the agreement.
For residents, this is not a minor administrative delay. It raises serious questions about transparency, accountability and what exactly has been agreed behind closed doors in one of the borough’s most high-profile and controversial public service contracts.
Waste collection affects every household in Croydon and represents a major area of council spending. Yet despite repeated requests, the full contract — including service standards, performance targets and penalties — remains withheld from the public, 12 months since it came into force.
A request for publication was first made to the (now former) director of streets and environment on March 24, 2025. In April last year, Charles Baker, the council’s head of environmental services and sustainable neighbourhoods, confirmed in writing that “we will be making this publicly available and publish a redacted copy of the contract on our website”.
Five-day wait: is this the kind of detail in the new Veolia contract – giving them five business days to clear fly-tips outside the town centre – what Mayor Perry is desperate to keep secret until after the election?
Around the same time, Graham Mitchell submitted a Freedom of Information request to Croydon Council asking for details around the new Veolia contract. Graham is a community activist of many years, and he is standing as an independent candidate for Bensham Manor ward in the council elections in May.
The council refused disclosure under Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, claiming the contract was intended for publication at some point in the future. On April 14 last year, Mitchell raised this with Mayor Jason Perry at a community meeting in Thornton Heath. Residents were told at the meeting that the Veolia contract would be available “soon”.
Repeated requests were made to the council to ask when the contract would be made available. But these requests were ignored.
Inconsistent: Mayor Perry’s Town Hall answers don’t tally with other council replies
On December 10 last year, in the Town Hall Chamber, the matter was raised at full council. In response to a public question, Mayor Perry said, “Now that we are through the mobilisation and the new operation of the contract, work is now being undertaken to do the redacting of the document, and it should be with us early in the New Year.”
This response does not stand up to scrutiny.
The council’s own statements are inconsistent.
In response to an FOI request submitted on December 16 2025, the council stated that the redaction work – blanking out sections of the contract which might be deemed to be commercially sensitive – had begun on March 31 last year.
The Mayor’s comments at the council meeting contradicted this, when he said the process started only followed the completion of mobilisation.
As Mitchell told me: “Given that Veolia’s re-appointment was announced in late 2024 ahead of an April 2025 start date, it is reasonable to expect that a redacted version of the contract could have been prepared within that lead-in period. The length of time now taken is therefore unusual.”
We are well into 2026, and there is still no sign of the Veolia contract.
This is not a trivial delay. The contract has now been operational for almost a year. By any reasonable standard, publication should have happened long ago.
Croydon Council claims that the delay is due to the time required to carry out “necessary redactions”. On the surface, that may sound plausible. Public contracts do sometimes require limited redactions, particularly around commercially sensitive information and data covered by GDPR.
Limited redactions: the previous contract only had very few blacked-out sections, and not enough to warrant more than a year’s work
Historically, the main redactions were limited and specific — primarily relating to financial penalty regimes linked to service performance indicators (SLAs). These are important details, but they are confined to certain schedules within the contract, not the entirety of the document.
The previous 2017 contract documents were published on the website of the South London Waste Partnership. Croydon is one of four councils that are members of SLWP, and it was in part because of Croydon’s long-standing commercial relationship that Veolia landed its SLWP deals with Kingston, Sutton and Merton.
Examination of the 2017 documents showed only four redactions in the main contract. Fewer than 30 pages (of those published) contained redactions within the Schedules.
This is not the kind of redaction work that takes a year to complete.
So, is the issue really about redaction, or about what the new contract might reveal?
Without access to the contract, residents are left in the dark on several critical issues:
- What performance standards has the contractor committed to?
- What penalties apply if those standards are not met?
- What flexibility does the council have to enforce improvements?
- What has changed from the previous contract?
These are not technical details — they go to the heart of how effectively Croydon’s waste service can be managed and held to account.
While the contract documentation remains withheld, we have nevertheless started to uncover some concerning details.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that there has been a significant change in the SLA – service performance indicators – for rectification of fly-tipping reports. This has gone from 24-48 hours up to five business days (so not including weekends). This would represent a significant weakening of service standards.
Is it this kind of information that Mayor Perry wants to hide from Croydon residents, at least until after the May elections?
Mitchell says: “From the outset of the contract, residents should already know what their money is being spent on, including the agreed service standards and key performance indicators, or KPIs—such as the time for clearing fly-tipping.
“The continued delay in releasing the documents, alongside an unusual use of FoI exemptions, raises legitimate questions.
“It is unacceptable in terms of transparency, particularly as we approach the May 2026 elections.”
At their core, public contracts should be public.
Nearly a year on, the continued failure to publish Croydon’s waste contract is no longer credible or acceptable.
Transparency is not optional. It is a fundamental duty.
- Tony Hooker has lived in Norbury for 23 years, and works as an IT consultant, ‘although I find myself increasingly to be more of a full-time activist’. LItter Free Norbury was started in 2020
- Anyone can write a Croydon Commentary, which is here to provide a platform for our readers to offer their personal views and experiences about what matters to them in and around our corner of south London. To submit an article for consideration for publication, email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, or post your comment to an Inside Croydon article that has caught your attention
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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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Complain to the Information Commissioner about the shilly shallying?
Definition of soon –
in or after a short time – example “everyone will soon know the truth”
A year is definitely not ‘soon’.
It should be a quick process for a couple of competent lawyers to read and redact the relevant sections of even the most complex contracts.
Same old Perry isn’t it. The man who reappointed a Contractor who had failed to deliver the previous contract. If anyone can make head or tail of what is happening with a waste collection service reduced to a random event seems to need to be an expert in Quantumn Mechanics Physics or perhaps a simpler answer is at hand. Perry and his hapless sidekick Roche have created a complete dogs breakfast and needs to cover it up.
It’s not just Veolia that can park wherever they like! The new “Community Wardens” or whatever they are, seem to be able to park on double yellow lines, as if they were police vehicles!
“Piss-Poor” describes Croydon failed mayor and most of the services that the council is supposed to provide, but none more so than the waste collection “service” grudgingly provided by Veolia. In 2025, Veolia used to empty 2 of the 3 bins in the bin store of our small block of six flats. In Jan 2026, they gave us one more bin but now only empty one of our four bins once a fortnight. There are ten blocks on our estate, and they don’t even treat all blocks the same ?!
Very happy with my bin collection. Sorry, but I am. In a million years in several addresses they’ve always been great. Apart from the one time they lost my garden bin
So in short:
* The 2017-2024 contract specifically stated clearance of waste across all of Croydon within 24 hours?
* And the new 8 year contract in place until 2033 (unless whomever forms the new Mayor & Councillor Cabinet can find some kind of contractual, break-out clause), means every ward in Croydon listed as ‘Other Areas’, is stuck with waste only being cleared after 5 business working days – is that right?
A long shot, but do you have information you can publish as to the areas that constitute as ‘Other Areas’? If not, I guess you will be working on it, since this information could prove crucial in highlighting an estimated guess that ‘perhaps’ there is a ‘North and South’ divide across waste management obligations across the borough e.g. perhaps the Southern, long-standing Tory-voting areas of the borough have been classed as zone 1,2 or 3, ensuring they receive a 24-48 hour waste removal service. In turn, perhaps old Labour-voting strongholds in the North of the borough have been stuffed with the new, sub-standard, 5 business day minimum waste removal collection arrangements – which could talk to the reason why residents in Norbury, South Norwood, Woodside, Thornton Heath etc are up-in-arms across the new contract, whilst those in the South of the borough seemingly have less to complain about…?
Finally, is this a sound-enough line of enquiry you could put to all the prospective Mayoral candidates for comment, since they will all presumably have had sight of the new Veolia contract, would have all signed it off, and so indeed, should rightly be called upon for comment as to why they agreed to it – and what lengths they might go to to change it.
Sound waste management and removal remains a clear issue (now of national significance) for the whole borough….Southern residents may have cleaner streets – but ultimately they still remain tarnished across national reputation through living in this failing borough too.
A public authority is unable to consider the time for redaction either within its evaluation as to whether a request calls within the appropriate limit, or indeed as a reason for delay in providing the information.
This fat sack of piss had the temerity to have his re-election leaflets put through my letterbox. I used them to clear up some fox shit and even that is too good for the appalling fat Tory arsehole.
So tell us, Bill, what is it that you dislike about Mayor Jason Perry?