20s plenty: Mayor Jason Perry seems to be in a terrible rush to remove a measure that is proven for reducing collisions and for reducing car insurance premiums
Just what might be coming round the corner in council business now that Jason Perry is back in the Town Hall? Probably a BMW being driven at close to 40mph, reports PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent
Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, has used his re-election for a second term as an excuse to declare war against cyclists, pedestrians and even young children walking to school.
The man whose big mouth has already cost the cash-strapped council around £10million over his money-spinning Low Traffic Neighbourhoods has now pledged to make Croydon’s roads more dangerous for all road users, including motorists.
In his manifesto, which was kept under wraps so as few people as possible could ever get to see it before the election in May, the man who imposed unlawful LTNs on six Croydon streets now blustered that he was “standing up for motorists”.
Petulant Perry: stripped of financial power, Perry wants to make our streets less safe
He even had someone draw up a “Motorists’ Charter”, to pander to the red necks and racists of Nigel Farage’s party, where Perry said he would “Continue leading opposition to Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion”.
We have some news for Perry and his flag-shagging motorist mates: deaths linked to poor air quality in London dropped by approximately 40% between 2019 and 2024 following the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone, though facts have never been piss-poor Perry’s strong point.
“No more anti-car agenda”, Perry’s “Motorists’ Charter” says, laying out Perry’s anti-people agenda.
Perry’s “Motorists’ Charter” also promised to “Use legal challenges, petitions and public pressure where needed”, and “Make Croydon the borough that stands up for motorists”. Is that, genuinely, a hill worth dying on?
The Charter also included a Perry promise to “Consult on removing unnecessary 20mph limits.”
“Unnecessary“? Unnecessary for whom? Perry fails to say…
This, remember, is the £86,000 per year Mayor who decided road safety patrols outside six primary schools – lollipop men and lollipop ladies – were “unnecessary“, all for the saving of less than £60,000 per year.
Given the dressing down Perry received from a High Court judge in March for his blatant hypocrisy over LTNs – “… the Mayor’s apparent lack of public enthusiasm for the road safety or health case for these schemes,,,”, His Hon Justice Pepperall said in his summing-up, using polite legal language for saying Perry is a liar – it is increasingly difficult to find any subject on which anything that our part-time Mayor says that can be relied upon to be true.
Yet since the election, Perry has doubled-down on “reviewing unnecessary 20mph speed limits where they are not supported by residents”.
But what does Perry mean by “reviewing”? What form might that take?
“There won’t be any meaningful reviews,” according to one Katharine Street source. “Perry has already made up his mind.
“A genuine evaluation starts with questions. Perry’s starts with the answer – his answer.”
As reported in Inside Croydon in 2024, what passes for truth and objectivity in most quarters is replaced by lies and prejudice with porkie pie Perry and the Croydon Tories.
Croydon has had its 20mph zones for almost a decade, mostly introduced on residential streets which are often narrow, and where pedestrians are going about their daily tasks.
The case for 20mph is well-made, with studies showing fewer casualties and reduced car insurance premiums, improved traffic flows and reduced fuel usage. In 2025, Transport for London published analysis of more than 150 20mph schemes, some implemented since 1989.
The report found:
- 40% reduction in the number of people killed
- 34% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured
- 75% reduction in the number of children killed
- 50% reduction in child casualties
- 35% reduction in collisions and
- 36% reduction in casualties on London borough roads.
The Mayor of London has a Vision Zero goal that aims for deaths and serious injuries to be eliminated from London’s transport network by 2041. The strategy to achieve this includes safe speeds, streets and vehicles, and safer driver behaviour.
Unfortunately, the Mayor of Croydon has zero vision.
Jason Perry is willing to risk other people’s lives and limbs to harvest votes from the extremists who would otherwise vote Reform, and was happy to help stir up disaffection among those who resorted to vandalism, racism and terrorism to oppose ULEZ.
Desperate stuff: part-time Perry is nore worried about losing votes to Reform than in doing the right thing
Figures supplied last year by the Metropolitan Police to the Putney News about 20mph enforcement across London found Croydon’s boys and girls in blue tackling speeding in 20mph zones on average less than once a week for the period 2021 to 2024.
But it is worth noting that 80% of the 212 actions that the police did take were for drivers speeding in excess of 36mph in a 20mph zones. When Perry talks about cutting crime, he’s never referring to those who do it by the way they drive.
Imagine what the outcome might be if Perry asked the Met Police to pursue rat runners and boy racers with the same rigour that he sends them out to deal with what he perceives to be a major threat to law and order, homeless people.
It’s not just bad news for people who happen to be walking, cycling or being driven when hit by one of Croydon’s dangerous drivers. Removing 20mph limits is going to hit the very people Perry claims to be championing with his planned “Motorists’ Forum”.
Increasing speed limits will turn Croydon’s residential streets back into the rat runs they were a decade ago — the cut‑throughs for delivery drivers, the shortcuts for impatient commuters and cabbies who don’t live locally and don’t care who or what they clip on the way through.
When your road becomes a high-speed shortcut, it’s not the wing mirror on Perry’s BMW iX3 that gets smashed. It’s yours. And when your car insurance premium goes up because your street or neighbourhood has become a high‑risk zone, it’s not Perry who will pay for it. You will.
How to claim an LTN refund from Croydon Council
- If you think you might be owed a refund on an LTN fine you were charged for in one of the six unlawful LTNs, between March 2024 and March 2026, this is the link to the council’s refund form: https://www.croydon.gov.uk/parking/croydon-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-ltns-penalty-refund-request
And if you live in one of the many households in the borough that don’t even own a car, such as Fairfield (where nearly two-thirds of households are car-free) or Selhurst, South Norwood or Broad Green (nearly half), you’ll be delighted that Perry will be “listening” to the Tory voters in the south of the borough, where nearly 90% own at least one car or van.
How will Perry decide that 20mph limits are “unnecessary”?
When he ripped out the cycle lane on Brighton Road, he cherry-picked support to back his decision. Only 458 people objected to the taxpayer-funded scheme to give people the choice to travel quickly, cheaply and safely by bicycle. That was less than 1% of the population of the four wards affected – Waddon, South Croydon, Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown and Purley and Woodcote. Of those who responded, 91% of them did not even live on Brighton Road or its adjoining streets.
And what next? There’s been a suggestion that Perry will issue some edict from his mayoral office in the Town Hall that could remove protections from School Streets – measures introduced to encourage parents and carers to walk their children to school, or take bikes or scooters (“active travel” it is called), and which have proved to be very popular with teaching staff and families, if not the chancers stung by a £160 fine for deciding to drive down a School Street at the busy times of day in term time.
The one saving grace for the School Streets are those ANPR cameras and their pesky Penalty Charge Notices: as Perry used to admit before he got his wrist slapped by a High Court judge, he really can’t afford to do without the revenue they generate.
The real test of Perry’s resolve over the 20mph zones will come if he decides to rip out the council’s 20mph signs and restrictions from Castlemaine Avenue in South Croydon, just across (very busy) Coombe Road from Lloyd Park, where he has his £1.2million, seven-bedroom family home.
He has form in this regard. So might piss-poor Perry pander to Reform with a few cancelled 20mph zones around the borough, but opt to keep the rat-runners away from his own front door?
Read more: School street scheme scrapped on road next to Mayor’s home
Read more: Perry’s go-slow council could take 5 years to pay LTN refunds
Read more: UnConnected Croydon where cycle lanes become dead ends
Read more: Tories accused of ‘pandering to prejudice’ over cycle lanes
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P P PERRY is an idiot !