CROYDON COMMENTARY: Since Jason Perry became Mayor of Croydon, the borough’s streets have become more polluted, dirtier and more dangerous places. PETER UNDERWOOD takes a look at the figures
This year’s healthy streets scorecard has just been published – here https://www.healthystreetsscorecard.london/ – and Croydon is going in the wrong direction.
Motor mania: while other boroughs seek to improve, Croydon is stuck in reverse
While most London boroughs showed some improvement, Croydon fell from 24th to 26th place this year, out of 33, with its final Healthy Streets scorecard rating dropping from 2.92 to 2.50 out of 10. This was one of the largest falls recorded. If there was a “relegation zone”, Croydon would be heading for it. These results continue a declining trend since 2022, when Croydon’s score was a still-modest 3.21.
The Healthy Streets Coalition is a group of transport, road safety, environment and health campaigners who are working together because the same interventions are needed to achieve all their various goals. They publish the scorecard every year to allow boroughs to track progress and see how they are doing compared to others.
The scorecard uses 10 measures. Six of these are “input” activities that boroughs can do to improve streets, such as limiting traffic around school opening and closing times and introducing bus and cycle lanes. The four others are “output” measures, such as the number of serious injuries and deaths in road collisions and how many people are doing more exercise through walking or cycling.
Worst in London: how Croydon is bottom of the Health Streets table for ‘active travel’ of children going to school
We all know that people want safer, quieter and less-polluted streets. We also need to reduce car traffic so we can keep London moving and cut the amount of time we waste sitting in frustrating and smog-filled traffic queues. While some London residents are reaping the benefits of positive action, it’s not good news everywhere.
There are now 10% fewer cars in the capital than at the time of the first scorecard in 2019. More than one-third of Croydon households do not own a car. The vehicle mix is also improving and, for the first time this year, electric vehicles and hybrids make up a higher proportion of London’s cars than diesels.
A significant negative change in Croydon this year was the removal of six Low Traffic Neighbourhoods following Mayor Perry’s idiotic statement that he needed them for raising money, rather than improving streets.
Cycle contrast: Croydon is a borough with among the fewest protected cycle lanes in the capital, as this map from the London Healthy Streets report shows
Croydon still has relatively good 20mph coverage, at 82.5%, and its School Street coverage remains better than many outer London boroughs (Tory-run Bexley, for example, has 0% of School Streets).
But Controlled Parking Zone coverage is just 20.3%, bus priority lanes remain low at 7.3%, and protected cycle track coverage is minimal in Croydon.
In terms of outputs, only 23% of Croydon adults walk at least five times per week, the lowest rate of all London boroughs, and cycling participation remains below 10%. Croydon is also in the top five boroughs for the highest proportion of road collision casualties for both pedestrians and cyclists.
The Healthy Streets Coalition verdict is that Croydon’s overall picture is weak: “Croydon’s results show the impact of losing established traffic filters, but also the need for stronger delivery across the input indicators.”
Unfortunately for Croydon, we have Jason Perry as Mayor, and while most would want to make our streets safer and more healthy, Perry seems determined to make them even more deadly.
Bottom of the table: Croydon is 33rd of the London boroughs (and the City of London) for residents taking regular walks
While the Healthy Streets Scorecard exposes Perry’s failures (he’s been Mayor since 2022), the purpose of the scorecard is to help boroughs.
The Healthy Streets Coalition says they “hope the scorecard helps boroughs to compare how well they are doing in relation to the indicators and to identify areas for future action in the short, medium and longer term”.
The scorecard shows that it is possible for councils to make a real difference. We can make our streets healthier, safer and nicer places to be. We can cut traffic and reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads.
All we need is the will to do it.
- Peter Underwood was the Green Party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor in the May 2026 local elections
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walking and cycling all very well, but what about those who struggle with either ? condemned to life in doors and isolation?
Reducing traffic and making our streets safer and healthier will benefit everyone. Walking and cycling are all very well and should be encouraged for everyone who can do that. I don’t see why you think that condemns anyone to a life in doors and isolation.
my point being ,,, what about those who struggle to walk or cannot cycle.. they ARE condemned to a life indoors if cars are banned.
Who said anything about banning cars? Delusional nonsense. As is the suggestion that anyone is “condemned to a life indoors” if deprived of their car.
how do you carry a weeks shopping for a family on a bike?
You get it delivered by electric van.
.. or literally look at the picture at the top of this article, a Dutch-style woodenbox bike with an electric motor for the hills.
One of these will comfortably carry a week’s worth of food shopping, granted you might need the occasional deliveries for some heavier and nonperishable items.
Croydon is London’s hilliest borough. Cycling isn’t appropriate for most people with the topography.
But of course, this article is very balanced with the former Green mayor candidate writing it.
Please detail where comparative measures, taken from 10 different metrics across 32 London boroughs plus the City of London, by an independent organisation, is in any way not balanced?
In any case, Croydon isn’t London’s hilliest borough.
Opinionated ill-informed Tory bollocks, all of it
Crowded with ugly blocks of flats, parking impossible for residents or visitors, having a car is a punishment in Croydon. The whole place has no atmosphere, and to shop there is not a pleasant experience anymore. It feels like a taty low class area. Even Lloyds Park has parking issues now. Cycling and walking is fine at certain times of the year, but this is not Miami in the winter…whatever they did has made people’s life a misery. Restrictions, 20 mile speed limit and all kind of cameras to collect revenue…not to mention council tax increase…fir less services as they cannot bother to keep the grass short in the streets…I don’t go to Croydon for leasure activities or to the bank and I live here…So I drive a few miles away into less crowded areas or towards Kent. Also people’s attitude have changed, go to West Croydon and you will feel you are anywhere else but not in England…I don’t think it will get better if people’s attitude doesn’t change and leaders don’t implement caring policies. AHH yes for the ones who are wondering, this has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, gender orientation or the broken English some speak…but we all pee the same colour ☺️, so good manners and friendly gestures have an effect on all. God help us Croydon…
Pretty spot on assesment . Town Centre has no middle to high end shops apart from M&S which is located in the shittest area of Croydon. The new Lloyds which i am forced to go into Centrale for is sandwiched between tatty shops which took minimal effort to set up.
Purley Way is still good and improving and southern areas of Croydon are still nice though. No way Mayor Perry allows homeless shelters here in Purley and South Croydon so that’s the only good thing for now. The town centre looks like a thrid world cesspitt and its influence is spreading to Addiscombe and East Croydon which are going downhill quick too.
And yet the fastest improving areas of London are the ones which have adopted walking & cycling priority measures wholesale.
Lambeth, Hackney, Camden, Waltham Forest… the Healthy Streets scorecard might as well be a guidebook to the best areas to live.
Because the people who both generate wealth in this country and spend it love this stuff. And if you want to attract people with money to spend & the dynamic business environment they create, which in turn becomes council revenue that can be invested in, say, making West Croydon a bit less of a dump, it’s part of what you need to build.
Interesting research. So looking at the areas where Croydon scored badly (in order of low score) we have: Active Travel – Walking (0.0), Protective Cycle Track (0.2), Casualties – Cycling (0.85), Bus Priority (0.98) and CPZ coverage.
Obviously the current local administration hate cycling, so no surprise with these appearing. As someone who suffered a fractured spine from being knocked off by a car, I know the dangers all too well. We do have an issue of narrow single lane main roads which doesn’t help, but not sure if this is worse than other boroughs.
I am surprised about the walking, where we score 0 and come dead last. I’m not sure why Croydon is such an outlier here. The only thing that comes to mind is safety issues, but that doesn’t hold across most of the borough.
Looking at all the points measured none of them are radical or hard to improve upon, so it is somewhat disappointing we do so badly.
Would be nice if Jason Perry could at least respond to allegations on here to balance things out. If he claims he is too busy, then why is he on x, ig and tik posting ? Inside Croydon gathers around 300000 monthly views afterall, so keeping quiet just isn’t a great look and reflects badly on Croydon as a whole.
While active travel has many benefits, this report is very inner London centric. The outer edges of Croydon (and Bromley even more so) are rural, the idea these should be infested with controlled parking zones is a joke. Cars: love them or hate them, they do bring economic benefits.
A lot of outer London shopping areas are small parades and villages. They are places for local people to walk/bike to, and visitors in cars to visit as part of a longer journey or a multiple-stop trip: pull into a 1 hour space, run an errand, make a purchase or grab lunch and then continue. They aren’t places to be getting the train to for a day out. Croydon has realised this in the “district centres”, although they make you use RingGo.