CROYDON IN CRISIS: Transport correspondent, JEREMY CLACKSON, on how the council kept secret another devastating ruling over the Tory Mayor’s bungling over the borough’s roads
Riding the risks: cycling in Croydon has got more dangerous under Tory Mayor Perry
Not content with making Croydon’s streets less healthy and more dangerous, Croydon’s failed Mayor Jason Perry has been costing Council Tax-payers millions of pounds due to his bungling over transport grants.
This all comes on top of the £10million fiasco over unlawful LTNs – low traffic neighbourhoods – which Perry was ordered to remove by a High Court judge who ruled that the Mayor had abused his powers by using the traffic calming measures as a money-making scheme for his cash-strapped council.
And now Transport for London wants its money back, after they funded a protected cycle lane along London Road where Perry ordered the “wands” to be removed. Perry never bothered to inform City Hall over his decision.
That alone could cost Croydon Council at least £250,000 in a refund of TfL money.
But Perry’s petulance has placed Croydon in a dispute with TfL which has also cost the council another £1.65million, at least, in lost grants in the 2026-2027 financial year.
Magic wands: Mayor Perry ordered the removal of the TfL-funded wands along London Road, but never told TfL
The latest episode of incompetence at Perry’s omnishambles council came to light at a Fisher’s Folly briefing given to Councillor Stuart King, the leader of the Labour opposition group.
The safety wands were taken out along London Road on Easter Monday. Even local councillors were not informed in advance.
Perry is a serial offender as far as vanishing wands are concerned. In 2024, Perry had the wands along Brighton Road, on the main road between Purley and the town centre, ripped out, claiming they were “unpopular”.
This, of course, was just a Perry porkie: the wands were unpopular only according to the 1% of residents in Waddon, South Croydon, Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown ward and Purley and Woodcote that Perry and his council bothered to “listen” to.
No impasse: emergency vehicles were able to navigate through the heavy traffic on the Brighton Road
Perry also claimed that the wands were holding up the emergency services because motorists couldn’t pull in to get out of the way. Another Perry porkie.
It all means that TfL has chosen to deal with petulant Perry by snubbing his requests for more funding under the Local Implementation Plan. And it’s the residents of Croydon who end up losing out.
LIP funding is the annual grants system under which TfL provides boroughs with finance to improve their road and transport networks, though only in a way that is consistent with the Mayor of London’s transport strategy.
As reported to Perry’s council cabinet last December, Croydon was seeking LIP funding of £3,358,000 for 2026-2027 and £3,603,000 for 2027-2028 – totalling nearly £7million.
It was around this time that Perry and his Conservative lackeys will have been drafting their “Motorists’ Charter”. After spending two years of his first term at least tacitly condoning anti-ULEZ vandalism and opposition, Perry has gone into his second term threatening to undo many of the traffic-calming measures, often paid for by TfL, that have been introduced over the last decade.
Counting the cost of Perry: how TfL has opted to block the majority of Croydon’s asks under the LIP funding process. More than £3.5m of applications for 27-28 are also under review
Perry’s car-supremacist blundering over the cycle lane wands is not without repercussions, however.
In a letter dated April 7, Helen Cansick, TfL’s head of investment planning for healthy streets, wrote to Croydon Council: “TfL has not issued Croydon’s 2026-2027 Local Implementation Plan (LIP) funding letter… we are no longer confident that the London Borough of Croydon is supportive of delivering the London Mayor’s transport strategy.”
This loss of confidence in piss-poor Perry came exactly one month before he was standing for re-election. Perry’s council failed to disclose that they had had a grant application for more than £3million refused.
Nor did the council share the reasons given by Cansick, which are no less devastating than the LTN judgement handed down in the High Court in March.
Cansick wrote: “There have been decisions and statements made by the executive Mayor of Croydon, Jason Perry, about three separate LIP-funded schemes which are in direct conflict with the Mayor’s transport strategy.”
In her letter, Cansick specified the humiliating High Court ruling over LTNs (which had been installed with TfL money), as well as Perry’s redesign of the Dingwall Road/Lansdowne Road cycling and bus priority scheme “which introduces motorised traffic back into the area, which did not have TfL’s approval”; and “an instruction from Mayor Perry to remove cycle segregation on London Road”.
All Perry’s fault: the letter from TfL was clear as to who is to blame for the refusal to pay Croydon its LIP fund money this year
These complaints from a senior City Hall official all specify Jason Perry as the source of the dispute.
TfL is demanding that the council submit a new LIP application for this year. TfL might also require Croydon – that’s you and me, not Perry personally, more’s the pity – to repay the £235,000 LIP funding the council was previously awarded for the cycle lanes.
Perry’s minions claim that the London Road cycle lane wands were removed because they were “not meeting the objectives of the scheme”.
The objectives were, surely, to provide safer streets and a safer cycling network. Wands duly binned, council officials have been instructed to draw up plans for a paint job on London Road. Perhaps they have sourced some special magic paint that generates an invisible safety shield protecting people on bicycles from motorists driving dangerously?.
The current and planned arrangements mean that anyone choosing to cycle between Purley and Thornton Heath Pond will be at greater risk of potential collision than before. The council’s designs fail to meet either TfL or Department for Transport design standards.
Petulant Perry: Croydon’s Mayor is making our streets less safe
According to the council, Croydon has no “active travel strategy”. Nor does it bother to monitor progress in increasing cycling or walking (modes of “active travel”).
That’s awkward. Anyone would think that Perry really does want fewer people to walk or go by bike. Or by bus, for that matter.
Tom Bowell, recently appointed to Labour’s shadow cabinet at the Town Hall, told Inside Croydon: “We know that the cycle wands were not by any means perfect. We heard businesses and residents raise legitimate concerns about them. But the right response should have been evidence-led and focused on drawing up new measures that work for all road users.”
Councillor Bowell, whose Town Hall brief is “streets and enforcement” is calling for “genuine consultation” about “the future of active travel along this busy corridor and making our roads safer in other parts of the borough”, saying that that is “consultation the Conservative Mayor has failed to hold”.
Indeed, when it comes to consultation, or even hard facts, it appears that the council has not been doing its job. Councillor King noted that council staff have not provided data on road collisions before and after the introduction of the wands and defenders on the cycle lanes. King has requested that those figures are made public.
A Katharine Street source said: “That will keep some poor sod in Fisher’s Folly terribly busy.”
And they added: “There’s only one reason that they’ve been keeping any data secret up till now: it’s because the hard facts will prove that Perry’s been telling lies to suit his ‘Motorist Charter’ agenda.”
Read more: Mayor Perry’s ‘Motorists’ Charter’ to deliver more accidents, higher car insurance and even put children’s safety at risk
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: Tories accused of ‘pandering to prejudice’ over cycle lanes
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Perry hasn’t got a Cabinet, just an echo chamber. He only ‘listens’ to people who agree with him, an extreme form of confirmation bias. He won’t take advice from experts if it doesn’t fit his warped views of the world.
This wouldn’t matter much if he was the only victim of these tendencies. Unfortunately for us, we’re stuck with this prize pillock and his blundering until May 2030, or even longer than that.
A big sarcastic round of applause to the DEMOC campaigners who landed us in this situation, where a fatuous narcissistic oaf with the support of less than one in eight voters can cause so much damage to our borough
On reflection, I take it back. DEMOC are to be congratulated for engineering a Tory coup, where with one eighth of the electorate, they have gifted their party absolute rule of the London Borough of Croydon.
If we still had the previous system, based on number of councillors elected, Perry would be leader of the Opposition, not a minority-rule dicktator (sic)
The piece de resistance was touting it as a non partisan issue. Turkeys voted for Christmas.
it seems nothing stops his actions. We all suffer for his blundering.
He’s our very own anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns to shit.
Am I being unreasonable to expect better from Croydon? Cycling in adjoining boroughs I see protected cycle lanes, cycling friendly safer streets areas, bike schemes for children on the school run, business and personal use cargo bikes and plenty of hire bikes – It has been estimated that just on the school run families can save up to £1000 a year. It happens elsewhere! So why not Croydon?
Because there isn’t enough demand for it in Croydon. We have, instead, a good bus service.
Take your head out of the sand and read the room. People are looking for leadership not Reform tribute acts
Time to award PPP and additional P for perpetually
So PPPP.
This isn’t the only GLA money he’s screwed up is it? Aren’t there some ‘green’ grants the council has the money for but hasn’t spent?
The anti-Tory attitude of some commentators is getting the better of them. They are, for political reasons, failing to acknowledge that there were insufficient cyclists using the roads to justify the cost of installing the wands in the first place. The presence of the wands and their bases presented potential danger to other road users, so the Council was well justified in removing those wands. If TfL wants any money back then they should be politely told “no”. TfL is to blame for squandering on a useless scheme. If they thought they might encourage many motorists to abandon their cars and cycle instead then they got that one wrong. TfL is financially stressed so it is good news that they are withholding funds for more unnecessary schemes. Those funds should be ploughed back into the bus services to avoid further cuts to the frequencies. Let’s remember that the Mayor of London’s money is our money — taken from us via the Mayor London’s precept in our council tax. And we know why that council tax is already very high don’t we?
Perry’s actions have seen funding withdrawn or withheld for bus services.
Keep up Derek. Perry’s the problem.
Can you enlighten us as to your assertion that “Perry’s actions have seen funding withdrawn or withheld for bus services.” Which actions caused TfL to reduce bus services?
It’s in the TfL response to Perry referred to in the very article you’re commenting on.
The reason so few people feel able to cycle when they want to is because Croydon council has either not done anything like enough (Labour) to make it safer and easier, or has actively ignored, suppressed and sabotaged (Conservative) this transport choice.
Numerous Croydon council and TfL reports and strategy documents – for example, Croydon Biking Borough 2010, Croydon Cycling Strategy 2018-23, TfL Cycling Action Plan 2 – confirm that more people would go by bike if simple measures, built and operating successfully elsewhere in London, were installed here. That includes having segregated cycle lanes – not just wands – on main roads.
When people decide to ride their bikes instead of using their car or taking the bus, train, tram or a taxi, they are freeing up space for other people, saving themselves time and money, getting exercise and cutting toxic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
You’re right that the Mayor of London’s money is our money. It should be spent here in our borough. Bangs for bucks, investment in cycling is a winner for everyone.
I have yet to see cyclists in any number using the cycle lanes across the Borough .
Which only goes to prove your status as an unreliable witness.
Hazel, the reason you see so few cyclists using Croydon’s cycle lanes is that the lanes are largely inadequate. Most of them are little more than white paint on the road, which often disappears at the most dangerous points.
For instance, if you want to cycle north from Coulsdon into Croydon — a gentle downhill route of just over 4 miles that takes about 25 minutes – you’ll find the cycle lanes vanish near Purley Cross. If you want to cycle straight on into Purley, you have pull out across two lanes of fast-moving traffic turning left as their drivers head for the Purley Way.
This is intimidating and unsafe.
The paint reappears at Purley Hospital, but en route to South Croydon is interrupted by car parking spaces and illegal parking.
That’s off-putting and hazardous.
The white lines disappear as you approach Whitgift School and you’re left with nothing but a hope and a prayer and a “Narrow Lanes – Do not Overtake Cyclists” sign until you get to Whitgift Street. Only at that point do you see anything resembling the safe cycling facilities common in other London boroughs.
This patchy and unsafe excuse for a cycle route network prevents people from cycling. That’s not accidental. It reflects political choices that have prioritised the convenience of some drivers over safer cycling for everyone.
It prevents people from leaving their car at home, skipping the bus and instead taking their bike when they want to.
It means our roads are unnecessarily congested with polluting cars and there are fewer free seats on the bus.
And ironically, without segregated lanes, drivers are legally required to leave at least 1.5 metres when overtaking cyclists, and failure to do so can result in penalty points and fines.
Bringing in safe, segregated cycle lanes on main roads would not only protect existing cyclists but also enable other people to choose cycling.
“The Council has a clear vision to seize opportunities and make the borough more attractive to residents, investors, businesses, learners and visitors, and cycling is a critical part of this vision.”
Who wrote that? Jason Perry, in 2013, when asking TfL for millions of pounds to fund a “mini-Holland” in Croydon. We lost that bid. Waltham Forest was one of the boroughs that won. There the proportion of adults cycling regularly is now 15%, and they enjoy the best cycling safety rate in London.
That you frame this as an attitude is evidence that you are failing to see the evidence of the benefits of active travel while you pander to what you wrongly perceive as your base.
Derek is what will henceforward be known as a PAP: pathetic apologist for Perry.
If Croydon was a “Village” there would be a perfect role for him.
Obviously Perry has handled this incredibly poorly, but at the same time I don’t think TfL should make cycling infrastructure a condition of receiving wider transport funding. It should be up to an elected council to decide which transport schemes best suit its area, rather than having to accept an entire package. Simply painting lines on roads and adding wands isn’t, in my view, the kind of high-quality cycling infrastructure that will persuade large numbers of people to cycle. I understand TfL’s aim is to change travel behaviour, but I’m not convinced this approach has broad public support beyond a relatively vocal group of cycling campaigners.
The wands were removed on Easter Monday this year. Presumably PPP hoped that no one would be awake to notice. I saw from my living room window the operatives removing them. Also I see daily a reasonable number of cyclists using the cycle lanes in both directions so to say that there are too few cyclists is nonsense.
If there were really a problem with emergency vehicles travelling along London Road, something would be done about the cars parked almost permanently on the double yellow lines on London Road just after the Sumner Road bus stop going north. It’s the same cars almost every day so they clearly know that they will never be ticketed.
As a cyclist, I find it depressing when I see the trouble that other London boroughs are going to, to build fancy new segregated cycle lanes whilst, simultaneously, Croydon is using my council tax to decrease cyclist safety.
Has anyone spotted this website: https://www.healthystreetsscorecard.london/ ?Croydon has dropped from 24th to 26th out of 33 in the table of London Borough safety. Removing cycle lane wands clearly does not help.