EXCLUSIVE: Mayor’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to fly-tipping is to feature on local television news tonight, as council videos ‘exposes’ a local trader doing what they have been instructed to do by… the council!
X-rated video: the council’s ‘faked’ news, claiming that a Brigstock Road shopkeeper is a fly-tipper
Jason Perry, the incompetent Mayor of Croydon, has launched an anti-fly-tipping campaign using a video that shows someone… disposing of rubbish exactly as they have been instructed to do by Croydon Council.
Rubbish contractors Veolia and the council introduced “banded” night-time rubbish collections almost 10 years ago.
Under this TBWC system – Time-Banded Waste Collection, for those not fluent in councilspeak – shop-owners and those living in flats above shops along the borough’s high streets, have been encouraged to put black bin bags and recycling out for collection overnight.
That scheme is reckoned by some to be one of the prime contributors to the awful state of many of Croydon’s streets. It has made an already bad street scene situation worse. However carefully placed the bin bags might be, they often leak waste fluids over the pavements, they are always an eyesore and they often attract further fly-tips, too.
Earlier this year, Mayor Perry and his council was exposed as running “the fly-tipping capital of England”, with on average more than 1,000 fly-tips reported in the borough every week in the most recent year for which official figures are published by DEFRA, the government’s environment department.
This spike in fly-tips in Croydon coincided with Tory Perry scrapping the council’s small enforcement team, whose job it was to… catch fly-tippers. Among the team’s other duties was to ensure that shopkeepers and those living in flats above shops followed the rules when it comes to the (authorised) banded waste collections.
Following his re-election in May, piss-poor Perry has been spouting about how he wants to make Croydon cleaner… after years when he created the situation where it has got much, much messier. And a recent government announcement that it is to increase the maximum fine for fly-tipping to £5,000 has seen Croydon’s Mayor seize on another money-spinning opportunity for the cash-strapped council.
“Croydon will impose the maximum fine, with no early-payment discount,” Perry said this week.
He’s been promising to use video grabs of fly-tippers caught on the borough’s CCTVs, creating what he has called a “rogues gallery”, where offenders will be shamed in public as well as hit with hefty fines.
Rubbish Mayor: Jason Perry helped to create the additional fly-tipping in Croydon when he axed the enforcement team
And as Perry re-launched his administration yesterday with a “comedy” video – take our word for it, Perry is far from funny – the same “fly-tip” video clip has been used yet again in the council’s publicly funded social media.
Yet this is Jason Perry’s faked news.
The subject was raised on Tuesday, at Perry’s Residents’ Associations Forum held at the Braithwaite Halls.
The video clip shows someone, likely a shopkeeper or member of staff, on Brigstock Road in Thornton Heath, with an armful of flattened cardboard boxes, which he neatly stacks inside another box already at the kerbside.
In fact, the alleged “fly-tipper” is following to the letter the instructions given by Veolia and the council to shopkeepers for their banded rubbish collections.
This bit of Brigstock Road is a notorious spot for fly-tipping.
Graham Mitchell, a community volunteer in Thornton Heath who attended the RAs’ meeting said, “I asked why the camera had not also caught the many other people who appear to fly-tip at that same location every day.
“The response was that there are various legal considerations before footage can be released. The Mayor said he hoped the legal position could be clarified so that more video evidence can be published.
“I wasn’t convinced by the reply.”
So much for Mayor Perry’s “zero tolerance”.
Council sign: shopkeepers and residents in flats on London Road are allowed to put their rubbish out after 5pm
And Tony Hooker, from residents’ group Litter Free Norbury, who was denied an invitation to Perry’s event but managed to attend anyway, is suspicious that the council campaign will catch out the unsuspecting, while doing little to nothing to stop the organised gangs of fly-tippers who have been operating across south London.
“I’m all for enforcement, obviously, but my fear is that the council’s efforts target the low-hanging fruit – they aren’t going to catch the serious serial fly-tippers but will issue fines to people or businesses that don’t necessarily know any different,” Hooker told Inside Croydon before going off to be interviewed by ITV News London, in an item due for broadcast tonight.
Asked about the council’s misleading video from Brigstock Road, Hooker said, “All shopkeepers seem to know or have been asked, to fold up their cardboard and place it inside another box. In this instance, it’s clearly going to be a guy from one of the shops nearby.”
Norbury campaigner: Tony Hooker being interviewed for ITV News London this morning
Hooker points out the council signs on the kerbside nearby which explicitly state that household and commercial waste must not be put on the pavement between 8am and 5pm daily – showing that rubbish for the banded waste collections can be left out after 5pm each day.
“I saw on the council’s video originally that this was taken at something like 8pm. But Croydon Council have covered that over with their logo in this version of the video!” Hooker said.
“Apparently, Croydon Council can’t identify the man and so want a member of the public to shop the shopkeeper.
“The fact is, he’s putting it by the bin because that’s where Croydon Council and Veolia have told him to put it.
“If Perry’s enforcement operation is shown to be a bit of a sham, residents will lose faith very quickly.”
Read more: New £5,000 fines for fly-tipping – but will Perry catch offenders?
Read more: Kafkaesque world of contractors clearing 98% of fly-tips
Read more: Petty Perry blocks residents’ groups from RA rubbish meeting
Read more: #BINMAGEDDON: Veolia performance is worse under new deal
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TBWC ? Total Bollocks Waste Collection ? Tory Boy Waste Collection?
The Council sign seems to be encouraging fly-tipping/rubbish dumping in the evenings/overnight seven days a week ?
Perry has been a major player in Croydon politics for the best part of three decades. If you hadn’t noticed he has been involved since the disastrous procurement process involving Bernard Wetherhill House that the Tories at one time claimed would cost Croydon Residents no extra council tax, but commenced the slippery slide to a huge debt burden. He then went on to appoint Jo Negrini to develop Croydon’s Westfield Project and the person whose addled decisions finally created an unsurmountable debt that the Council could no longer service.
As Mayor he instigated this ludicrous refuse collection that bare all the hallmarks of legalised fly tipping that was always to the benefit and advantage of a Contractor that had been let go before due to the inadequate service they had provided to the residents of Croydon.
If you hadn’t noticed by now. Surely you can see Jason Perry is part of Croydon problems and has a complete lack of ability to solve any of them. The pork barrel politics of Perry to the benefit of the residents of the wealthier parts of the area to make them out vote the general interests of the whole area has so much to answer for the shocking decline of Croydon.
You missed the fact that Perry was a key player in the disastrous, apparently no-strings-attached, deal with what was then Hamerson. So not only has he engineered the death knell for Croydon’s finances & services, he’s also managed to turn us into a shabby ghost town.
The short length of pavement on the east side of London Road, between Elmwood Road and St James Road has bin bags placed “tidily” next to the lamp posts and trees literally every day by the residents who live above the shops. The bin men probably clear them in the very early morning but it is guaranteed that there will be more by 10am. Hence, for most of the daylight hours the pavement looks disgusting. I pass this whenever I walk to West Croydon station.
There are many other stretches of road where I could report the same problem. This is just an example.
Bin bags leak. The pavements in many places are covered with horrible grime that will most likely never be cleaned off.
Allowing people to leave their trash on the pavements is not an acceptable solution to domestic waste disposal. If it is really necessary for householders to take out their garbage every day, at least provide them with proper bins into which to put it.
That surely is a job for Manju Shahul-Hameed – councillor for the Broad Green ward. I mean… does she do anything ?
The small minority of Croydon people who voted for Perry in 2022 and 2026 have condemned all of us to higher Council tax, increased Council debt, poorer services, broken promises, a war on our environment and filthier streets
The streets are probably lovely in the area where Perry lives.
Years of collating photo’s on the london road and adjoining road and reporting the ”flytips” of waste dumped between 08.00am and 17.00 The actions of the political administration and their social media replies to evidenced challanges come across as scurrilous. At best. One Councillor did not even know the premises were new after being burnt down in the riots and labelled a person reporting with evidence hundreds of incidents as ”all talk and no action”. Marvelous example of the type of representatives in place that pillory and make victims of those reporting matters as asked.
The reality is that they created this problem. They created this environmental disaster on our main shopping high streets and the side roads. They are doing as little as possible to do anything about it.
Fundamentally Perry and Co are the ones that are all talk and no action.
One can only have total sympathy for ”the few” left actually doing enforcement in difficult circumstances when represented and led by a person found guilty in court of misusing LTN. What a farce of local government. Utterances are met now with derision and even when truthful fall on deaf ears after so much untrue propaganda.
Is there nothing else we can do about this? The amount of trash deposited on the pavement at all times of day is disgusting. The whole concept of “legal littering/flytipping” between the hours of 17:00 and 08:00 (13 hours every day) is insane.
Not according to Mr Alasdair Stewart. He went on social media saying the buildings on London road were old and that was all they could do. Yet failed to realise those by Sumner/St James road being reported were all new and all were tipping every hour of every day on the London Road St James Road Wellington Road Elmwood rood Nova road, Kidderminster road Dennet road Handcroft road. Many legally as they were designated collection points. I am wondering if Scotia Gas Network were consulted as their sub station was blocked daily on St James road or even the residents that had biffa bins placed under their window and blocking their front door many days of the week. Clearly Mr Stweart and co failed to think things through or realise that once a legal dump is allowed every individual or business will add to that and were reported so many times with a total lack of action. Photo’s reference numbers complaints all evidenced all sent and all treated to political disdain and those reporteing it slurred and smeared by Conservative Councillors. This daily tipping of food oil matttresses and oter waste has led to an explosion of vermin on the side roads and gardens along with one whole stretch of houses being infested with cockroaches. Businesses are storing food goods in units were vermin are seen daily by local residents.
“..were old and that was all they could do. ”
Nonsense ..in Croydon…. they should never of approved upper level flat conversions on old terraced commercial property. The council will end losing more long term on the flytipping and daily cleanups .. they could also make a cpo on a tiny piece of land for rubbish disposal areas on high streets.
Absolute madness
If residents really have nowhere else to put their trash, the council should build big cuboid bins specifically for the bin bags. At least they wouldn’t look so unsightly.
I realise that the argument against them would be that people not from the neighbourhood would also drop their trash in them. But at least the area wouldn’t look so disgusting.
By allowing garbage on the pavements, we are saying that it’s ok for anyone to do it at any time. All pride in the area is gone.
“the argument against them would be that people not from the neighbourhood would also drop their trash in them.”
The same argument can be applied to the current practice of dumping bin bags on the pavement