CROYDON IN CRISIS: An above-inflation hike for resident parking permits, parking fees and penalties is being lined up to help plug the hole in the council budgets caused by the Mayor opening his big mouth.
By our transport correspondent, JEREMY CLACKSON
Turns out that when Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, opens his mouth and costs the borough millions of pounds, it is the borough’s residents who end up picking up the bill.
Mayor Perry, who has hiked Countil Tax by 33% since 2023, now plans to rinse residents with increased parking fines, parking charges and residents permits, all to make up for the cash-strapped council’s short-fall in income from his unlawful LTNs.
The amount of money in LTN fine refunds, lost revenue and grants that have to be repaid to Transport for London all because of Perry’s big mouth and bad decisions this year alone amounts to at least…
£15.4m
That is made up of:
£7m
in fines unlawfully charged to motorists for driving in Perry’s LTNs, which the Mayor said were intended to be a money-spinner for the council, despite that being unlawful.
£3m
lost in budgeted revenue this year since the LTNs were removed by order of the High Court in March.
£0.25m
the grant to be repaid to TfL after Perry ordered the removal of safety “wands” from a cycle lane along London Road. TfL only found out this act of civic vandalism when Perry boasted about doing it on his social media.
£1.35m
rejected or blocked by TfL because of Perry’s dismantling of previous Healthy Neighbourhood low-traffic schemes
£0.286m
bus priority upgrades “under review”.
£3.6m
Local Implementation Plan, LIP funding request for 2027-2028 now under review by TfL due to pro-car Perry’s various acts of petulance.
Jason Perry is paid £86,000 per year as Croydon’s executive Mayor. But he costs the borough more than that. Much more.
And it is Croydon residents who end up paying through the nose for Perry’s predicament.
In budget proposals expected to be rubber-stamped by Perry’s Conservative colleagues in the next few weeks, resident parking fees, parking charges and fines are all going up by 3.5% – above the current rate of inflation.
Council income from PCNs – Penalty Charge Notices – has been falling, as the unlawful LTNs and dodgy yellow boxes have been stripped out of Croydon.
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
Croydon Council holds the details of every single fine it raised on the six LTNs in question from March 2024 to March 2026 (fines charged on LTNs before that are not refundable; before Perry made the LTNs permanent, the low-traffice zones were administered entirely lawfully).
The council could, quite reasonably, email those concerned to advise them of the change of circumstance. But it now appears that the council is going to wait and only make refunds when people come forward with valid claims. And even then, they don’t appear to be in any kind of rush to give back people’s money.
Even at a council with debts of £1.7billion, the estimated refund total of £7million is a hefty chunk of change, and the longer the council can keep wronged drivers’ cash in its grasp the better as far as Perry and the council finance chief Conrad Hall are concerned.
Going up: what started at 10p an hour will soon be closer to £1.50 thanks to Mayor Jason Perry
In a sane world, you might think that reducing bad driving behaviour would be celebrated as a good thing. But in Croydon, it is the honest, law-abiding car-driving residents who end up being punished.
The council operates a banded parking permit system, with annual charges from £39 if you own an electric vehicle, up to £342 if your vehicle has particularly high carbon emissions.
A residents permit does not guarantee you a parking place even on your own road. So why are you being charged more each year for a council “service” that costs next to nothing to administer?
Maybe Jason Perry isn’t the motorists’ friend that he’d like people to believe.
According to the council’s own reports, the above-inflation increase in fines, charges and fees should generate an additional £2.75million for Perry’s council’s coffers next year.
Perhaps the biggest impact of these stealth taxes will not be on drivers. When our local high street businesses are struggling with excessive business rates, utility bills and extra National Insurance costs, the last thing they need is for on-street parking to be made unaffordable for their customers.
Parking on many roads in the borough is getting seriously expensive. A couple of years ago it was free for 30 minutes with a ticket on your dash. Then we got RingGo parking on an app: 10p for an hour.
Now it’s £1.31 for 30 minutes on a side road.
And thanks to Jason Perry and his big mouth, we’re all about to be forced to pay even more.
Read more: High Court judge orders end to Croydon’s ‘unlawful’ LTNs
Read more: Council failed to include High Court LTN case on risk register
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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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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Nice of Jason Perry to appoint a fall guy to take the flak for this when motorists realise that what he says and what he does are two different things. Some people are born shit, others become shit and some have shit thrust upon them – which one is you, Alasdair Stewart?
Sorry to anyone who wants to cycle along Croydon’s main roads in safety without fear of being hit by a careless motorist, Mayor Perry needs your cycle lane for car parking to fill the hole in his transport budget (caused by unlawfully ripping out TfL-funded cycle lanes).
At least the south of the borough where car ownership is higher will suffer more with this, and that is their own fault for giving us four more years of Piss-Poor back in May.
You wait until people challenge the tickets they got in Lloyd Park and other free parking spots on the basis of an incorrect enforcement code!
He is so useless, but Inside Croydon have been pointing this out for years. But still the dim witted Tory voters put him back in for another 4 disastrous years.
Equivalent to electing Trump for self harm