Council planners have ignored an Order from a High Court judge over the granting of retrospective permission for a block of flats in Sanderstead. But as STEVE WHITESIDE explains, the case of 54 Arkwright Road is far from an isolated example of poor practice by Croydon’s planning department
Another monstrosity: the developers at 98 Hyde Road were given a second chance to build on the site. This is the result
A year on from a Judicial Review into one of Croydon Council’s planning department’s many contentious rulings, when a judge issued a Court Order that confirmed that the development at 54 Arkwright Road is unlawful, and people are now renting flats in that building – at up to £1,800 per month – even though it does not have a valid planning permission. But under Croydon’s dysfunctional council, 54 Arkwright Road is far from an isolated case. Continue reading
What does someone who oversaw the biggest financial collapse in English local government history do after they trouser their £437,000 golden handshake from the Council Tax-payers of Croydon?
Back in the spotlight: Jo Negrini was sharing her expertise again yesterday
Why, they deliver lectures to people who ought to know better, on “Growing a sustainable London”, that’s what.
The Tom Lehrer line was that “Satire is dead” after Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State who ordered the carpet-bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yesterday, at something called the London Real Estate Forum held at the Barbican Centre in the City of London, Croydon Council’s former chief executive Jo Negrini took the barely breathing body of irony and stamped all over it in her kitten heels. Continue reading
Time fires: the LFB crew at the Thornton Heath Clocktower this morning
A Metropolitan Police and London Fire Brigade investigation is underway after a fire in the Thornton Heath Clocktower gutted the local landmark.
The fire took place in the early hours of this morning.
Despite prompt arrival by the Brigade, the much-loved piece of Thornton Heath heritage had been left badly damaged.
There have been no reports of anyone being injured as a result of the Clocktower fire.
The clock was erected in Thornton Heath town centre in 1900, having been paid for by public subscription.
Given the local council’s parlous financial circumstances, it could be left to local people to dip into their pockets once again to fund its repair.
This morning, Thornton Heath ward councillor Callton Young said, “I’m deeply saddened to see the damage done to Thornton Heath Clock Tower by a fire in the early hours.
“I just spoke to Councillor Karen Jewitt who is in touch with the authorities in an effort to learn the cause.
“The inside of the tower and clock faces seem to have taken the brunt.” Continue reading
Samantha Collins is another Croydon fund-runner taking part in this Sunday’s London Marathon.
Running times: Crystal Palace Fun Runner Samantha Collins will be one of thousands raising money for charity in Sunday’s London Marathon
Collins is running with a target of nearly £2,000 to support national charity Leukaemia Care.
Collins, 46, will be running the London for the fourth time, but after taking part in 2021’s “virtual” marathon, she says she is looking forward to running again in person this year.
She has chosen Leukaemia Care as her cause because her husband, Andy, was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia six years ago.
“I have been training with my running club Crystal Palace Fun Runners who have given me great support,” Collins said. Continue reading
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Information Commissioner gives Croydon six months to clean up its act over how it responds to the public.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Dumb and Dumber: neither Mayor nor CEO responded today to an invitation to comment on the ICO’s stern reprimand to the council
Croydon Council has been reprimanded by the Information Commissioner’s Office after it was found to have failed to respond properly to more than half of the Subject Access Requests, or SARs, a form of Freedom of Information request, that it has received from members of the public.
The ICO issued its formal reprimand to south London’s rottenest borough in July.
Today they published their findings on Croydon and six other bodies – including other London boroughs Lambeth and Hackney – which have failed to perform up to the standards required by data laws.
The Information Commissioner’s Office says that it is “the country’s independent regulator for data protection and information rights law, upholding information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals”. Continue reading
Slowly life, and arts, are getting back to ‘normal’, as our veteran culture correspondent, BELLA BARTOCK, was delighted to discover at a concert by the choral group The Sixteen at Croydon Minster on Monday
A numbers game: The Sixteen performing at Croydon Minster. Or maybe 18. Or perhaps 40
I was getting impatient.
I had phoned my friend Claudia’s mobile several times, but got no reply. Trying the landline, I was almost about to give up again when a voice came on the other end, “Hello. Claudia de Boozy speaking,” she said, rather too loudly.
“You’ll have to speak up. I’m watching Pointless on catch up and I don’t know how to pause it.”
As loudly as I dared, I explained that I had got two tickets for The Sixteen’s concert at Croydon Minster and would she like to go with me. This just added to Claudia’s confusion. Continue reading
The employment law team at the Croydon-based legal firm of Martin Searle Solicitors’is about to stage Disability Matters, their annual campaign to work to stamp out disability discrimination in the workplace.
Advice sessions: Martin Searle’s legal experts have a range of online resources and offer seminars in October
The campaign coincides with World Mental Health Day on October 10.
The team has found that after the covid lockdowns there has been a notable increase in people seeking employment law advice about disability discrimination at work. This increase is largely due to workers who are struggling with mental health disabilities such as depression and anxiety.
Those who hoped new Mayor Jason Perry would sweep away the bad practices of the council’s planning department are in for a bit of a disappointment. STEVE WHITESIDE with the latest in a long-running saga
Court out: council planners are still working with developers to get around a judge’s ruling
Even the decision of a High Court judge is not enough to get Croydon Council’s planners to follow proper planning process.
It’s now been more than a year since, in response to a Judicial Review of one of its planning department’s many contentious rulings, the council was ordered by a judge to quash its decision on 54 Arkwright Road.
The Court Order that followed confirmed that this as-built development was unlawful. The building as completed did not have a valid planning permission.
This saga goes back to 2017, when the council planners granted permission from developers Aventier for the demolition of existing building at 54 Arkwright Road, Sanderstead, and the erection of a two-to-three-storey building which would include six two-bedroom flats and one three-bed flat, as well as the “formation of vehicular access and provision of seven parking spaces, cycle and refuse storage and landscaping”. Continue reading
The council is looking to re-set its Place Review Panel – now to be renamed the Design Review Panel – and is inviting applications from architecture and design experts to sign up for two or three days’ work each year, when they will pontificate on the merits, or otherwise, of the latest applications received by the planning department at Fisher’s Folly.
Back to the drawing board: Croydon’s Place Review Panel will now be the Design Review Panel
Croydon’s Place Review Panel was established in 2016, at a time of “Peak Negrini” at the council, when its then chief exec, Jo “Negreedy” Negrini, was applying her “no expense spared” approach to her mission of making friends and influencing people among London’s architecture set, and using hundreds of thousands of council cash to do so.
Back in November 2016, the council said that its PRP “will ensure that Croydon’s increasing popularity as a development location will continue to be shaped by its commitment to delivering quality design and placemaking throughout all aspects of the built environment including public realm, infrastructure and buildings”. Continue reading
Fund runners: Every runner in this Sunday’s London Marathon has a story to tell. NSPCC fund-raiser Baz’s story is harrowing
Croydon’s Behzad Shadnia – “Baz” – is running in the London Marathon this Sunday, raising money for the NSPCC – the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Baz, who’s from South Norwood, has strong personal reasons to support the NSPCC’s cause.
There’s a clue right at the top of his JustGiving page: “Trigger warning”, it says, in big capital letters.
“Please don’t read any further if you have unprocessed trauma.”
Baz moved to Dubai at the age of seven. A shy child, he struggled to make friends at school, but bonded with the children of family friends. He and his peers had freedom to explore their local area and for the most part felt safe in their adventures. Continue reading
The second episode of Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files was a bit of a Croydon special, with cameo appearances of the local branch of the English Defence League, as well as another appearance by Croydon North MP Steve Reed, and the full story of how one party member was ‘thrown under a bus’ by the Corbyn leadership as it was attacked over antisemitism
The second part of the Al Jazeera Investigation Unit’s documentary series The Labour Files aired on Saturday night, with further disturbing revelations from inside party headquarters, based on a massive leak of documents.
But the version of the programme released on YouTube includes an extra half-hour of material, and even more shocking information about how the party was being run before, during and after the time when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Continue reading
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, on the Conservative peer’s criticism of the Truss government’s reckless ‘Mini-Budget’
‘Reckless’: ‘Lord’ Gavin Barwell has been critical of the Tory ‘Mini-Budget’
Baron Barwell of Croydon in the London Borough of Croydon has had enough of the Conservative government.
The patience of the man who was Tory MP for Croydon Central for seven years finally cracked on Friday afternoon, as he pronounced himself politically homeless.
“I haven’t left the Conservative Party,” he tweeted. “It has left me.”
After months of grumblings from the sidelines about his old mate, the philanderer law-breaker and serial liar Boris Johnson, over the way that his government was “getting Brexit done” and causing lasting damage to the nation, Friday’s Mini-Budget saw “Lord” Barwell finally lose it.
Below par: the Coulsdon Manor Hotel and the 140-acre golf course have been removed from sale by cash-strapped Croydon Council
Our south of the borough correspondent, PEARL LEE, on another massive hole in the council’s budgets
Croydon Council has taken Coulsdon Manor Hotel off the market.
The grand country house, sitting in a 140-acre parkland golf course, was put out for offers in July 2021, part of the fire sale of the cash-strapped council’s assets after the previous Labour administration had crashed the borough’s finances.
Katharine Street sources suggest that council officers had suggested that the hotel sale could put as much as £750,000 into the financially embarrassed Town Hall coffers.
There has been no official announcement about the withdrawal of the hotel from sale on the council website, not even so much as a tweet on part-time Perry’s mayoral account. But word has been dribbled out from a Tory councillor in Coulsdon to the local residents’ associations that the Coulsdon Manor Hotel and the accompanying golf course are no longer being sold. Continue reading
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: The records at Croydon Minster, the register of births, marriages and deaths, have given DAVID MORGAN more leads into local history, this time to the story of war-time bravery in 1944
Led by Mounties: the Queen’s funeral procession in London last Monday, led by a contingent of the RCMP
On Monday, as a detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – the “Mounties” – led the Queen’s funeral procession up The Mall, they served as a reminder of the strong links between our countries.
The Doldorph family and Croydon have a connection to Canada, too.
People living and shopping in Old Town in the first part of the 20th Century, as well as attending what was then still known as the Parish Church, now Croydon Minster, will have been familiar with the Doldorph family name. Continue reading
Yesterday’s disastrous ‘Mini-Budget’ from the Tory government saw Chris Philp described as ‘the idiot’s idiot’. You can’t say we weren’t warned, writes our Political Editor WALTER CRONXITE
Plutocrat: Chris Philp, who retains his business interests in investment companies called Pluto
There’s a reason Chris Philp is called “the Treasury’s No2”.
There’s also good reason people are now calling him “the idiot’s idiot”.
Yesterday morning, Philp, the millionaire property investor with the opaque businesses who is also Croydon South’s MP, must have thought he had reached the zenith of his political career so far.
There he was, on the government’s front bench in the House of Commons, grinning like the cat that had got the cream, alongside his newish boss, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, as he was about to deliver the Mini-Budget.
Friday, September 23 2022 will probably go down in history, after the disaster that is Brexit, as one of the days of greatest national self-harm in the history of this country. Continue reading
Justice: Steve Reed OBE
Steve Reed OBE, the MP for Croydon North and a prime mover in the notorious “Chicken Coup” attempt to unseat Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2016, has been revealed as one of the party’s senior members who provided a character reference for notorious activist Luke Stanger.
Stanger, a former Labour employee, escaped any serious sanction despite accusations of making death threats and rape threats and other forms of intimidation against Corbyn-supporting party members, as was reported last night in the first episode of The Labour Files, the Al Jazeera investigation.
A longer version of the documentary has been released on YouTube today, and includes Reed’s glowing reference for Stanger. Continue reading
The management of even straightforward pieces of street furniture continues to be beyond the capabilities of some of the council’s six-figure-salaried executives
As the chill winds and rains arrive with autumn, council officials snug in their offices in Fisher’s Folly appear to be in denial about the borough’s missing bus shelters, which were ripped from Croydon’s pavements 18 months ago with the promise of some architect-designed hi-tech replacements.
Gimme shelter: bus passengers are exposed to the elements in Croydon
Inside Croydon was first to report the removal of the old, reliable bus shelters – you know the type: with a roof and a side, often providing seats, too, which keep the worst of the rain and wind off passengers while they wait for their bus to arrive.
And this month, we have reported the apparent business difficulties of the fledgling company, Valo Smart City UK Ltd, which has failed to submit its annual accounts on time (hardly something to inspire confidence) and has been taken to court, twice, for unpaid bills worth tens of thousands of pounds.
Croydon’s high-paid execs in the “Digital Team” handed a 10-year contract to Valo Smart City – we don’t think that the use of “smart” is intended ironically – on the promise that the company would generate £6.8million in income for the cash-strapped council from road-side advertising. Even though Valo had never built a bus shelter before. Nor had any evidence of selling a single ad in this country.
Dramatic moments: Inside Croydon is offering two pairs of tickets to see the Depression-era play, Twopence To Cross The Mersey, at the Ashcroft Theatre on Tuesday October 18
Inside Croydon is delighted to offer our loyal readers the chance to see a new theatre production coming to the Fairfield Halls next month: the play Twopence To Cross The Mersey.
We have two pairs of stalls tickets – face value: nearly £70 for each prize – to give away in a simple, fun competition. Continue reading
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