A long-established animal charity based in London has launched a campaign this month targeted at pet owners who desperately need help in a crisis.
Mayhew’s “There When Owners Need Care” campaign aims to improve public awareness for the urgent need for temporary care and shelter for the pets of people facing a crisis, whether that be an ongoing issue or an unexpected emergency. Continue reading
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Thomas Keen was a hugely successful Victorian businessman whose name became synonymous with an English staple condiment. DAVID MORGAN looks into the life of this generous benefactor to Croydon
Hot stuff: the businessman behind the brand was a generous donor to Croydon Minster
I wonder how many times over the past century and a half that a member of the clergy has stood in the pulpit of Croydon Minster and spoken about the parable of the mustard seed?
As they spoke to the congregation, looking into the light coming through the window over the west door, they might never have realised that this window is dedicated to Thomas Keen, a generous Victorian benefactor who had made his fortune from selling mustard, at one point employing more than a thousand people, operating granaries across the country and running the biggest mustard factory in the world.
This window in the church was dedicated to Thomas Keen after his death, aged 61, in 1862. Continue reading
Grow your own: Dobbies have all the kit, seeds and tips, for your Christmas dinner
You might not want to go to the lengths of rearing your own Christmas turkey in your backyard, but one local garden centre is offering free sessions to show you how to grow all the vegetables you might need for a traditional festive feast.
Dobbies at Woodcote Green is staging a free Grow How session next month to show customers how to prepare a delicious dinner with all the trimmings.
Dobbies’ Grow How interactive session on Saturday, August 6, is suited for novice gardeners and experts alike.
Dobbies’ horticultural experts will spend deliver an informative guide on growing Christmas dinner staples – Charlotte potatoes, autumn king carrots, kale dwarf green curled, parsnip tender and true, and Swiss chard bright lights. In addition to this, the experts will share top tips on creating a thriving herb garden to elevate your meal. Continue reading
Participants across Croydon are being invited to sign up to the Leukaemia Care Step Out Challenge for Spot Leukaemia, a national fund-raising event which takes place in September.
The aim is to move as far as you can between September 1 and 30 and so raise as much as you can. To take part you can walk, run, cycle or run and set whatever distance you want to. Once signed up, all you need to do is ask friends and family to sponsor whatever they can.
Zack Pemberton-Whiteley, the chief executive of Leukaemia Care, said: “The challenge is free to sign up to and people can raise anything they can – as every penny raised makes a difference.”
Leukaemia Care is delighted to reveal this year’s medal in an eco-friendly design, to be given to anybody who reaches the £50 milestone. Continue reading
The Lonely Boat: Drew Peach’s prize-winning painting
Croydon Art Space, in Addiscombe, last night presented an award for an outstanding piece of work by a student at Croydon School of Art. In front of his MP, dignitaries and the artists, KEN TOWL delivered a piece of performance art of his own…
At six minutes to eight on Thursday, an email pops into my inbox. It’s from Paul Hall, the owner of the gallery Croydon Art Space, informing me that “the minor damage to the artwork can be repaired”.
I breathe a sigh of relief and think back to the events of the evening, trying to pinpoint exactly why it happened. At least that way I might be able to avoid future catastrophe.
At around 6.45, I had arrived, as invited, for the presentation of the Best Artist of the Year Award 2022, the culmination of a partnership with Croydon School of Art. In the reception area, I am made to feel welcome, offered a drink: “Red or white?”
I ask if the wine is cold and was informed that it was, but it is now room temperature. The temperature of the room is akin to that of a sauna turned up to full, so, contrary to habit, I decline the wine and opt for water. Continue reading
Long lost: The River Wandle really did look like this, once…
CROYDON COMMENTARY: After a week-long heatwave and record temperatures, LEWIS WHITE makes a case for us to cherish local rivers, such as the Wandle, bringing the water companies back into public ownership, and for an end to the concreting over of the front garden spaces of our homes
It is, of course, very good indeed that the River Wandle has changed from an open drain in the 1960s with minimal water life and detergent foam clouds on top, back part of the way towards what it was in the 1860s, when people could fish for Trout at Wandsworth and gather watercress from an unpolluted stream at Carshalton. Continue reading
Nearly 7,500 from south-east London have joined 140,000 people nationally as volunteers in the world’s largest trial of a blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer as part of the latest NHS drive to catch the disease when it is generally easiest to treat.
On trial: 140,000 people have volunteered for the blood tests in the past year
The test will potentially offer earlier detection of hard-to-spot cancers, such as head and neck, bowel, lung and pancreatic cancers, even before symptoms appear.
In just one year since the NHS-Galleri trial began, volunteers have taken up the invitation to have a blood test at mobile clinics in convenient locations, including supermarket and leisure centre car parks and places of worship.
The NHS-Galleri study is a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) – meaning that half the participants have had their blood sample screened with the Galleri test right away (test group) and the other half (the control group) have their sample stored (these may be tested in the future). This is allowing scientists working on the trial to compare the stage at which cancer is detected between the two groups. Continue reading
This year marks the 40th anniversary in this country of the U3A – the University of the Third Age, groups of older peopl,e who come together to encourage and share learning.
To celebrate the occasion, Croydon u3a offers this recipe or a satisfying and enjoyable u3a experience:
Ingredients and method:
Tough choices: tenants in private accommodation have been stung with huge rent rises
As ANDREW FISHER explains, the cost of living crisis begins with too many people being unable to afford somewhere decent to live, as private rents increase by 15.8% this year
“Been spending most our lives living in a landlords’ paradise”.
If Coolio was to update his 1990s chart-topper Gangsta’s Paradise, those would surely be the lyrics.
Property website Rightmove has reported London rents are rising at a 15.8per cent annual rate of growth, “the highest ever annual rate of any region”. Rightmove finds rents in outer London are currently rising faster than in inner London – with rents in outer London boroughs like Croydon up 4.3per cent in the last three months alone. Continue reading
A young woman with serious mental health issues was ‘cast adrift by the organisations who should have helped her, over many years’, says a damning set of findings. ‘The situation is not unique,’ according to senior official
Two separate ombudsman services have found against Croydon Council and two NHS bodies and awarded a young woman and her family more than £15,000 in compensation after they found that she had “been put at significant risk of self-harm”.
Let down: the woman and her parents were ‘failed multiple times’ by Croydon Council
The report, published this morning by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman together with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, contains many shocking disclosures and includes the finding that the vulnerable woman was refused supported living accommodation, “as Croydon Council insisted her parents needed to formally make her homeless before this would be offered”.
The report says, “The organisations which should have looked after her failed multiple times to provide specialist aftercare services.”
LGSCO and PHSO investigated the Croydon woman and her family’s complaints and “found serious concerns with the way her situation was handled” by Croydon Council, the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and the former NHS South West London Clinical Commissioning Group (now the NHS South West London Integrated Care Board). Continue reading
Time is running out to make online nominations for the fifth annual Baton Awards, which celebrate the excellence of women of colour in business and champion equality for all.
This year’s awards ceremony, to be staged in November, will be held at the prestigious British Medical Association building in Tavistock Square, London. It will be presented as a hybrid event, with an in-person ceremony and dinner, while also being streamed online.
The organisers predict that the 2022 awards will surpass all previous ones, illustrating the significant interest within the community to showcase and celebrate the achievements of women of colour worldwide.
‘Pound a bowl!’: pupils on the Know Your Onions course had a busy day selling produce on Surrey Street last week
Croydon pupils turned market traders last week, selling fruit and vegetables grown by their schools at Surrey Street Market, as part of a programme promoting healthy eating, cooking and sustainability.
Thirty pupils from The Link Secondary, Shirley High and Meridian High School took part in the project.
Rhubarb, potatoes, spring onions, lettuce, herbs, and more, were on the school produce stall, with the young stall-holders making a total of £104 on the day, which will be reinvested back into their schools. Continue reading
Crystal Palace’s £100m new stand at Selhurst Park has the backing of fans (natch), support from councillors and approval from the planning department. Yet the club has gone out and hired a planning lobbyist.
STEVEN DOWNES profiles Terrapin’s man hoping to seal the deal
Coming in to land: might work begin on Palace’s spaceship-like stand in 2023?
In 2018, when Crystal Palace submitted their first planning application for their spaceship-like new stand at Selhurst Park, the scheme had little opposition. It got rubber-stamped by the council, the Mayor of London approved it, and club chairman Steve Parish’s appearance before the planning committee helped to deliver a rarity: a unanimous vote in favour.
All that Palace needed to do for the building work to start was to sign a Section 106 agreement with the council, which would provide for the replacement of the six houses that needed to be demolished on Wooderson Close, finding new homes for the five council tenant households there. They needed to do that, and purchase a parcel of land from Sainsbury’s that is currently a car park. Oh, and get the £100million in place to pay for the project.
But Palace never did sign the S106, they have never bought the land from Sainsbury’s, and from statements made by the club in the past week, they are only now getting the money in place to pay for the build. And all this time, the six households on Wooderson Close have been left dangling in uncertainty over the future of their homes, by the club and council.
That might all be about to change, as the club gears up for a revised planning application, to be submitted possibly sometime this autumn. Continue reading
Croydon on fire: a drone camera captures the blaze in the Addington Hills, just below the viewing point, where more than 60 firefighters were battling to contain the blaze
THE HOTTEST DAY: Fire Brigade gets wildfires at Addington Hills and Chapel View under control as London declares a major incident
More than 100 firefighters were this afternoon battling to stop two potentially devastating grass fires spreading in the Addington Hills and in Selsdon.
The fires in the Croydon hills were just two of seven in the capital and on the hottest day ever recorded which, with temperatures reaching 40C and higher for the first time, saw a major incident declared. Continue reading
Criminalised: new powers could see police issuing on-the-spot fines for street drinking
A community action group has responded angrily to Labour councillors in South Norwood signing up to a police scheme intended to clear the area of street drinkers
Volunteers at the South Norwood Community Kitchen have characterised the plans as “social cleansing”, and warned of the “disastrous impact” that the scheme might have.
The proposals for “no drinking zones”, with on-the-spot penalty notices for offenders, on some of the borough’s high streets are part of a scheme announced earlier this month by Tory Mayor Jason Perry. Continue reading
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Stirred into action by our report about street trees being in desperate need of some care and attention during the heatwave, loyal reader LEWIS WHITE, right, set off armed with his watering can and a handful of copies of our news story. This is what he discovered
Branching out: saplings in our streets desperately need water in the extreme heat
After reading Inside Croydon’s article, Council appeals to public to water street trees in heatwave, I took a screenshot and printed out half a dozen copies or so and then went down to a few local streets where I knew trees were planted over the last two winters.
I selected the seven newest trees, which included three that were clearly distressed, with flagging leaves, shrivelled leaves and a few dead branches.
I took the drought-time plunge and knocked on doors of adjacent houses. Some people were out, some were in. All of those who were at home were interested enough to help water the poor trees. The iC article printout really helped, proving I was “legit”!
One young man let me use the hose he was about to use to wash a 1970s heritage car. A lady filled watering cans and I watered as she refilled 10 of them. Continue reading
Dry as the desert: Verde House has been without water since 8pm last night
Around 100 residents, including families with young children, living in a new tower block in Croydon Old Town have been left without any water supply since just after 8pm last night – on one of the hottest days, and night, in history.
Verde House, on Cairo New Road, close to Reeves Corner, is a new-build of part share-ownership flats and part social housing, managed by housing association Optivo.
Yesterday, with a Red warning national emergency in place across much of England, the top temperature recorded was 38.1C – hotter even than Cairo in Egypt. By lunchtime today, the Met Office was confirming that today’s temperatures had broken all historic records, with 39C being registered at Charlwood in Surrey. Continue reading
Under threat: while there are protections in place for the 145-acre golf course, the Coulsdon Manor hotel could be sold for redevelopment
More than 140 acres of a parkland golf course, woodlands and adjoining hotel could be at risk from profit-hungry developers, according to the local residents’ association, as PEARL LEE reports
A Victorian-era manor house, built for the Byron family, could be demolished and redeveloped into housing under the latest proposals released by the Conservative-controlled local council, as it tries to sell publicly-owned properties and open spaces.
Proposals to sell the Coulsdon Manor Hotel and the adjoining golf course were first revealed 12 months ago, part of the efforts to plug a budget black hole that had seen Croydon’s bankrupted council handed a then-record £120million government bail-out.
A year ago, those proposals for Coulsdon Manor – which has been council-owned since 1938 – looked to maintain the status quo, after current operators Bespoke Hotels had approached the Town Hall about changing their existing lease of the building into a purchase arrangement which would guarantee the continued use of the golf course as a public course – open for use for “pay and play” to anyone, not requiring expensive membership fees. Continue reading
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