Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on the early moves by the new administration
Jason Perry’s first executive act as Croydon’s new Mayor was to start to wind-in the toxic legacy of Paul Scott’s time in charge of planning and development in the borough by ordering the removal of SPD2.
Cheery start: Jason Perry yesterday on the Town Hall steps with his Deputy Mayor Lynne Hale
SPD2 is the planning design guide, introduced under the previous Labour-run council, that was used by the council’s planners to create what some councillors called “a 9-9-9 emergency” in Croydon: block-after-block of nine flats being built in place of family homes, rarely in keeping with the suburban streets where they were being built.
And with each planning application looking to build just nine homes, profit-hungry developers never had to provide any affordable housing, as they are legally required to do on developments of 10 units or more. Continue reading
Some of Croydon’s rubbish contractor Veolia’s lowest-paid workers are being balloted over strike action.
Binned: Veolia’s staff in Croydon are paid much less than refuse workers elsewhere in London
The Unite trades union is asking around 100 refuse workers employed by Veolia as drivers, loaders and sweepers whether they are prepared to take part in a series of stoppages.
Under contracts with Veolia agreed by Croydon’s previous Labour-run administration, the workers’ wages are around £7,000 per year below pay rates for comparative workers in London. Many of the HGV drivers are on £12.51 per hour while the lowest-paid loaders and sweepers are on £10.75 per hour.
Despite many months of negotiations, Veolia gave their drivers a 2.5per cent pay rise last year, with sweepers and loaders getting a 2per cent increase in 2021. For 2022, Veolia is refusing to offer an increase any more than 2.5per cent, while inflation has soared to 9per cent, and rising, meaning a real-terms pay cut for their staff. Continue reading
Major League Baseball is coming back to London, starting this summer with what American organisers describe as a “quickfire, non-stop action” version of the game being staged in Crystal Palace Park.
Smashing: MLB is on its way back to London
London Mayor Sadiq Khan is on a whistle-stop tour of the United States to drum up new tourism business for the capital. Overnight he announced a renewal of the London series, last played pre-pandemic in 2019, with MLB games to be played at the Olympic Stadium from 2023.
But first there’s to be a day of what’s called MLB Home Run Derby X at Crystal Palace Park on July 9 this year – a modernising of “America’s game” for the 21st Century, with plenty of pyrotechnics, music acts and all-round entertainment.
“The field of play is smaller, but the action is bigger than ever,” MLB says of the format, which is undertaking a world tour that stops off in London, Seoul and Mexico City. Continue reading
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Among the candidates seeking election last Thursday was ROBERT WARD, right, who’s been a Conservative councillor for Selsdon and Addington Village since 2018. Here, he shares his thoughts on a tough campaign, and what the next Town Hall term offers
After miles of streets pounded, countless leaflets pushed through letterboxes and dozens of fruitless Twitter spats, it is all over.
On Sunday evening, I and the rest of the weary candidates at last knew our fate. The electorate had spoken, but here in Croydon it took three days and nights to figure out what they had said.
By yesterday, the morning after, we were able to reflect on what it might mean for the people of Croydon. Continue reading
With the final declaration in, WALTER CRONXITE reports on the state of the council after the 2022 elections
By the end, the emotions on show at the Croydon Council election count at Trinity School were less those of shock, disappointment or even anger, more just simple exhaustion at the end of a four-day marathon.
It was nearly 7.20 on Sunday evening, at elections where the polling stations had opened at 7am on Thursday. Having announced the last result from the last ward to declare – Peter Underwood’s fourth-placed finish in Fairfield ward – Katherine Kerswell, the Returning officer who’d presided over the mayhem and disarray from the moment the ballot boxes had arrived at the counting centre, allowed herself a little frisson of a hop and a punch of the air with both arms. It drew a few jeers of derision from those who had the misfortune to still be in the hall.
The underlying causes and concerns surrounding the arrangements for the count have been laid out elsewhere. But the outcome of the voting at the centre of it all promises to have repercussions for many years to come.
The north-south divide: for the first time in 20 years, the political map of Croydon is not just red and blue
Jason Perry arrived at the Town Hall this morning to take up office as Croydon’s first elected Mayor. How the new Conservative Mayor rubs along with a council chamber where the largest single party is Labour seems certain to define his administration. Continue reading
WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, on the latest behind-the-scenes moves by some of those who helped bankrupt the council
Old direction: Stuart King, tipped to lead the Labour group at the Town Hall
The Labour group at the council, now reduced to 34 councillors, is moving swiftly to anoint Stuart King as their new leader.
The defeat of Val Shawcross in Thursday’s mayoral election has left a power vacuum at the top of the local Labour Party. With Hamida Ali not standing for election and Shawcross failing to take ultimate control of the running of the borough, the Town Hall Labour group is more leaderless than usual.
But there’s more than a sense of the inevitable about the handling of the succession to Ali, Tony Newman’s protégé who took over from him as leader at the height of the Town Hall’s financial collapse in October 2020.
An email from a very senior Croydon Labour figure, seen by Inside Croydon, intimated that King is to be the new leader of the Town Hall group – even before the leadership contest was announced, never mind put to a vote. And yesterday it was made clear that the matter is to be resolved in the next 72 hours, with a deadline for candidate nominations due today.
There is a special charity preview of Olga at the David Lean Cinema tomorrow evening, the result of a partnership between 606 Distribution and the BFI, with the support of the UK Cinema Association.
With each ticket sold, a donation will be made to DEC, the Disasters Emergency Committee, to support refugees from Ukraine, to save, protect and rebuild lives.
More than 5million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion by Russia, leaving behind jobs, belongings and loved ones. Homes have been destroyed or are unsafe to live in. Critical infrastructure such as health facilities, water supplies and schools have also been damaged or destroyed.
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Round after round of redundancies at the council, going back more than a decade, may have led to the shambles of the election count, according to former senior council official ROD DAVIES
Without a thorough and open review of what occurred during the conduct of Croydon’s 2022 election count, no one can state with any certainty whether the reasons for the initial delay in starting the count were due to ineptitude or to specific circumstances that delayed opening the ballot boxes and distributing the ballot papers. It may be that significant number of presiding officers arrived at Trinity with a lot of issues to be addressed.
Trinity School: is this really the only venue suitable for staging an election count in Croydon?
As for the choice of Trinity School as a count venue, what other option is there in Croydon where everything is on one level with lots of space to unload the ballot boxes and PO packs; to lay out the counting tables in a single area that can be adequately supervised and then carry the various items to the required places?
The problem is that the election has to work around Trinity’s schedule and not the other way around. Continue reading
No overall control.
After weeks of campaigning, all the voting and, eventually, all the counting was concluded three days after the polls closed, the final results of the 2022 Croydon local elections were in. With the borough’s first Green councillors elected in Fairfield, and its first Liberal Democrat in 20 years chosen by the voters in Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, and the Tories making gains in New Addington and Waddon, Labour had lost the Town Hall majority it had held since 2014.
LAB 34 (-7)
CON 32 (+3)
GRN 2 (+2)
LIB 1 (+1)
*Plus one vacancy in South Croydon as a result of the election of Jason Perry as Croydon Mayor Continue reading
Unfinished work: tellers will be back at Trinity School this afternoon for a fourth session of the council’s ever-so-slow election count
WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, on the country’s longest-lasting election count, and more unwanted notoriety for Croydon
The Croydon election count looks set to head into a fifth day, and its second week, after yesterday’s session at Trinity School managed to declare results in just eight of the borough’s 28 voting wards.
As Croydon’s 2022 local election count heads towards a fifth day, here are the results declared so far after Saturday’s count.
After 10 of the borough’s 28 wards have been declared, the parties stand at:
CON 6
LAB 19
GRN 0
LIB 0
OTH 0
After a long closure, mostly due to the covid pandemic lockdown, the Riesco Gallery at the Museum of Croydon has reopened with Life Behind The Costume, an exhibition celebrating Kathakali, a form of drama through dance that originated in Kerala, southern India.
“Discover the culture of Kerala through an inspiring exhibition of Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam costumes, traditional dress of Kerala, films and photographs.
“Experience and learn about Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and tradition drumming through workshops and performances led by experts from Kerala,” the Museum says.
Popular landlord: the Dog and Bull’s Mark Knight, who died on Thursday
It’s likely to have a subdued atmosphere at the Dog and Bull on Surrey Street today, after the death of the pub landlord, Mark Knight, on Thursday.
Knight, 51, had been running the pub, the oldest in Croydon, for nine years.
No details about the circumstances of Knight’s death were given, but yesterday a statement was issued on the Young’s pub’s Facebook page.
They said, “It is with immense sadness that we have to let you know that our landlord, Mark Knight, tragically passed away very suddenly on Thursday. Continue reading
To the victor the spoils: Croydon’s elected Mayor, Jason Perry, makes his acceptance speech at Trinity School this morning. Runner-up Val Shawcross is on the right of the stage
Democracy was kept waiting while council officials struggled with their abacuses. By our sleep-deprived political editor, WALTER CRONXITE
Jason Perry has been declared the first elected Mayor of Croydon, after a borough-wide vote sent a message to the local Labour Party, which had bankrupted the council, that plausible deniability as a campaign strategy was not enough to win back public trust and keep control of the Town Hall.
But the result was a very long time coming, with a recount ordered by the Returning Officer and the final declaration not being announced until just before 5am on Saturday – 31 hours after the polls had closed on Thursday night.
Conservative Perry was declared as having 38,612 votes, while Labour’s Val Shawcross had 38,023.
It was a close-run thing, with 2,000 votes separating Perry and Shawcross after the first-preference votes had been slowly tallied and verified.
Once second preference votes were added to the two leading candidates’ votes, that gap had closed to 550. With Shawcross on the verge of conceding defeat, the recount was called.
It was 3.30am when Returning Officer Katherine Kerswell, rather than either of the contesting parties, ordered the recount. “This is such an important vote for Croydon and the margins are very slim for me to be asking this, so I need to be absolutely sure they are correct,” Kerswell told the school sports hall where the count was being held. Continue reading
Transport for London has today warned passengers to expect as many as 37 bus routes, operating out of four Arriva garages, to be out of action during next week’s strike action.
Non-request stop: Unions are planning on three strike days in the next fortnight
“Transport for London is advising customers to check before they travel and leave more time for their journeys,” a spokesperson told Inside Croydon, highlighting that bus services in and around Croydon, Thornton Heath, Streatham and Brixton, as well as parts of Surrey, will be hit by the Unite union strikes called for Wednesday May 11 and all day Monday May 16 up to the early hours of Wednesday May 18.
Around 1,000 bus drivers operating from South Croydon, Brixton (Telford Avenue), Norwood and Thornton Heath garages are expected to take part in the action.
Numbers game: the Sutton count in the Westcroft Centre getting underway last night
CARL SHILTON at the election count reports on how senior Liberal Democrats lost their council positions while their party clung on to power, as Labour won their first seats for 20 years
The election fight in Sutton turned feral as the Liberal Democrats worked the national politics angle to enable them to hold on to a wafer-thin majority of just three councillors.
Despite this, the Sutton’s “Local” Conservatives gained two council seats while the LibDems lost four, and a reinvigorated Labour Party finally got councillors elected in Sutton for the first time since 2002.
Sutton’s 55 council seats are now distributed thus: LibDems 29, Tories 20, independents 3, Labour 3.
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Council’s erstwhile deputy leader has been named among 75 councillors across the capital who are working for the property and development industry. By STEVEN DOWNES
Lobbyist fodder: Labour councillor Stuart King
Stuart King, who until Wednesday, at least, was the deputy leader of Croydon’s Labour-controlled council, has been named among dozens of “London’s most powerful councillors” who are also in the pay of the property and development business.
Campaigning website OpenDemocracy yesterday reported the troubling potential for multi-million-pound conflicts of interest among at least 75 senior elected councillors in the capital, and highlighted King and his part in the council’s loss-making sale of the Croydon Park Hotel.
All but 11 of those 75 councillors, OpenDemocracy reports, were standing for re-election yesterday. That includes Stuart King. Continue reading
Political editor WALTER CRONXITE reports on a ‘dangerous political moment’ for the Conservative Prime Minister
When Boris Johnson got up this morning, he was living in a Labour-controlled local council.
Labour won Westminster City Council yesterday, the first time since 1964 that the Conservatives had lost control of the London borough which is the home to the national government, Buckingham Palace… and Downing Street.
Long wait: London Mayor Sadiq Khan hails the Labour victory in his home borough
On a night of Conservative carnage in local elections in London, the “local” Tories also lost Wandsworth, the “beacon” of Thatcherism since 1978.
North London borough Barnet was lost to Labour, too.
In Sutton, the Liberal Democrats clung on to control, just, winning 29 of the 55 available seats, as Labour won its first council seats in the borough for 20 years.
The Conservatives in Sutton, who 12 months ago had high hopes of wresting control from the Liberal Democrats for the first time since 1986, belly-flopped, winning 20, only two more than they held from 2018.
The reason for the shattering of Tory strongholds in London was, according to Ravi Govindia, the now-former leader of Wandsworth council: Boris Johnson. Continue reading
Casting a clout before May is out: our next guided walk is on May 21
Make the most of the wonderful natural habitats on your doorstep and join us on Saturday, May 21, for the latest Inside Croydon guided walk.
It will be a return visit to local nature reserve Roundshaw Downs, and once again we are delighted that Dave Warburton, Sutton’s senior biodiversity officer, will be our expert guide. Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Research based on government figures confirms that Croydon’s planning department has been out-stripping other south London boroughs in giving permission to property developers – at times by a rate of more than 5 to 1. By STEVEN DOWNES
Research based on government data shows that Croydon Council granted more than five times as many planning permissions in 2020 as neighbouring borough Bromley.
The same work also showed that in 2020, the latest full-year figures available, Croydon’s planners rubber-stamped planning permission to more than four times as many applications as another neighbouring borough, Labour-controlled inner-city Lambeth.
And over the course of the last four years, from 2018 to September 2021, Croydon granted planning permission to a total of 1,279 applications, while in next-door Sutton, just 422 schemes were given a planning green light by their council.
Co-chair: Celestina Oniye-Thomas
Croydon Voluntary Action has this morning announced co-chairs for its Local Community Partnership in Croydon Central East, which covers Woodside, Shirley North, Shirley South, Park Hill and Whitgift and Addiscombe East wards.
CVA – the council-funded umbrella organisation for charities and volunteer groups across the borough – says that with Lynda Graham and Celestina Oniye-Thomas “the Central East Local Community Partnership will be set to be a shining light for community-led and focused action”. Continue reading
Striking staff at Coulsdon Sixth Form College have stepped up their industrial action, as teachers have taken to the picket lines on Placehouse Lane for a second week.
Union members are in dispute over pay disparity between Coulsdon and the salaries paid to staff undertaking similar work at Croydon College, which operates under the same management.
Staff were out on strike yesterday and this morning, following last week’s initial one-day stoppage.
Teachers believe that their salaries at the college “fail to recognise the extent of the skill and dedication involved in delivering high-quality education”, according to a spokesperson for the local branch of the National Education Union. Continue reading
 | Jim Bush on Purley’s purdah banner i… |
 | William Winterford on Purley’s purdah banner i… |
 | derekthrower on Perry makes no formal interven… |
 | Gerry Cowie on Purley’s purdah banner i… |
 | Arfur Towcrate on Purley’s purdah banner i… |
 | John Osborne on Councillors wave through 676 f… |
