Planning director worried about her career? So she should be

Posted on April 22, 2022 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: As someone who spent their career working on local authority planning matters, STEVE WHITESIDE has found council director Heather Cheesbrough’s attempt to gag one of the Mayoral election candidates just the latest example of shameless arrogance

False claims and cover-ups: Croydon’s planning director, Heather Cheesbrough

So Heather Cheesbrough, the council’s “director of planning and sustainable regeneration” is suddenly worried about her career, after lodging a complaint against one of the candidates in the Mayoral election because he has said that if elected she would be asked to resign?

But this is just the most recent example of Cheesbrough’s shameless arrogance towards the people who pay her wages and she’s supposed to serve.

I am astonished that it has taken her so long to realise that the damage that she and her supporting cast in the planning department have done to some of the “Places of Croydon” and the people who live there, might one day come back to bite her. Continue reading →

Posted in Aventier, Business, Croydon Council, Environment, Heather Cheesbrough, Kenley, Planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Murder investigation under way after Addiscombe stabbing

Posted on April 22, 2022 by insidecroydon

Three men were arrested last night as the police began a murder investigation after a man was found dead in Leslie Grove Place, off Cherry Orchard Road in Addiscombe.

It is the third violent knife crime incident in the borough in the past week.

According to a statement issued by Scotland Yard, “At 18.29hrs on Thursday, 21 April, police were called to Leslie Grove Place following reports that a person had been stabbed.

“Officers attended and found a man, believed to be aged 40, who was pronounced dead at the scene.”

The victim has not yet been identified. Continue reading →

Posted in Addiscombe West, Crime, Knife crime, New Addington | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Half of Shawcross’ team helped keep Newman in power

Posted on April 21, 2022 by insidecroydon

CROYDON LABOUR IN CRISIS: There’s probably a reason that Val Shawcross has neglected to publish details of who is working on her very well-funded Mayoral election campaign: it includes seven councillors who helped to bankrupt the borough. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

Changed position: Val Shawcross with Steve Reed last weekend. The MP has taken a big influence on her Mayoral campaign

With just two weeks until election day on May 5 and Labour’s “New Direction” candidate to become Croydon’s first executive Mayor has yet to publish full details of who is working in her campaign team.

But Inside Croydon has obtained a list of members of Shawcross’s inner circle and can reveal that it is full of long-term supporters of Tony Newman, the discredited former council leader who bankrupted the council.

“I’ll make a clean break with the financial problems of the past and run a tight ship,” the Labour candidate has promised in her election literature.

Yet that “clean break” has seen Shawcross include in her team no fewer than seven past or present Croydon Labour councillors who all worked closely with Newman in the years leading to the council’s financial collapse. Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Carole Bonner, Chris Clark, Clive Fraser, Croydon North, Maddie Henson, Rowenna Davis, Sarah Jones MP, Sherwan Chowdhury, Simon Hall, Steve Reed MP, Stuart Collins, Tony Newman, Val Shawcross, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Bussetti found guilty over his ‘disgusting’ Grenfell video

Posted on April 21, 2022 by insidecroydon

Paul Bussetti, the South Norwood man who posted a “disgusting” and “abhorrent” video of a Grenfell Tower model on social media, has been given a 10-week suspended jail sentence after admitting his crime.

Guilty: Paul Bussetti

Bussetti, 49, pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

The video clip, recorded at a Bonfire Night party in November 2018, shocked the public when it went viral a little more than a year after the Grenfell Tower fire in which 72 people were killed.

At a two-day trial in August 2019, Bussetti was found not guilty of posting the video, but the Crown Prosecution Service appealed against the verdict. Bussetti’s acquittal was later quashed by the High Court. Judge Lord Justice Bean said then that he did not accept Bussetti’s argument – that the figures in the bonfire were his friends – as a defence.

At the latest hearing this week, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said of the video that, “it was offensive to almost everybody who has an ounce of decency about them”. Continue reading →

Posted in Crime, South Norwood, South Norwood Tourist Board | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Political duopoly gets helped by preferential vote system

Posted on April 21, 2022 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: With postal voting forms dropping through letterboxes this week, ANDY BEBINGTON thinks that the preferential voting system being used to elect the borough’s first executive Mayor is flawed

I believe that the electoral method which we have to use for the election of Croydon’s Mayor is flawed. It favours a two-party system and, as such, is perhaps unlikely to be changed any time soon.

For the Croydon Mayor, we all have two votes – a first choice and an alternative choice. When the first choices are counted, unless any one candidate has 50per cent of the vote or more, then the top two go into the second phase.

In that second phase, the alternative votes of the remaining, the rejected, candidates, are then counted if they are for the leading two candidates. Alternative votes which are not for the top two are disregarded. Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 Croydon Mayor election | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

‘Home form at Arena cost us’ says departing Trams boss Giles

Posted on April 21, 2022 by insidecroydon

NON-LEAGUE NEWS: End of an era at Croydon Arena, as the manager who helped pull the club together after crisis-hit years has announced he is stepping down. ANDREW SINCLAIR with a round-up on another tough season for the Trams, Rams, Balham and the rise of new side AFC Whyteleafe

‘Heavy heart’: Croydon boss Liam Giles

With promotion hopes dashed, Liam Giles is to stand down as manager of Croydon FC after this Saturday’s final game of the season.

Giles announced his, and assistant manager, John Gladwin’s, decision following their side’s 3-1 defeat at Greenways on Good Friday – the duo’s 99th game in charge of the Trams.

Croydon’s promotion push stuttered through March, with Giles’s side going three games without a goal and losing two of those matches at Croydon Arena.

Giles made his announcement on social media “with heavy heart”, but in an exclusive interview with Inside Croydon admits that his decision had been coming for some time.

“I was brought in to try and steady a sinking ship and bring stability on the field,” Giles wrote in his tweeted announcement on Friday. “I feel I have achieved that and much more off the field but ultimately I am disappointed not to get the club promoted back to Step 5.”

It’s been a tough couple of years for many in non-league football, with this 2021-2022 season being the first full season since 2018-2019, after two pandemic-affected campaigns. Continue reading →

Posted in AFC Croydon Athletic, AFC Whyteleafe, Balham FC, Croydon FC, Football | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Choir demands compensation over BHLive’s Fairfield shambles

Posted on April 20, 2022 by insidecroydon

Rare event: the Fairfield Halls venues are not being used three-quarters of nights this year

CROYDON IN CRISIS: BHLive, the under-fire operators of the council-owned arts complex, have been accused of costing one of the borough’s top arts groups thousands of pounds because of their poor management of the prestige venue. By our arts correspondent, BELLA BARTOCK

Disappointed: the Croydon Philharmonic Choir felt let down by their treatment from BHLive

Potentially hundreds of pounds in lost ticket sales, an unstaffed box office, closed toilets, lifts not operating, thousands of pounds extra spent to get a grand piano not provided by the venue, and not even the promised access to the in-house café for hard-working musicians to get a cup of tea during rehearsals.

Those are just a few of the complaints following what was supposed to be a gala concert given by the Croydon Philharmonic Choir, guest orchestras and around 120 performers in total at the Fairfield Halls earlier this month.

The Halls, owned by Croydon Council, are already the subject of a fraud investigation over the spending of £67million for a refurbishment that was incomplete and never finished.

But since the Halls reopened in September 2019 and got back into business following the covid lockdowns, there has been mounting criticism of the venue’s operators, BHLive, its skeleton staffing of the prestige venue and tissue-thin artistic offering. Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Art, Ashcroft Theatre, BH Live, Croydon Philharmonic Choir, Fairfield Halls, Music, Oliver Lewis, Theatre, Val Shawcross | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Thames Water’s road closures leak into a second week

Posted on April 20, 2022 by insidecroydon

When in a hole…: Thames Water’s road closures remain in place after more than a week

Road closures on Coombe Road by the junction with Heathfield Gardens, caused by collapsing road surface and dodgy water mains, continue into a second week – despite Thames Water having originally intended to complete their works by yesterday.

Continue reading →

Posted in South Croydon, South Croydon Community Association, Transport | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Mayor candidate Shawcross’s ‘new’ direction not so new at all

Posted on April 20, 2022 by insidecroydon

Any ‘clean break’ with the incompetence and graft of the past at Croydon Town Hall that is being offered by Labour Mayoral candidate Val Shawcross appears doomed by her own campaign’s deep-rooted connections with discredited Tony Newman and some of his most loyal supporters. STEVEN DOWNES reports

Plausible deniability will only get you so far.

As Croydon’s “Local Conservatives” are discovering to their cost, as hard as they might try, they cannot completely distance themselves from the lying, philandering, corrupting, tax-dodging Tory shambles at Westminster under Boris Johnson.

In much the same way, the local Labour Party, dominated by the malign influence of Blairite MP Steve Reed, has been hoping, desperately, that the voting public would not draw the dots between the wretched Town Hall administration of his mate Tony Newman and their Mayoral candidate, Val Shawcross.

 

Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Addiscombe East, Addiscombe West, Alisa Flemming, Brick by Brick, Broad Green, Business, Callton Young, Children's Services, Chris Clark, Clive Fraser, Croydon Council, David Evans, Fairfield Halls, Fly tipping, Hamida Ali, Humayun Kabir, Karen Jewitt, Maddie Henson, Manju Shahul Hameed, Meals on Wheels, Planning, Refuse collection, Sarah Jones MP, Schools, Sean Fitzsimons, SEND, Sherwan Chowdhury, Steve Reed MP, Stuart Collins, Stuart King, Tony Newman, Val Shawcross, Veolia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Park Life arts exhibition, Honeywood Museum, Apr 23- Jun 4

Posted on April 20, 2022 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

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Councillors slam Bellway’s ‘sham’ consultation over Lido site

Posted on April 19, 2022 by insidecroydon

Towering concerns: Bellway have said that they’ll keep the listed diving board – largely because they have to – but have submitted their application without any public feedback

Councillors in Waddon have written to a development company that wants to build a 10-storey residential tower block next to the Purley Way playing fields and accused them of running a “sham” public consultation and treating residents with “utter contempt”.

Bellway: councillors accuse the company of treating residents with contempt

Bellway acquired the site of the former Wyevale Garden Centre on Waddon Way which, until it was closed in 1979, had been the Purley Way Lido.

Their latest proposals look to cram an “excessive” 180 homes on the site, about five times as many as was indicated in a recent version of the council’s Local Plan.

The councillors are also overtly critical of the council’s own planning department for ignoring its own policies and agreements reached by elected representatives.

The developers have been encouraged to push for greater development on the site, and a taller tower block in an area of two-storey homes, only after a pre-application consultation with Croydon Council’s own planning department.

According to a letter to the developers from councillors Robert Canning, Joy Prince and Andrew Pelling, Bellway submitted their planning application before their own consultation had concluded. Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Croydon Council, Croydon parks, Heather Cheesbrough, Housing, Joy Prince, Parking, Planning, Property, Purley Way, Purley Way Lido, Robert Canning, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Mayor will have little say over borough’s rubbish contractors

Posted on April 19, 2022 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: It is one of the biggest and most important services provided by any local council. But the manner in which the borough has outsourced the management of bin collections, street cleaning and waste disposal and recycling has become a massive failure of democracy, writes STEVEN DOWNES

No accountability: Veolia’s service is supposed to be overseen by the SLWP quango

For all the blather and promises from the candidates, whoever gets elected as Mayor of Croydon in two weeks’ time will be virtually powerless over many major decisions, with contracts worth billions of pounds, over one of our local authority’s largest areas of responsibility: collecting and dealing with a load of old rubbish.

That’s because Croydon, along with Kingston, Merton and Sutton, have outsourced all responsibility for their refuse contracts and other related business, including the Viridor incinerator at Beddington, to a completely unaccountable council quango, the South London Waste Partnership.

It has been allowed to become a significant collapse of democratic accountability in this part of the capital. Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Business, Croydon Council, Fly tipping, idVerde, Kingston, London-wide issues, Merton, Peter Underwood, Refuse collection, Stuart Collins, Sutton Council, Val Shawcross, Veolia, Waste incinerator | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Croydon Mencap election hustings, Bingham Road, Apr 23

Posted on April 19, 2022 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Charity | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Government offers 1m cut-price rail tickets in ‘first-ever sale’

Posted on April 19, 2022 by insidecroydon

It is hard not to be cynical when, with the Prime Minister a proven liar and law-breaker and further Partygate revelations expected this week, his government ministers keep reaching into public funds to find distractions and enticements for the public.

First, there was the dog-whistle refugee deal with Rwanda announced last Thursday, presented by Priti Patel (“Enoch Powell with an Instagram account” as one commenter described her), a crass attempt to get the blood rushing to the puce cheeks of gammons and Brexiteers across the country.

That was “Dead Cat 1”. Today, we have “Dead Cat 2”, 1million half-price rail tickets for a month into May… The Tories’ faith in their ability to bribe the British public with their own money never fails. Continue reading →

Posted in East Croydon, Norwood Junction, Transport | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Labour staffer caught trying to cheat online election poll

Posted on April 18, 2022 by insidecroydon

Stage managed: Labour leader Keir Starmer’s arrival at South Croydon deli La Spezia last week happened without members and party officials being told of the visit

CROYDON LABOUR IN CRISIS: Professional organiser resorts to devious methods to try to make Shawcross campaign look stronger.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

A paid Labour Party official – and a member of the campaign team for Val Shawcross, the party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor – has been caught issuing instructions to members to try to fix an online poll.

Inside Croydon has obtained screen grabs from a Labour WhatsApp group which show Anthony Ellis, Croydon Labour’s borough organiser, issuing an instruction to visit a page on this website: “Gang, can you go over there and vote for Val Shawcross and Labour at the bottom of the page.”

Later, perhaps after considering that the polls on the website allow just a single vote based on a user’s IP address, Ellis added, “Vote from as many devices as you can.

“Make sure to vote from your phones and laptops.”

Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Addiscombe East, Andrew Pelling, Maddie Henson, South Croydon, Tony Newman, Val Shawcross, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Our Iconicon winners name their favourite Croydon buildings

Posted on April 17, 2022 by insidecroydon

Icon: Leon House, South Croydon, once offices, now luxury apartments, with hidden treasures inside. A favourite of the Editor

We invited you to tell us what your favourite, most iconic Croydon building is, and why, in our latest exclusive prize competition for Inside Croydon subscribers.

The entries received included the obvious, and the not so obvious, and one or two thought-provokers and controversial choices.

Each of our winners will be receiving a signed copy of John Grindrod’s acclaimed new book, Iconicon.

John will be Inside Croydon’s guest speaker this Wednesday at our first Talking Inside Croydon event since the pandemic, when he will speak about his book and his journey around Britain – and Croydon – seeking out some of the best, and worst, architecture from the last 50 years.

There are just a few tickets left (free for iC subscribers; £5 for anyone else). Click here for more details. Continue reading →

Posted in Inside Croydon | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Warlingham take league title without having to make a tackle

Posted on April 16, 2022 by insidecroydon

Centenary celebration: Warlingham players past and present at Hamsey Green celebrate their league win at the start of their centenary season

RUGBY ROUND-UP: Warlingham kicked off the club’s centenary season in some style, celebrating finishing the season as London South-West Div 3 champions without having to make a tackle in anger.

Crunch tackle: Warlingham’s form in the final few games was unstoppable

In an extraordinary turn of events, Warlingham took their regional division without having to play their last two fixtures. Their opposition for both games, first Basingstoke and then Old Emanuel, called in to say that they couldn’t fulfil their fixture.

Warlingham were awarded the points for each game, but the position at the top of the table was delicately balanced.

It made for an agonising wait for a couple of hours at Hamsey Green, with a host of former players in the clubhouse bar in their stripey blazers, anxiously waiting on the results to trickle in, by phone and text messages from the rest of the league.

When the RFU website confirmed that Petersfield had beaten previous table-toppers Weybridge Vandals 36-33, it meant that Warlingham had snatched the title, but by the narrowest of margins, on points difference, with the top three clubs separated by just a single league point.

Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon RFC, Old Mid-Whitgiftians/Trinity RFC, Old Walcountians, Old Whitgiftians, Purley-John Fisher, Rugby Union, Sport, Streatham-Croydon RFC, Warlingham RFC | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Labour axed Meals on Wheels service to save just £24,000

Posted on April 16, 2022 by insidecroydon

EXCLUSIVE By STEVEN DOWNES

Axed: Most of the people receiving Meals on Wheels paid for their food

Croydon’s Labour-run council will save the grand total of £24,000 per year by cutting its Meals on Wheels service to hundreds of vulnerable and elderly residents, Inside Croydon has discovered.

As reported exclusively by this website earlier this week, the bankrupt council took the decision to end the service “by stealth”. The ending of the service will result in the loss of 22 jobs and the closure of contractor Apetito’s depot in the borough. Apetito had been delivering meals to frail and elderly residents in Croydon for 14 years.

According to official council figures, Apetito was visiting 206 Croydon residents every day, including throughout the covid pandemic lockdown period. Continue reading →

Posted in Adult Social Care, Business, Callton Young, Charity, Community associations, Croydon Council, Janet Campbell, Meals on Wheels, Stuart King, Val Shawcross | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Big Local Broad Green is tendering for partner organisations

Posted on April 16, 2022 by insidecroydon

Community group Big Local Broad Green is seeking partner organisations to help run its hub on Keeley Road and administer grants in the neighbourhood on behalf of the resident-led organisation.

Big Local Broad Green was formed five years ago with the aims “to strengthen and enhance the area through the assets, strengths and connections of local people who live and work here”.

They say that the Big Local initiative “will see local citizens building on their talents and aspirations identifying and acting on their own passions and concerns to make their area an even better place to live and work”. Continue reading →

Posted in Asian Resource Centre of Croydon, Broad Green, Broad Green Residents' Association, Charity, Community associations | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Vieira looks to Brentford and Bernabeu for Wembley glory

Posted on April 15, 2022 by insidecroydon

FA CUP SEMI-FINAL PREVIEW: Even though they are denied arguably their player of the season, Crystal Palace fans are approaching Sunday’s big match with nothing-to-lose optimism

Crystal Palace will never have a better chance of beating the world champions and making it through to the FA Cup final than on Sunday at Wembley.

With Palace looking at securing their best-ever finish in the Premier League, playing some seamless and fluid football in Patrick Vieira’s first season in charge at Selhurst Park, you just had to look at Chelsea’s players after the final whistle at the Bernabeu on Tuesday night, slumped on the turf, demoralised and dejected. They had collectively just beaten Real Madrid in their own backyard, yet had seen the end of their defence of the Champions League with a 5-4 aggregate defeat.

Those 120 minutes less than five days before the FA Cup semi-final will still be in the Chelsea players’ legs come Sunday afternoon, painfully so for some. Chelsea had looked tired, off the pace, in the last half-hour of normal time in Madrid, and the extra 30minutes will have compounded that weariness at the end of a long season. Continue reading →

Posted in Crystal Palace FC, Football, Patrick Vieira, Sport, Wilfried Zaha | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Coulsdon West RA photography competition now open

Posted on April 15, 2022 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Community associations, Coulsdon, Coulsdon Town, Coulsdon West Residents' Association | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Council’s planning chief attempts to gag Mayor candidate

Posted on April 14, 2022 by insidecroydon

CROYDON IN CRISIS: Heather Cheesbrough has lied about her qualifications and covered up for planning staff with too-close connections with private developers. Now she’s trying to block an election candidate calling for her to be sacked. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES

Above criticism: Croydon Council’s planning director Heather Cheesbrough

One of the council’s top-paid executives and a controversial figure at Fisher’s Folly for the past five years has moved to gag one of the Mayoral election candidates – because he dared to call for her to be sacked.

Heather Cheesbrough has been the council’s director of planning and sustainable regeneration since January 2016, when she was appointed to the influential position by Jo “Negreedy” Negrini, the former CEO.

In her time in charge, Cheesbrough and the council planners have frequently outraged locals for the casual way they have dismissed complaints about over-development in some of Croydon’s leafier suburbs. Cheesbrough was also involved in pushing through planning permissions for Brick by Brick, the council-owned, loss-making house-builder, while she oversaw a much-criticised re-drafting of the Local Plan which failed to provide proper protections for the borough’s open spaces and parks.

Planning is a hot topic with voters ahead of May 5’s local elections. It is probably the single issue above others that saw the borough’s long-suffering residents vote for a change to a directly-elected Mayor.

And now one candidate for Mayor, independent Andrew Pelling, has said that if he wins the vote he will see to it that Cheesbrough is removed from her position. Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, 2022 Croydon Mayor election, Andrew Pelling, Brick by Brick, Croydon Council, Heather Cheesbrough, Jo Negrini, Katherine Kerswell, Planning, Val Shawcross, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Pat Ryan’s excess: veteran’s generous grants left unquestioned

Posted on April 14, 2022 by insidecroydon

The culture of secrecy and cover-ups in Croydon Labour meant that one councillor never did face any scrutiny over his misuse of thousands of pounds of public money to resurface a private road and to pay for equipment in a private pre-school based outside his ward. KEN LEE reports

Balloted out: Even Blairite MP Steve Reed (right) couldn’t get his mate Pat Ryan back in the election

Among those councillors who won’t be standing on May 5 is Pat Ryan, the sometimes cantankerous veteran Crystal Palace councillor who, in the end, went with a whimper and not a bang.

“If there had been a bang,” one of his erstwhile Katharine Street colleagues said fondly, “Pat probably wouldn’t have heard it.”

Septuagenarian Ryan’s final months on the council were not exactly covered in glory.

He broke the party whip over LTNs, he was disqualified as a councillor for his lengthy absences (through ill health), only to be reinstated just before the end-of-term under never properly explained circumstances. But Ryan’s closeness to Blairite MP Steve Reed OBE and his long association with council leader Tony Newman – he was Newman’s chief whip in 2014 – probably counted in his favour as far as the numpties running Croydon Labour are concerned.

Ryan’s recent return to the Town Hall Chamber has proved to be short-lived, despite efforts by some to get him on to the ballot paper for the elections on May 5 at the expense of a black woman left-wing candidate.

Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Nina Degrads, Pat Ryan, Stephen Mann, Steve Reed MP, Val Shawcross | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Even the Town Hall meetings don’t work at bankrupt council

Posted on April 14, 2022 by insidecroydon

In the time-honoured words of EJ Thribb, ‘And so farewell then…’. As many as 35 of the borough’s 70 councillors who were elected in 2018 won’t be Town Hall regulars after the May 5 elections.
Political Editor WALTER CONXITE bids a not-altogether fond farewell to some of the borough’s departing elected representatives

Half of the 70 Croydon councillors who were elected at the last local elections in 2018 will not be standing again at this year’s Town Hall elections on May 5.

That’s the exceptionally high toll taken at the bankrupt borough, after local representatives have struggled through two tough years of covid remote working on top of dealing with all of the stresses created by the council’s financial collapse.

Five of the Class of 2018 went 12 months ago. All five of those held, or had recently held, cabinet status. One had been council leader until October 2020. Two, Tony Newman, that discredited council leader, and Simon Hall, were forced to resign in disgrace for their parts in the various scandals that have swirled around Croydon Town Hall and Fisher’s Folly.

And 29 more councillors have now decided that they no longer have the appetite for the various duties and meetings that go along with the purple lanyard, the car park pass and at least £11,000 per year in allowances. Continue reading →

Posted in 2022 council elections, Andrew Pelling, Croydon Council, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Hamida Ali, Stephen Mann, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

‘The Prime Minister admits he lied’ says Tory Lord Barwell

Posted on April 13, 2022 by insidecroydon

Boris Johnson should resign over Partygate: that is the clear view taken by the former Croydon Central MP. But having law-breakers running the country at Westminster won’t affect how he votes in next month’s Town Hall elections. By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor

Liars and law-breakers: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak

Gavin, “Lord”, Barwell, the former Conservative MP and sometime colleague of Boris Johnson, has given the firmest indication yet that he believes the lying, philandering and law-breaking Prime Minister should resign.

Barwell issued one of his typically gnomic tweets last night (he clearly enjoys being called up by researchers for Peston or Newsnight for his two-bob “insights”), reacting to the news that Johnson has become the first Prime Minister in history to be caught breaking the law.

Johnson and his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, have both been issued fixed-penalty notices by the police for breaking the covid laws by attending parties and piss-ups in Downing Street when the rest of the nation was under strict lockdown. Continue reading →

Posted in Boris Johnson, Croydon Central, Gavin Barwell | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments