CROYDON LABOUR IN CRISIS: Calls for the resignations of party officials after a second failure to properly conduct background checks, as election campaign staggers through its latest controversy.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Chaos: Labour official Joel Bodmer’s campaign committee has blundered again
There are mounting calls from Labour members in Croydon for the immediate resignation of the chair and key officials of the Local Campaign Forum after another of the party’s approved candidates for the Town Hall elections on May 5 stood down following widespread criticism of their abusive, sexist and homophobic social media posts.
On Tuesday, this website reported how 24-year-old Elliott-Jay Munroop had tried to cover-up his use of vile racist abuse and expressions such as “batty boy” by deleting his Twitter account soon after he was selected to be a Labour candidate in South Norwood.
After trying to claim that the tweets had been from his “youth” (some had been posted as recently as last year), he finally issued an apology on Thursday night.
Then, just before 8pm last night, Munroop announced (via his latest Twitter account) that he was withdrawing as a candidate for the council elections. Continue reading
CROYDON COMMENTARY: The close working relationship between senior council planners and profit-hungry developers building in the borough is under increasingly close scrutiny. Here, IAN KIERANS suggests some ways for residents to get the answers that they are seeking
The MP, Chris Philp, asked the wrong question.
Green light: This is the kind of development of blocks of flats for which Jan Slominski has in the past recommended planning permission be granted
It would be inappropriate for an employer, such as Croydon Council, to release individual information about an employee, such as Jan Slominski, and Dean Shoesmith, the head of personnel at the council, is perhaps viewing his response to the MP under the Data Protection Act, not to mention Employment Law.
Mind you – as many requesting lawful information from this council will know – they have a varied and extremely “interesting” approach to providing information, and they already have a shed load of rationales ready to meet their needs to withhold information that might not be seen as conducive to their interests.
I believe Croydon residents already have a perfectly clear understanding of how the council’s planning department operates policy, process and interprets planning law, creating a wonderful aroma that would make Viridor sewage’s treatment plants appear amateurish in creating strong, pungent smells. Continue reading
‘To improve the conditions in people’s homes, the tenants have to pay for it… How is that fair?’
ITV News’ DANIEL HEWITT last night broadcast a follow-up to the investigation into conditions in council flats in South Norwood which caused a national scandal. That included a brief excerpt from an interview with the leader of Croydon Council. Here is the recording of the full interview
Just weeks since party-goer Boris Johnson tried to con the nation (again) by making out that covid was somehow “over”, and started removing all government restrictions on mask-wearing and dropping the need for people to self-isolate if testing positive, and so infection rates across the country are soaring, with an additional 1million coronavirus cases reported across the country in the last week.
Official data from the Office for National Statistics show the number of covid-19 infections rose to 4.26million in the seven days to March 19 – up 29.7per cent on the week before.
This is just short of the 4.3million in the first week of 2022, which was the highest total since estimates began.
With a little more than a month before the Town Hall elections, ANDREW FISHER, pictured left, sifts through the shifting opinion polls, nationally and across London, to see what we can learn about how people might vote in Croydon
Croydon is a politically divided borough.
The southern, Surrey end is a Tory stronghold, while the northern part, with London postcodes, is solidly Labour. Which political party controls the council has in the past pivoted on which party can claim the most marginal wards around the centre.
In recent years, the centre of gravity has shifted. Labour regained the Croydon Central parliamentary seat in 2017 on a large swing, having missed out in 2015 by just 165 votes. Labour’s Sarah Jones held Croydon Central in 2019 with a slightly increased majority, despite the national swing against Labour. Continue reading
On the eve of ‘Non-League Day’, when the country’s smaller clubs ask fans from Premier League sides to pay them a visit, ANDREW SINCLAIR rounds up the latest news from Croydon FC and Croydon Athletic
Captain’s choice: Trams skipper Nick Wilson is clearly delighted as he congratulates goal-scorer Dan Vaughan
Robbed of a shot at their first piece of silverware in decades by an administrative error while struggling to keep their play-off push on track, it’s been a chastening few weeks for Croydon FC.
The Trams had managed to progress as far as the semi-finals of the London Senior Trophy, where they were due to play Hilltop. But they were informed earlier this month that they’d been removed from the competition for fielding two ineligible players in their January quarter-final win over AFC Cubo. It was the scorer of the late winner in that game, Richard Pingling, who proved to be one of the sources of controversy. Continue reading
Council directors are withholding information from a local MP on the date that a planning official started a new job. By STEVEN DOWNES
Dodgy dates: the council is keeping planning official Jan Slominski’s joining date a secret
The attempts to cover-up the close connections between Croydon Council’s planning department and some commercial developers who are making millions from building flats in the borough appear to have reached all the way to the top of the local authority.
Dean Shoesmith, the council’s recently appointed head of personnel, has refused to provide a local MP with the date when Jan Slominski rejoined the council’s planning department.
The exact date of Slominski returning to work for Croydon, in the senior role of team leader for the south of the borough, is important to local residents’ groups because it relates to a controversial planning decision on a development for which the architects are HTA Design.
Slominski worked for HTA Design until January this year, the same month that an application for one of their projects was given a favourable report and approval by a council planning official.
CROYDON IN CRISIS: On the first anniversary of the broadcast of the TV news report that shocked the nation, the council has been forced to pull a press release which tried to misrepresent the findings of the independent housing improvement panel that was established in the wake of the Regina Road scandal. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Back to reality: Fransoy Hewitt being interviewed by ITV News in her Croydon flat in March 2021. Some at the council are trying to pretend this never happened
The council’s propaganda department was yesterday forced to pull a bull-ish, and bullshit, press release that it issued on Tuesday, in which they tried to diminish recent criticisms of the lack of improvements to the housing conditions of their tenants.
Like an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”, Croydon Council’s version of reality tried to suggest that there had been much progress in made by the borough’s housing department in the past year, lots of doors had been knocked on and repairs carried out, and Monday night’s cabinet meeting had approved a shiny new “improvement plan”.
So all was hunky dory.
When of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Continue reading
The local NHS Trust and the Mayor of Croydon staged a joint ceremony yesterday to dig in and contribute to the Queen’s Green Canopy – a tree-planting initiative being run to coincide with celebrations around the 70th anniversary of the royal reign.
Cherry on top: Mayor of Croydon Sherwan Chowdhury and NHS chief Matthew Kershaw at the planting ceremony
The Queen’s Green Canopy was created to mark 2022’s Platinum Jubilee, inviting individuals, community groups and organisations from across the country to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”.
Croydon Health Services NHS Trust hosted yesterday’s event attended by Councillor Sherwan Chowdhury, Croydon’s ceremonial mayor, and representatives from across the health, care and voluntary sector, as well as pupils from Elmwood Infant School and Harris Invictus Academy. Continue reading
One of the largest trades unions representing staff at Croydon’s Mayday Hospital has accused outsourcing giant G4S of trying to bully its members out of taking strike action.
Ready to strike: a protest outside Mayday earlier this month. A GMB strike is planned for Apr 4
Efforts to intimidate hospital porters and cleaners, including some of the lowest-paid staff at Mayday, is “inflaming rather than resolving the situation”, according to the GMB.
The GMB has appealed to the NHS Trust which operates Croydon University Hospital to intervene and influence its contractor to stop trying to intimidate its members, and to take the cleaning and portering contracts back in-house on standard NHS employment terms. Continue reading
Disaster: seven people died when a tram derailed close to Sandilands tram stop in November 2016
Nearly six years after the fatal Croydon tram crash which claimed the lives of seven people, the Office of Rail and Road this morning announced that it is to prosecute Transport for London, Tram Operations Limited and driver Alfred Dorris following what they describe as “a detailed and thorough investigation”.
A relative of one of those killed in the crash said this morning that the prosecutions have come as “a little sense of relief” amid a “road of pure hell” for families over the past five years.
An inquest into the events that took place on the tram network at Sandilands on November 9, 2016, was held at Croydon Town Hall last summer. A jury returned a verdict there of accidental deaths of the victims: Dane Chinnery 19, Philip Seary, 57, Dorota Rynkiewicz, 35, Robert Huxley, 63, and Philip Logan, all from New Addington, and Donald Collett, 62, and Mark Smith, both from Croydon. Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: After 40 years in Croydon politics, councillor decides to run as the ‘non-party’ candidate, offering to axe council rent increases, sack a distrusted council planning director and start a forensic investigation to recover the millions lost on the Fairfield Halls refurb.
By STEVEN DOWNES
Andrew Pelling, the former Tory MP and Labour councillor, is to stand in May’s local elections as a non-party independent candidate.
In the running: Andrew Pelling
He says that if elected as Mayor, among his first moves would be to axe the 4.1per cent increase in council rents that was passed by his former Labour colleagues on Monday, and he would insist on the resignation – or sacking – of Heather Cheesbrough as the council’s director of planning.
He says that as Mayor, he would also send in forensic accountants to find where the near-£70million supposedly spent on the Fairfield Halls refurbishment has gone, and take the matter to the courts if necessary.
In the last eight years as a Labour councillor, Pelling was one of the few to dare oppose Tony Newman, the council leader who presided over the Town Hall’s financial collapse. Pelling also spoke in favour of having a directly-elected mayor, a change in the way the borough is run which he says he has supported for 20 years.
It seems that Pelling will be standing for election not once on May 5, but twice.
As well as being on the ballot paper to become the borough’s first executive Mayor, he is also putting himself forward for election as a candidate for the Waddon council seat he has held there since 2014. It will be news that will not be greeted warmly by his erstwhile Labour running mates. Continue reading
Loss-making council company prioritises profit-generating clients over legal responsibilities for the education of some of the borough’s most vulnerable children. By CARL SHILTON
Parents of Sutton children with SEND have been lied to by their local council, as it has tried to fob them off with an inferior – and cheaper – set of lessons and therapies.
Cognus, Sutton Council’s education delivery company, is putting the borough’s autistic children at the end of a queue for face-to-face therapy sessions, claiming staff shortages, while improving its own bottom-line by selling their services to other local authorities.
Sutton Council has been under close examination because of the failings of Cognus, including an appearance on BBC Panorama 18 months ago.
Controversial Cognus – company motto: “No limits on learning… provided we can make a profit out of you” – has come under fire for its withdrawing vital face-to-face speech and language therapies to Sutton children with SEND – special education needs and disability. A row erupted at a council committee last week, and saw one angry opposition councillor storming out of the meeting after local LibDems tried to wave the matter away. Continue reading
A shocking report from charity CPRE London highlights how the council’s Local Plan has put every open space in the borough at risk from development, writes PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent
Too late: mature trees bordering Duppas Hill Park were destroyed by developers last week, without planning permission. The council did nothing to stop it
Croydon, and its planning protection-lite revised Local Plan, has been given “star billing” in a conservation organisation’s critical report which claims there are more than 50 parks and open spaces in London which are under immediate threat of development.
Environment campaigners CPRE London’s report Forever Green? calls on the London boroughs to take urgent action to safeguard precious public parks.
But their report has come too late to stop a chunk of Thornton Heath’s Grangewood Park being auctioned off last month, or to halt the bulldozers in Waddon, as around a dozen mature trees were hacked down next to Duppas Hill Park last week. Continue reading
CROYDON LABOUR IN CRISIS: Slack diligence by the Local Campaign Forum missed vile racial slurs, sexist language and homophobic abuse on a wannabe councillor’s social media account.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Cleaned up his act?: Elliott-Jay Munroop, as he appears on his new, Labour-approved, Twitter account
The committee that is supposed to be running Labour’s local election campaign in Croydon has come in for a new wave of criticism after it endorsed the selection of a candidate despite their record of posting racially abusive, homophobic and sexist remarks on social media.
Elliott-Jay Munroop is one of three candidates selected by Labour to stand in South Norwood ward in the local elections being held on May 5.
An investigation by Inside Croydon has discovered that shortly after Munroop was selected as an approved candidate by Croydon Labour’s Local Campaign Forum, he deleted his Twitter account, @elliottjay_.
That account included repeated references to the homophobic slur “batty boy” and a vile four-letter “C” word which ends with “N”, which he used as an insult to certain high-profile black men.
Deleted: One of Elliott-Jay Munroop’s tweets from his now erased account
One Labour councillor, with whom we shared our complete file of Munroop’s questionable messages, told Inside Croydon, “I haven’t heard that word spoken since Alf Garnett was still on the television. You’d hope we had moved on from that. Continue reading
In what one campaign group has today described to Inside Croydon as “outrageous news”, the Department of Transport is close to handing a six-year rail operator’s renewal contract to Govia Thameslink Railway, who run trains through East Croydon, South Croydon and Norwood Junction, despite having evidence of 13 years of corruption at one of their lines, Southeastern, in which they falsely claimed at least £64million in taxpayers money.
Six more years!: Govia Thameslink are close to being handed a contract extension, despite having committed a multi-million-pound fraud on the tax-payer
A £23.5million penalty notice was published only last week for financial malpractice on Govia’s Southeastern franchise, confirming at least 13 years of systemic malpractice by the operator, going back to the very foundation of the franchise.
Southeastern began by concealing taxpayers’ money in relation to rolling stock payments from 2007, before escalating their behaviour in relation to HS1 payments from 2014.
“There is evidence that this happened with the full knowledge of the company’s auditors and Govia’s directors, all of whom are also on the boards of GTR and Southeastern,” Emily Yates, the co-founder of the Association of British Commuters, said today. Continue reading
Town Hall turnout: council tenants and other locals protest against Labour’s 4.1% rent increase as ‘a war on the poor’. Photos by Guy Smallman
The difference between the realities of life for council tenants in Croydon and the public statements from the Labour-controlled council demonstrate that the lessons of the Regina Road housing scandal have not been learned by those in power. By STEVEN DOWNES
The complete disconnect between the “slumlords” of Croydon Council and the dozens of tenants forced to endure atrocious conditions in their council-owned homes was highlighted by last night’s cabinet meeting at the Town Hall, and the snivelling, self-satisfied press release issued this morning from the propaganda bunker in Fisher’s Folly.
One year on from the council being exposed as slum landlords in shocking ITV News footage from the damp and mouldy flats in Regina Road, more than 50 residents, including many from the South Norwood homes now nationally notorious as “the worst in Britain”, turned up to protest.
Speaking truth to power: the disconnect between the Labour council and residents was evident last night
Not a single Labour councillor or election candidate joined them in their demo. The borough’s two Labour MPs, Sarah Jones and Steve Reed, were conspicuous by their absence.
Unusually, in her busy and highly visible campaign, Val Shawcross, the Labour mayoral candidate, was nowhere to be seen, either.
But the Labour-controlled authority – led by Shawcross’s party colleagues – is going ahead and raising council rents by 4.1per cent, in the middle of a cost of living crisis and while also taking away Council Tax Support from 20,000 of the poorest and most vulnerable households.
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