Time to end borough’s ‘lazy’ political duopoly say Greens

Posted on April 7, 2021 by insidecroydon

Voters at next month’s council by-elections are being encouraged to end the Town Hall’s unfunny double act, reports WALTER CRONXITE, political editor

The Green Party has accused the political duopoly which dominates Croydon politics of becoming “lazy”, with Tories and Labour relying “on you just voting the same way you always have”.

Ria Patel: first-time candidate, standing in South Norwood

The Greens have today named their five candidates for the council by-elections on May 6. Two of those by-elections are being held following the resignations as councillors of Tony Newman and Simon Hall, part of the discredited leadership that has bankrupted the council and caused a national scandal over the appalling conditions of flats in a council block.

“Voting Green this time will show that you can’t be taken for granted and will force all the other councillors to put more effort in if they don’t want to be voted out next time,” said Peter Underwood, the Green candidate in Woodside, Newman’s old ward.

Woodside is the ward which is also represented by Hamida Ali, the current council leader, and Paul Scott, one of the most controversial councillors in the borough because of his work on planning issues.

“It’s time we had councillors that actually listen to residents,” Underwood said. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Croydon Greens, Esther Sutton, Hamida Ali, Housing, Kenley, New Addington North, Park Hill and Whitgift, Paul Scott, Peter Underwood, Simon Hall, South Norwood, Tony Newman, Tracey Hague, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

So you want to be an actor? Fairfield Halls from May 31

Posted on April 7, 2021 by insidecroydon

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Warlingham Beer Bands and BBQ, Hamsey Green, Jun 26

Posted on April 7, 2021 by insidecroydon

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Crystal Palace Park is electrified to get a bit of The Power

Posted on April 7, 2021 by insidecroydon

Not since the days of Michael Caine and The Italian Job has such a large filming crew used Crystal Palace Park as a location

The race track around the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace has been transformed this week into a trailer park for location shooting of a blockbuster television series.

Amazon Prime are adapting Naomi Alderman’s prize-winning novel The Power into a 10-part action series that features Heather Agyepong, Halle Bush, Pietra Castro and Rob Delaney (among others).
 Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Cinema, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace Park, Environment | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Roovolt: Deliveroo riders go on strike over pay and conditions

Posted on April 7, 2021 by insidecroydon

By Clara Murray

Putting the brakes on: Deliveroo riders in Croydon are on strike today

After last week’s snub by bankers and investors which saw nearly £4billion wiped off the company’s value at its disastrous launch on the stockmarket, today Deliveroo was facing a revolt by the people it relies upon the most, its riders, as they staged a nationwide strike for fair pay, safety protections and basic workers’ rights.

Thousands of Deliveroo riders in London, including dozens in Croydon, have joined the strike, organised by the Independent Workers’ Union. The IWGB says Deliveroo is now “the world’s most protested app-based platform”. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Restaurants | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Council flats crisis has been heartbreaking, and cruel’

Posted on April 6, 2021 by insidecroydon

The scandal over the appalling conditions in South Norwood flats rolls on, as the council evacuated some of its tenants into poor conditions – in one case, placing a mother with a two-year-old toddler into what appeared to be a bail hostel. JANE NICHOLL explains how Croydon managed to make a very bad situation even worse

All three blocks of flats at Regina Road have been affected by leaks, damp and mould

For the past two months I have been supporting one of the residents in the Regina Road flats.

I met her when delivering meals and groceries to her flat through South Norwood Community Kitchen. The first time I saw her, she answered the door and she and her two-year-old toddler were in wellies – the floor of their flat was so saturated. It stank of damp and mould and it was freezing. She’d been contacting the council for the past two years, from when the decay started.

She and I went on the offensive, contacting housing officials, Steve Reed MP and South Norwood ward councillors Jane Avis (who has now stood down) and Patsy Cummings.

Patsy didn’t seem happy with me being involved. She would not reply to any of my emails, but repeatedly told the resident that she’d “got it” and for her to tell me there’s no need for me to be involved as yet again (yawn) “she’d got it”.

Until the exposure on ITV News two weeks ago, it seemed that Councillor Cummings had never been inside the block, and she had certainly not spoken to the resident face to face.

Continue reading →

Posted in Clive Fraser, Croydon Council, Hamida Ali, Jane Avis, Patsy Cummings, South Norwood, South Norwood Community Kitchen, South Norwood Tourist Board, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

New Addington independent could fry Fish’s chances

Posted on April 6, 2021 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on a spanner in the works of Conservative hopes of winning a council seat

Standing again: Michael Castle with his by-election nomination form

Croydon Tories are fuming that one of their party’s former candidates is standing as an independent in next month’s New Addington North by-election, wrecking their chances of winning the council seat from Labour.

Michael Castle was one of the Conservative Party’s official council candidates in what was then known as Fieldway ward at the 2014 local elections. Suffice to say, he did not win.

The by-election in the re-named New Addington North is one of five being staged in Croydon on May 6, alongside the London Assembly and London Mayor elections. The New Addington North vote has been called following the resignation as councillor of Simon Hall, the Labour-controlled council’s cabinet member for finance.

With widespread anti-Labour sentiment over the council’s financial collapse on Hall’s watch, Council Tax increases, controversial Brick by Brick developments around New Addington and the recent council housing scandal, the Tories believed that this was a seat ready for the taking, and at the weekend they named Lara Fish, an activist with strong local connections, as their candidate.

Continue reading →

Posted in Community associations, Croydon Council, Fieldway, New Addington North, New Addington Residents' Association, Simon Hall | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

School Streets work – so why have Sutton removed them?

Posted on April 6, 2021 by insidecroydon

In Carshalton, the local council has removed a traffic-calming scheme outside a primary school, so that they can hold a consultation about… re-introducing it. Local parent VERITY THOMSON takes up the story

Parents, residents and volunteers working on the School Streets schemes in Sutton were dismayed at the council’s decision to revoke them. Sutton is now the only London borough not to have any School Streets.

Sylvia Gauthereau, from the School Streets Initiative, says, “It’s very disappointing to see Sutton council backtrack on their School Streets and take away this valuable facility from schools against their will, especially when we have so much evidence now that they achieve the intended aims with protecting children and their family from pollution and road danger.” Continue reading →

Posted in Schools, Sutton Council, TfL, Transport | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Keep it local! Use the Croydon Eats food ordering app

Posted on April 6, 2021 by insidecroydon

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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Viridor incinerator given 20 warnings in just 15 months

Posted on April 5, 2021 by insidecroydon

Twenty: that’s the number of official warnings issued by the Environment Agency to Viridor over their waste incinerator at Beddington in just 15 months.

The 20 formal warnings – without a hint of any kind of sanction for the multi-national operators – relate to breaches of what were supposed to be strict limits over pollution incidents at the incinerator. The figures were obtained by south London environmental campaigners through a Freedom of Information request, and cover the period from September 2019 to December 2020, as the incinerator belatedly became fully operational.

It works out at an average of one warning every 23 days.

Other figures obtained from Viridor have shown that the Beddington incinerator is pumping out three times as much greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as other, similar facilities.

Yet the shocking statistics have been described as “reassuring” by a Liberal Democrat councillor who chairs the South London Waste Partnership. Continue reading →

Posted in Environment, Kingston, Merton, Sutton Council, Waste incinerator | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Aide to MP Reed selected for South Norwood by-election

Posted on April 4, 2021 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on how the local MP could soon have a member of his office staff on the council

Keith Starmer’s shadow minister on local government, Steve Reed OBE, has been deeply embarrassed by Croydon’s collapse

Croydon North’s Progress MP, Steve Reed OBE, yesterday moved one step closer to his goal of installing a placeman on Croydon Council, when a member of his own Parliamentary staff was narrowly selected as the Labour candidate for next month’s South Norwood ward by-election.

There is no doubt that the collapse of the Labour-run council in his constituency and the resulting controversy surrounding some of the MP’s Blairite colleagues, such as the discredited former council leader Tony Newman, has been a cause of deep, squirming embarrassment for Reed, who just happens to be Sir Keith Starmer’s shadow cabinet member for… local government.

Yet despite having the strong backing of an influential Labour MP, in a ward selection meeting where local party members were given a choice between only three candidates, in the final round of voting full-time political staffer Louis Carserides scraped in by a mere four votes ahead of community volunteer and teacher Amy Foster, 27 to 23. Continue reading →

Posted in Clive Fraser, Croydon Council, Croydon North, Jane Avis, Louis Carserides, Patsy Cummings, South Norwood, Steve Reed MP | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

MP tells developers they could rebuild Downsview bungalow

Posted on April 3, 2021 by insidecroydon

Croydon North MP Steve Reed has written to a firm of property developers demanding that they cease immediately all work on a new block of flats on a residential street in Upper Norwood, threatening them that they may need to rebuild a demolished bungalow, in the same manner that a listed pub in Kilburn was recently restored.

MP Steve Reed and Downsview resident Caroline Fenech at his site visit last week

Reed’s intervention is implicitly critical of the Labour-run council’s planning department for ever granting permission to demolish a 1920s-built chalet bungalow on Downsview Road, or allowing it to be replaced by a three-storey block of nine flats, despite a restrictive legal covenant on the property and out of character with the neighbourhood.

As Inside Croydon reported earlier this week, neighbours on Downsview Road, off Beulah Hill, say that the covenant ought to prevent overdevelopment of their street.

This week, Reed, the constituency MP met residents on the road and later tweeted, “Real determination to save Downsview Road SE19 from developers who are breaking a legal covenant and changing the character of this lovely neighbourhood to make profit. I’m giving residents my full support.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Community associations, Croydon Council, Croydon North, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Housing, Planning, Steve Reed MP | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Tories include a proven liar among by-election candidates

Posted on April 3, 2021 by insidecroydon

The Conservative Party candidates in the council by-elections next month include one man who, the last time he stood for election to Croydon Council, was accused of telling falsehoods by no less than three bishops, and a woman who allowed her name to be used on dodgy letters of support for Gavin Barwell (remember him?).

Tory Ola Kolade: scolded by the Churches Forum for bearing false witness the last time he stood for election

The by-elections are being held alongside the London Mayor and Assembly elections on May 6. They follow the resignations of five sitting councillors, including discredited former council leader Tony Newman and Simon Hall after their part in the Town Hall financial collapse.

Given that candidates in these by-elections will be appealing to residents for their trust, it might strike some as odd that Croydon Tories should include in what they call “an excellent slate” those with a proven record of dissembling. Continue reading →

Posted in Bishop of Croydon, Croydon Council, Kenley, London Councils, Lynne Hale, New Addington North, Ola Kolade, Park Hill and Whitgift, South Norwood, Steve O'Connell, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

BME Forum ‘deeply troubled’ by Johnson’s racism report

Posted on April 3, 2021 by insidecroydon

Croydon’s Black and Minority Ethnic Forum has entered the row over the government’s controversial racism report that was published this week, saying that they were “deeply troubled” by its findings.

Tony Sewell: delivered the report that the racist Tory Prime Minister wanted

The report has been accused this week of cherry-picking “data to suit a predetermined narrative, and sets out to gaslight people of colour with a dismissal of their lived experience”.

The report was commissioned last year, in response to the Black Lives Matter protests after the death in the United States of George Floyd when he was being taken into custody by police. To chair the UK government’s commission, the Tory Prime Minister, Boris “water melon smiles” Johnson, appointed Tony Sewell, a long-term denier of institutional racism who has also been accused of homophobia. Continue reading →

Posted in Boris Johnson, Community associations, Croydon BME Forum | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Candidates’ tough task to shake off Labour reputation

Posted on April 2, 2021 by insidecroydon

Our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE, on how candidates standing in ward by-elections next month have to shake off the stigma of replacing discredited Tony Newman and Simon Hall

Kola Agboola: has a tougher task to defend a Labour-held council seat

Kola Agboola and Mike Bonello have been named by Labour as their candidates in the New Addington North and Woodside council ward by-elections on May 6 – with the daunting task of trying somehow to repair the deep reputational damage caused by the men they are seeking to replace as councillors.

Agboola, a New Addington resident, is standing for election in the ward previously represented at the Town Hall by Simon Hall, the cabinet member who presided over the council’s financial collapse.

Bonello will be standing in the ward that has been represented since 1994 by Tony Newman, the former leader of the council who in a recent government-commissioned review was said to have operated “an inner circle of a small number of cabinet members who have been very controlling in their management of the council and its finances”. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Central, Croydon Council, Croydon South, Fieldway, Hamida Ali, Jane Avis, Kenley, New Addington North, Park Hill and Whitgift, Paul Scott, Report in the Public Interest, Simon Hall, South Norwood, Steve O'Connell, Steve Reed MP, Tony Newman, Vidhi Mohan, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Whitgift Foundation sows the seeds of a green revival

Posted on April 2, 2021 by insidecroydon

The Whitgift Foundation, Croydon’s biggest landowners and the operators of three large fee-paying schools, has launched an ambitious borough-wide gardening project to inspire residents to shrug off lockdown, dust off the trowels and get green-fingered as we spring into spring.

They claim that Grow With John is the biggest community project in the Foundation’s 425-year history.

Backed by television celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh, the Grow With John campaign is offering free packets of seeds to households, schools, businesses or community groups.

You don’t need a garden the size of Whitgift School’s to take part in this spring’s gardening project

And they have launched a new website packed with tips and advice for novice gardeners to encourage them to play a part in turning Croydon into a green oasis within south London.

After a recent name change – apparently, to distinguish themselves from the less well-known Tudorbethan archbishop Eric Whitgift – the re-styled John Whitgift Foundation issued a statement this week saying, “Following a year that has seen restrictions for all ages, the Grow With John plan will see the roll-out of thousands of seed packets across schools and care homes.

“Whether you are nine or 90, the Foundation is determined to help get their community involved.” Continue reading →

Posted in Charity, Gardening, Old Palace, Ryelands Primary and Nursery, Schools, Trinity School, Whitgift Foundation, Whitgift School | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Podcast: ‘My living nightmare in temporary accommodation’

Posted on April 2, 2021 by insidecroydon

Last week, we published the account by SHANTAL MOSES (left) of her  lockdown year spent with her young son in inadequate and dangerous accommodation provided by Croydon Council.

This is Croydon’s real housing crisis, another aspect of the appalling conditions endured by council tenants in tower blocks in South Norwood.

Gilroy Court is the London Road B&B which was “an indictment of modern Britain” and declared to be not fit for purpose by Labour councillor Alison Butler when she was in opposition and a Newsnight TV report exposed the conditions endured by residents there.

Nearly a decade later, and nothing has changed, as even throughout Butler’s six years as cabinet member for housing, the council continued to use Gilroy Court for emergency, supposedly “temporary” accommodation for often frightened and disconnected young mothers such as Shantal. Continue reading →

Posted in Alison Butler, Croydon Council, Housing, Under The Flyover | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

MyT offers easy accounting software for Croydon firms

Posted on April 2, 2021 by insidecroydon

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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Trinity gets top marks for their pizza delivery to hospital

Posted on April 1, 2021 by insidecroydon

Delivery boys: pupils from Trinity provided more than 100 pizzas to Mayday Hospital

NHS key workers will be getting a special pizza delivery in time for Easter, thanks to a fund-raiser carried out among pupils, staff and parents at Trinity School.

Trinity is always looking for ways to support the local community.

In the space of just a few days, an appeal for donations to a fund for Croydon University Hospital raised almost £2,000 – enough for 110 large, freshly cooked pizzas, “to thank them for working so tirelessly to take care of us”, according to one member of school staff. Continue reading →

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South Croydon prep school appoints new headteacher

Posted on April 1, 2021 by insidecroydon

A independent primary school in South Croydon has announced its new headteacher.

Sara Marriott: takes over at Elmhurst in September

Sara Marriott will take over the running of Elmhurst School for Boys, on South Park Hill Road, from September this year.

Marriott, a business studies graduate from Edinburgh, will succeed Tony Padfield, who has taught at Elmhurst since 2012 and served as headteacher for four years.

Prior to her work in education, Marriott had gained a wealth of experience in marketing. As a strategic brand marketing consultant, she has worked with several household names, including Oxfam and Baxter’s Soup.

For the last 14 years Marriott has taught at Bickley Park boys’ prep school in Bromley, where she is assistant head. A mother of three, two of her sons attended Whitgift School, with the third attending Royal Russell. Continue reading →

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Brick by Brick’s delayed accounts show another £0.8m loss

Posted on April 1, 2021 by insidecroydon
  • Report states ‘material uncertainty in respect of going concern’
  • Fairfield Halls project costs soar to £76.4m
  • New directors find many BxB properties over-valued
  • Auditors ‘unable to determine whether adequate accounting records have been kept’

With just a few hours to spare, Brick by Brick, the council’s loss-making house-builders, yesterday finally filed their accounts for the financial year ending in March 2020. Eight months late, these audited accounts show that Brick by Brick, and their “chief executive”, Colm Lacey, have been lying to the council and the Croydon tax-payers about the true state of the failing business, which with its accumulated losses and hundreds of millions of unrepaid loans, is technically insolvent.

Brick by Brick’s 2019-2020 annual accounts show more losses, this time to the tune of £803,451, after a year in which they’d generated £23million in revenues.

The losses are worse than that reported for 2018-2019 (£657,611) and it means that after receiving £208million in loans from Croydon Council since the company was formed in 2015, Brick by Brick has made a loss every year it has traded. Yet according to Lacey’s public statements, the accounts when published would demonstrate “the viability of our model”. And that wasn’t even meant as an April fool gag. Continue reading →

Posted in Brick by Brick, Business, Colm Lacey, Croydon Council, Fairfield Halls, Housing, Jo Negrini, Planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Newman makes comeback to star in new Croydon pantomime

Posted on April 1, 2021 by insidecroydon

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: The Croydon Panto is returning to the Fairfield Halls later this year, with a special production and a cast full of favourite villains.
By our Showbiz Editor, BELLA BARTOCK

Tony Newman, until last October the leader of the council, is to take the lead in Croydon again later this year when he plays a starring role in the 2021 pantomime production at the Fairfield Halls.

In a massive career change for someone more used to repeating barely credible lines before a jeering audience in the Town Hall chamber, Newman has been taking acting lessons in order to deliver barely credible lines before a cheering audience on the Ashcroft Theatre stage.

The discredited third-rate politician who bankrupted Croydon is to star in the role of Baron Hardup in this year’s production of Cinderella at the Halls in late December.

“It’s a role that was just made for Tony,” according to a close personal friend.

Continue reading →

Posted in Inside Croydon | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Fire Brigade ‘concerns’ over safety of 44-storey tower

Posted on March 31, 2021 by insidecroydon

The fire brigade has expressed concerns about the fire safety of the “unusual methods” of construction of the world’s tallest prefab, the black twin towers on George Street opposite East Croydon Station.

The twin towers at 101 George Street were almost finished a year ago. Today, all 456 flats are still empty

Inside Croydon revealed in February that delays with the sign-off of building regulations by Croydon Council had prevented 546 tenants from moving into their new homes in the prestigious, £180million development, named Ten Degrees by developers Greystar.

Built by Tide Construction using modules that were manufactured off-site, the 44- and 38-storey towers were completed in March 2020 in record time. But despite eager tenants paying their deposits and being given move-in dates in August and September 2020, today the blocks remain empty.

It was not until Monday this week that the build achieved practical completion, having met the demands of the building inspectors. Continue reading →

Posted in 101 George Street/Ten Degrees, East Croydon, Housing, Property | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Gammons and other chancers among 20 Mayor candidates

Posted on March 31, 2021 by insidecroydon

City Hall: no Mayor of London has ever got 50% of the first ballot

“Jeez.”

That was the one-word reaction of Tim Donovan, the long-standing political editor of BBC London, when he saw the full horror of the 20 runners and riders in the race to be Mayor of London.

Poor old Tim, who has the world-weariness of someone who had to endure two terms of Boris Johnson never answering his questions, knows that in the spirit of “BBC impartiality”, all 20 of the candidates, including the most hopeless of no-hopers, the chancers, as well as Laurence Fox and Count Binface, will have to get a token mention in every serious broadcast report on the campaign trail between now and May 6. Continue reading →

Posted in London Assembly, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Sian Berry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Banned! Barwell blocks Inside Croydon from his little chat

Posted on March 31, 2021 by insidecroydon

In the week that the Grenfell fire inquiry resumed, the former minister who failed to act on multiple warnings about the dangers around tower blocks is staging a cosy little fund-raiser all about his ‘career’. We wanted to listen in. Except after taking our ticket money, Croydon’s Tories had second thoughts.
KEN TOWL takes up the story

Lord (Gavin) Barwell: a peer for hire

On Monday, at just one minute past 6pm, I received an email from Eventbrite, the online ticketing agency, exhorting me to “Get excited! Your event From Coulsdon to the House of Lords: An Evening with Lord (Gavin) Barwell is coming up soon!”

I don’t mind telling you that I was practically incontinent with excitement. I was just days away from being in the same (albeit virtual) space as our Gavin, erstwhile MP for Croydon Central and now Baron (Gavin) Barwell of Croydon in the London Borough of Croydon PC.

This was a man who had fought his way up from the mean streets of Coulsdon, up the greasy pole of local and national politics, all the way up, as the title of the event alluded, to the nobility.

Who would not be excited? I had questions to ask. The blurb in the “About this event” section promised “an unparalleled insight into the inner-workings [sic] of national and local government”. Continue reading →

Posted in Coulsdon, Croydon Central, Gavin Barwell, Ken Towl, Mario Creatura | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments