Generation Rent warns of half-a-million in covid arrears

Homelessness will triple this year unless the government acts to end the rent debt crisis faced by private renters as a result of the economic shock of coronavirus, the campaign group Generation Rent has warned today.

While the government has suspended all eviction cases in the courts until August 24, there is no protection beyond this point for renters who are in arrears.

Generation Rent suggests that rates of rent arrears have risen from 4 per cent before the pandemic to 13 per cent, which could make 45,000 households homeless, costing councils an extra £117million in temporary accommodation and other support. Continue reading

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Free online employment advice sessions, Jul 8 and 15

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Croydon in crisis: 500 jobs to go in council ‘reorganisation’

EXCLUSIVE: Our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE, on the unhappy consequences of the council’s poor management that has created ‘the perfect financial storm’

Jo Negrini

Council CEO Jo Negrini: 15% cuts across the board, though perhaps not to her own £220,000 salary

Croydon Council is to launch wide-ranging consultations tomorrow, July 1, as it begins what in councilspeak they like to describe as a “restructuring”, but what in plain English will mean that more than 500 council staff will be losing their jobs in the next few weeks.

Less than two weeks ago, Tony Newman, the leader of the Labour-run council, was promising, “We are taking all the necessary steps possible to protect the key front line services that our most vulnerable residents depend upon.”

Yet Newman now faces some uncomfortable conversations with union shop stewards and his councillors over the scale of the cuts being proposed.

The 15 per cent reductions in staff are the price to be paid for the coronavirus cash crunch that the council found itself in after spending more than £80million to deal with the immediate demands presented when confronted with the emergency.

According to the council, even after receiving £20million in emergency finding from Whitehall, Croydon has a £62.7million-sized hole in this year’s budget. Continue reading

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Fears grow at Fairfield Halls over operator’s unsigned lease

The Fairfield Halls may be in “hibernation” until next year because of coronavirus, but Croydon Council is now facing another crisis over its ill-fated £43million refurbishment project, with growing fears that the company appointed to manage the arts complex could hand back the keys and walk away at any point.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan with Croydon’s Tony Newman and Ollie Lewis at the reopening of the Halls. Who will be running the venue after lockdown?

The council appointed Bournemouth-based swimming pool operators and conference organisers BH Live to run the arts programme at Fairfield Halls in early 2017.

A council report revealed that the deal with the social enterprise company included options to last for up to 15 years, and could ultimately be worth as much as £180million to BH Live.

Under the terms of the operating agreement, the council would no longer have to provide any day-to-day funding for running the venues, while BH Live would get to keep all receipts from ticket sales and bar and restaurant concessions.

When the deal was announced, BH Live had just over a year to wait before the curtain could go up at a refurbished, prestige venue, where the council was carrying out what was supposed to be a £30million modernisation.

But with rookie in-house developers Brick by Brick put in charge of refurbishment works, BH Live and the Croydon public were kept waiting until September 2019 before the five-times-postponed opening night could finally be staged, at a venue where building and refit works were still unfinished and some promised improvements were left incomplete.

Reluctantly, earlier this year, the council finally admitted that the over-running works had cost at least £43million. It is widely believed that that figure could rise yet further. Continue reading

Posted in Art, Ashcroft Theatre, BH Live, Borough of Culture 2023, Croydon Council, Fairfield Halls, Neil Chandler, Oliver Lewis | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Understanding Your Finances free online session, Jul 2-Jul 16

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Learning lessons from teaching remotely during lockdown

Secondary school teacher KEN TOWL on how he and his pupils have managed to master the technology and the etiquette of staff meetings during the coronavirus quarantine

Some pupils have settled into remote lessons better than others

With just 10 minutes of the lesson to go, instead of the expected paragraph evaluating the achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of my Year 8 history pupils – let’s call him Andy to protect his identity – sends me a message via Microsoft Teams.

“Sorry sir, I don’t understand what we have to do.”

Andy has been struggling with remote learning since it began on Monday, March 23. He is isolated and unhappy and worried about his grandparents. He knows, as well, that asking for help so late in the lesson will probably not go down too well with his teacher. It is possible that this concern is at least part of the reason for his follow up message: “Here’s a picture of my new ducklings. There are three of them.” Continue reading

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Police receive complaint after Wellesley Road #BLM incident

Croydon Police are dealing with a complaint after a violent incident on Wellesley Road on Friday in which a young black man was chased and restrained by at least eight officers after a brief chase.

Friday’s incident on Wellesley Road was captured in a 50sec video that was seen by hundreds on social media

The Police say that no one was hurt and no one was arrested, but some who saw the incident drew obvious comparisons with how George Floyd was restrained and killed by a single police officer in Minneapolis last month, his death prompting global Black Lives Matter protests.

Witnesses say that they saw the man hit and kicked by officers. A 50second video of the part of the inciddent was widely circulated on social media together with the hashtag #BLM.

“The guy looked terrified and the way the police kick and hit him, I’m not surprised,” one eyewitness tweeted, asking the Police for an explanation.

Today, Superintendent Andy Brittain, the Borough Commander, issued this statement to Inside Croydon, “On Friday, June 26 at 14.14hrs, officers in a marked vehicle on proactive patrol on Wellesley Road, Croydon, observed a man run away on seeing police. Continue reading

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Volunteers in Selsdon shift their work from food to support

As – for better or for worse – the government eases coronavirus lockdown conditions, so some of the mutual aid groups and food banks which sprang up around the borough three months ago are now being wound up.

The Food Hub team deliver supplies to the Monks Hill Food Stop service

Age UK Croydon, based in Thornton Heath, announced over the weekend that it was closing its coronavirus emergency foodbank.

And the Selsdon Food Hub is now pivoting the services it has been providing to the isolated and vulnerable.

“Although we are stepping down a few services this week, we will continue to give elderly and vulnerable residents regular befriending calls,” Andy Stranack, the manager of the Selsdon Contact charity which was among the many groups that came together to help their neighbourhood cope with the pandemic. Continue reading

Posted in Age UK Croydon, Charity, Church and religions, Community associations, Selsdon Residents' Association | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Minster embraces Zoom and YouTube in response to covid

Croydon’s 1,000-year-old parish church has embraced 21st Century digital technology during the coronavirus lockdown to share worship and provide support for its congregation,  writes DAVID MORGAN

The easing of lockdown has seen the Minster re-open its doors

Rev Dr Andrew Bishop, the priest in charge of Croydon Minster, knows how rapidly life can change. As a Church of England vicar, you are part and parcel of life’s ebbs and flows in your parish.

In December, he was leading a televised broadcast of the Minster’s Christmas Midnight Mass on BBC1, with a global audience of millions. In March, Father Andrew was forced to close the church.

The closure, because of the covid-19 pandemic, has created a very different picture of church life and worship.

The church choir which in December wowed its television audience has not been able to practise together, let alone sing any services.

A plan was needed so that Croydon Minster could carry on its role as the civic church of Croydon, being there as a spiritual rock for all. Continue reading

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Croydon in crisis: IFS report shows council was ill-prepared

Croydon Council’s mountain of debt and reduced reserves made it one of the country’s least-prepared local authorities for dealing with an emergency such as coronavirus.

That’s the conclusion offered by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – IFS – in a report published this week relating to the resilience of local authorities based on the coronavirus crisis.

The think tank’s report shows some interesting trends for Croydon. While covid-19 has seen Croydon badly affected in terms of infection rates, the borough ought not to have been as vulnerable as some other London councils in terms of relative impact on local employment, revenue generation, vulnerable businesses, the percentage of elderly population… Continue reading

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It’s time for action to make borough’s roads safe for cyclists

CROYDON COMMENTARY: The plan for a green recovery in the borough announced this week meets with approval from MARCUS CHURCHILL, pictured left, but he says that the proposals are long overdue and need to be implemented urgently

I fully commend these councillors’ vision.

Time is running out.

Croydon Labour’s election plans going back years have promised to make the borough greener with safer cycling and walking. It has simply not materialised on any meaningful level. Continue reading

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How Samuel Hemmans helped give Napoleon the Elba…

MARVELS OF THE MINSTER: Many gravestones and memorials were lost when the area around Croydon’s parish church was redesigned in the 1960s to allow the construction of the Roman Way dual carriageway. One such stone commemorated the Hemmans family. DAVID MORGAN tells their story

The entrance to the Minster’s churchyard and many clues to history

On the Hemmans family memorial in the churchyard of what was once known as the Croydon Parish Church had the following information: “Samuel Hemmans, late of Chatham Dockyard, d June 14th 1819 aged 74, Ann his widow d Oct 22, 1833 aged 81, Susannah Hinton her sister, d Dec 18th 1845, Samuel Hood Hemmans, Lieut. R.N. d at Ceylon, May 2 1854 aged 62, Mary Eliza Hemmans, d Feb 15th 1872, aged 81, Thos. Hinton Hemmans, Lieut.-Colonel d Nov 17th 1873, aged 79, Ann Hemmans, d April 1 1875 aged 75.”

The lives of the two Hemmans brothers, Samuel Hood Hemmans and Thomas Hinton Hemmans, provide rich examples of military life in war-dominated early 19th Century England.

Strean’s Victorian book Croydon In The Past has a note beside the family’s memorial entry. It said that the Hemmans family were originally from Mitcham, where they ran a brewery in Lower Mitcham. He also wrote that William Hood Hemmans, the brothers’ grandfather, was churchwarden of Mitcham Parish Church in 1820 and that his name was cast on one of the bells. William was buried right by Mitcham Church together with his wife.

That memorial refers to “other family members who lie in sacred places”. Continue reading

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Filmmakers stream Black Lives Matter documentary for free

Generation Revolution, an award-winning 2016 documentary that examined the first Black Lives Matter protests in Britain, has today been made available to stream online, free of charge for a limited period.

On its initial release, a review in the Grauniad said of Generation Revolution, “It’s an important contemporary document – if it’s rare to see youth political activism treated with respect in mainstream filmmaking, it’s even more unusual to see that of black youth.”

The feature-length documentary follows the story of three revolutionary, black- and brown-led groups and their battle for equality. Generation Revolution, which comments on institutionalised racism and police violence in the Britain and the United States provides an uncanny relevance in 2020.

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XR’s slow march highlights lack of progress on emissions

Sutton XR protestors on their slow march to the Tory MPs’ offices

Extinction Rebellion protesters yesterday marched through Sutton town centre before delivering letters to the borough’s pair of Tory MPs, Paul Scully and Elliot Colburn, demanding action on the climate emergency.

Sutton XR said, “The letter urges our MPs to publicly speak out on the government’s failings on the climate and ecological emergency and come clean with constituents that government inaction will lead to the death of millions.” Continue reading

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Croydon in crisis: BBC says at least five councils could go bust

WALTER CRONXITE reports on how local authorities across the country have been left high and dry by the government over meeting the ‘unsustainable’ costs of the coronavirus emergency

An emergency finance review report is expected at Croydon Town Hall next week

Coronavirus has seen Croydon Council incur more costs than all but eight of the country’s biggest local authorities, according to figures published today by the BBC.

And the BBC is reporting that some of the largest councils across Britain say they may have to declare themselves bankrupt unless the government agrees to further support.

According to the council’s chief exec Jo Negrini, Croydon spent £83million on special measures during the first two months of the covid-19 pandemic. Yet despite the government having encouraged councils to “spend what it takes”, Croydon has so far received just £20million in emergency funding from Whitehall.

That leaves a £62.7million black hole in the council’s finances, with no prospect of it being made good any time soon. Continue reading

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After covid suspension, Ombudsman reopens for business

Council CEO Jo Negrini’s three-month amnesty from having complaints submitted about her authority to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman is over.

Croydon Council CEO Jo Negrini: subject again to Ombudsman scrutiny

The Ombudsman is pretty much the only recourse that remains to residents of the borough if they feel that their case is being ignored or badly handled by staff at Fisher’s Folly. Even then, its powers are strictly limited, the penalties at its disposal minimal, even for repeat offenders such as Croydon Council.

Councils are not even required to publish the detail of cases where the Ombudsman has found against them, allowing to continue the pretence that they are delivering services adequately. In Croydon, this has lead to instances where the same family has had to file repeat complaints after the council has continued to fail them.

The LGO considers submissions on disputes with local authorities over housing matters, planning issues, children and education and adult social care. In a system heavily loaded in favour of the local authorities – who use your Council Tax to pay to defend their actions – a complaint can only be submitted to the Ombudsman after the council has been allowed to “mark its own homework”. Twice.

Because of coronavirus, the Ombudsman paused all casework at the end of March, but today it announced that it “will be resuming all existing casework and taking on new complaints through its website from next week”. Continue reading

Posted in Adult Social Care, Children's Services, Croydon Council, Jo Negrini, Planning | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Council accused of ‘wildlife vandalism’ to help Brick by Brick

Before: How Wontford Road Green looked last weekend, a rich habitat of wildflowers

Our environment correspondent, PAUL  LUSHION, on suspicions that a rare wildlife habitat in suburban Kenley has suffered the cruellest cut

The council has been accused of an act of “wildlife vandalism”, with some angry residents of Wontford Road and Roffey Close in Kenley suspecting that grass-cutting contractors were sent in by the council to help the planning case for a controversial Brick by Brick housing development proposed for the public green space.

Wontford Road Green is on rare chalk downland. In summer, as the grass and wildflowers grow, it provides a rich habitat and food source for millions of butterflies, bees and other insects and pollinators. Rare species have been observed there.

A year ago the council trumpeted, as part of its new, climate crisis green policies, its intention to do-nothing to parks’ grassland and roadside verges, allowing nature to take its course, helping to provide habitat for under-pressure bee populations and pollinators. Some parks and open spaces have been designated trial areas – though notably not Wontford Road Green. They even now have a whole page on the council website devoted to this eco-aware approach.

Yet Croydon Council cannot even do nothing properly. Continue reading

Posted in Brick by Brick, Climate Crisis Commission, Croydon parks, Environment, Extinction Rebellion, Kenley, Planning, Tony Newman, Wildlife, Wontford Road Green | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Train operators offer advice for travelling in the ‘new normal’

During this coronavirus pandemic, not everyone works in No10 and can just drive to Barnard Castle when they fancy a day out.

But as lockdown measures are eased, and there’s a gradual return to work for some, railway operators are keen for any undertaking a daily, or even a weekly, commute into central London to understand how they can help keep themselves and others safe in the “new normal”.

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Chef Kerridge’s cinema tour brings comedy to Selhurst Park

There’s a big night of comedy coming up at Selhurst Park [cue gratuitous Wayne Hennessy-related gag here]… only this time it will be provided by television stand-up  Mark Watson and what is promised as “a line-up of some of the country’s best comedians”.

Outside night: comedian Mark Watson

Watson is staging the first Carpool Comedy Club, as part of the offer around the Tom Kerridge Drive and Dine drive-in cinema roadshow.

TV chef Kerridge’s caravan pulls up at Selhurst Park on July 28 and runs until August 2.

The Carpool Comedy Club is being staged at Selhurst Park on Friday, July 31. Also on the bill for the south London leg of the comedy shows is Jen Brister, with others still to be announced. Continue reading

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Amazon backs virtual training scheme for small businesses

Enterprise Nation, the business support network, has launched a Small Business Accelerator in partnership with Amazon, offering a free support package for more than 200,000 small businesses and startups across the country.

Jenny Campbell: former Dragons’ Den investor will be offering your business advice tomorrow

As part of the activities offered around the service, there will be a virtual Amazon Academy event tomorrow, on Friday June 26, with ex-“Dragon” Jenny Campbell to introduce businesses to the world of selli,ng online.

In response to covid-19 and the impact of the economic lockdown on small businesses, the Amazon Small Business Accelerator offers a free online training programme.

From today, businesses can take a quick online diagnostic test to find what approach best fits with their business – “Start”, “Grow” or “Turbo”. Participants will also access benefits designed to help them, ranging from discounts on business supplies and protective equipment from Amazon Business, to dedicated Amazon Web Services training and partner offers. Continue reading

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Croydon in crisis: Contractors in £9m row over Fairfield Halls

EXCLUSIVE: The council’s blundering house-builders Brick by Brick face the threat of a multi-million-pound legal action in a payments dispute over the refurbishment of the town centre’s arts venue. By STEVEN DOWNES

More than a year late, unfinished and incomplete, the Fairfield Halls refurb is now subject of a multi-million-pound payments dispute

The building contractors who carried out the refurbishment works on the Fairfield Halls are in “on-going discussions” with Brick by Brick in a dispute over unpaid fees for their work on the prestigious project.

Sources suggest that Vinci Construction UK Ltd are seeking further payments of as much as £9million for the work that they conducted in Croydon between 2017 and late 2019.

For reasons best known to themselves, in 2016 Croydon Council appointed their in-house house-builders Brick by Brick – a firm with no corporate experience of house-building, never mind large-scale refurb projects – to oversee the works on the council-owned Fairfield Halls.

It was around this time that things started to go horribly wrong. Continue reading

Posted in Arnhem Gallery, Ashcroft Theatre, BH Live, Business, Fairfield Halls, Mott MacDonald, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

‘A once in a generation opportunity to shape a new Croydon’

We’ve had red Labour. There’s been “Blue Labour”. Now, a handful of councillors from the north of the borough want to see a truly “Green” Labour in Croydon.

A network of ‘green corridors’ are among the measures suggested in a call for ‘rapid action’ over the environment and inequalities

Learning from many of the environmental benefits of the coronavirus lockdown, and the many deadly lessons in inequalities around the borough which covid-19 highlighted, five Labour councillors have been joined by a dozen civic societies and organisations calling on the council to deliver on its six-year-old promises “to make Croydon London’s greenest borough”.

There’s more than a sense from the letter – which appeals for “rapid action” over inequalities and pollution issues – that the signatories suspect that council leader’s Tony Newman’s Croydon Climate Crisis Commission will amount to nothing more than another exercise in adding to the planet’s hot air emissions while providing another £100,000 or so on to the bottom line of David Evans’s The Campaign Company.

The letter is addressed to Newman and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the chief exec of the New Economics Foundation, ostensibly the politically neutral figure dragged in to chair the talking shop. Continue reading

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‘Green Labour’ letter throws down challenge to leader Newman

KEN LEE, our Town Hall reporter, on the first signs of revolt against the leadership among unhappy Labour councillors

‘Green’ Labour: Jamie Audsley

In what appears to be a barely-disguised challenge to the authority of the council leader, five Labour councillors have today signed a letter pressing Tony Newman to “implement a comprehensive strategy to make the borough greener, more equal and more resilient to climate change”.

Put simply: implement the promises made by Croydon Labour in its manifestos of 2018, and 2014.

The call for action to honour election promises has gone to the same Tony Newman who, for the past six years, has allowed tens of millions of pounds to be spent on a polluting waste incinerator being built and operated on the borough boundary, who continues to support airport expansion at Gatwick, who allows playing fields and green spaces to be built on, and who seems to think that solar-powered aeroplanes could soon be a solution to polluting air travel.

The dissenting councillors have been joined in their joint letter by a dozen local societies and organisations.

But under the authoritarian rule of Newman, who has been leader of the Labour group at Croydon Town Hall since 2005, such a blatant, public questioning of his ability to deliver on policies has never before been tolerated. Continue reading

Posted in 2022 council elections, Croydon parks, Environment, Jamie Audsley, Janet Campbell, Muhammad Ali, Nina Degrads, Stephen Mann, Tony Newman, Wildlife | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sutton’s heating network inflicts fuel poverty on new estate

The council-backed SDEN has the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow over Hackbridge’s New Mill Quarter, where residents are being forced to pay more than double to going rate for heating

Our Sutton reporter, CARL SHILTON, on a saga of deceit and disservice

Sutton Council and its Liberal Democrat councillors have found themselves in hot water over SDEN, the district heating network which was supposed to provide cheap, “green” energy pumped all the way from the Beddington incinerator.

The council is estimated to have spent at least £30,000 in a legal battle to keep SDEN’s dodgy business model a strict secret, but after two years and two rulings against Sutton from the Information Commissioner, they abandoned their futile case just as a judge was about to order them to release all the information.

SDEN – Sutton Decentralised Energy Network – has a monopoly over the supply of heating and hot water to around 850 properties on the Barratt-built New Mill Quarter estate in Hackbridge. There’s no choice of supplier, never any opportunity for residents to “switch”. Continue reading

Posted in Elliot Colburn, Jayne McCoy, Nick Mattey, Sutton Council, Tom Brake MP, Waste incinerator | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SDEN: A timeline of council bungling and sky-high fuel prices

Sutton Council’s handling of its energy network has placed a number of families who have moved into the Barratt’s-built New Mill Quarter at Hackbridge in “fuel poverty”.

This timeline tells a story of denial, dishonesty and outright incompetence

2018: The first residents move into the New Mill Quarter in Hackbridge, built on the site of what was previously the Felnex trading estate. They all have to sign up to SDEN as their heating and hot water supplier. It is not long before some submit complaints over the high charges for heating. SDEN denies any complaints have been received.

Unreal McCoy: councilor said the sky-high fuel bills were ‘as expected’

Jan 2020: SDEN heating for residents of NMQ costs up to three times more than the market rate. Complaints continue to go unresolved. SDEN does not investigate its pricing and advises residents to turn their heating down. Questions are raised in the House of Commons.

Jan 7: NMQ Residents reach out to Liberal Democrat councillors Ben Andrew, Vincent Gilligan and Hannah Zuchowska, asking them to sign a collective complaint. None respond. Residents contact Jayne McCoy, another Sutton LibDem who worked to get SDEN established. She also refuses to sign the collective complaint. Despite the high bills received by residents, McCoy states pricing is working “as expected”. Continue reading

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