Walker Dunelm: a sad farewell to contributor Patrick Ford

Posted on May 3, 2020 by insidecroydon

STEVEN DOWNES, Editor of Inside Croydon, pays tribute to one of this website’s earliest contributors

Patrick Ford at a family event in 2019, shortly before his death

I’d known Patrick Ford for most of my life, though for the past few years we’d been cut off from one another, separated by that cruel fog that was his Alzheimer’s disease.

For as long as I’d known him, Patrick had been at turns an inspiration and an encourager. So when he discovered that I was trying to write a Private Eye-style, satirical take on local life and politics in this corner of south London, he was both curious and intrigued.

Patrick, the father of my best mate at school, had introduced me to Private Eye when I was 14 or 15. He’d been buying the fortnightly snub at authority since issue No2. Continue reading →

Posted in Inside Croydon, Walker Dunelm, Walks | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Celebrate 20 years of the Croydon Trams with our competition

Posted on May 3, 2020 by insidecroydon

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the first fare-paying passenger services to run on the Croydon Tram network, and to help our loyal readers celebrate, we have a copy of the recently published Croydon Tramlink, A Definitive History, by Gareth David (RRP £30) to give away to the winner of our latest competition, which is exclusively for Inside Croydon subscribers. Continue reading →

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The curate of Croydon best known for his drinking song

Posted on May 3, 2020 by insidecroydon

In his latest discovery from Croydon Minster, DAVID MORGAN has found in the vaults how one of the parish’s priests became a celebrated poet whose work might still be heard in a popular song of the last century

Cheers… it was a Croydon curate who first wrote of the Toby Jug

When the Reverend Francis Fawkes arrived in Croydon to take up a curacy at the Parish Church, what is now known as Croydon Minster, little did he know how his career was going to take off.

It was around the year 1750 when Fawkes arrived in Croydon, having previously been a curate at Bramham, near Wetherby, in Yorkshire. It was four years later that he came to the notice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Herring.

This was at the time when Herring was suffering ill-health and was staying in the Archbishop’s Palace, right next to the church – in what we know today as Old Palace School. Francis Fawkes decided that he would write an ode to celebrate the recovery of Archbishop Herring. This very much touched the elderly clergyman.

The verse that included Herring’s name went as follows;

Let Health, gay daughter of the skies
On Zephyr’s wings descend
And scatter pleasures as she flies
Where Surrey’s Downs extend.
There HERRING woes her friendly power
There may she all he roses shower
To heal that shepherd all her balms employ
So will she sooth our fears and give a nation joy.

Continue reading →

Posted in Church and religions, Croydon Minster, David Morgan, History, Music, Poetry | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

We’ll meet up again, don’t know where, don’t know when…

Posted on May 2, 2020 by insidecroydon

Croydon celebrated VE Day 75 years ago – and images from that time will be on the Museum of Croydon’s website this week

Next Friday is probably not going to be quite the celebration of bunting, street parties and Union flags anyone had quite imagined when the usual Mayday bank holiday was shifted to Friday, May 5, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

But under the strictures of the covid-19 lockdown, the Museum of Croydon is laying on a real feast of films, photographs, art and artefacts from the borough’s archive collections to be viewed online. Continue reading →

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Labour Party orders Newman to cancel his planned group AGM

Posted on May 2, 2020 by insidecroydon

WALTER CRONXITE, political editor, reports on the latest setback for the council leader, and a financial blow for one of his most loyal supporters

Tony Newman, the Labour leader at Croydon Town Hall, has been dealt another blow after being instructed to cancel a planned “virtual” group annual meeting he hoped to hold on Wednesday night.

Tony Newman: virtual reality

Labour Party policy nationally is that, while the country is on lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic, trying to carry on as if it is “business as usual” really is not a great idea.

Newman wanted to press ahead with a virtual annual meeting, mostly in an effort to shore up his increasingly weakened position as council leader, ahead of the expected submission of a 14,000-signature petition calling for a borough-wide referendum on the question of whether the council should be run by a democratically-elected Mayor. Continue reading →

Posted in Caragh Skipper, Chris Clark, Croydon Council, Fairfield, Toni Letts, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Covid death rates linked to poverty and high-density housing

Posted on May 2, 2020 by insidecroydon

Official death rate figures from the ONS show that over-intensification of housing has played a part in helping the spread of coronavirus, as Croydon’s NHS chief warns against ‘inequalities’. BARRATT HOLMES, our housing correspondent, reports

Croydon has suffered a far higher death rate from coronavirus than much of the country, as the more economically deprived and densely populated parts of London have recorded up to four times as many deaths from the virus than more prosperous and rural locations in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The ONS analysis, the first detailed work of its kind since the pandemic reached these shores, show covid-19 exacerbating existing large health inequalities.

“It can never be right that someone’s life chances are so profoundly affected by where they live or how much money their family has,” Helen Barnard, of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said yesterday. Continue reading →

Posted in Alison Butler, Brick by Brick, Croydon Council, Croydon NHS Trust, Health, Housing, London-wide issues, Matthew Kershaw, Mayday Hospital, Planning, Thornton Heath, Tony Newman, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Endangered butterfly ignored in Brick by Brick flats application

Posted on May 1, 2020 by insidecroydon

Hutchinson’s Bank, near New Addington, has a worldwide reputation as a conservation reserve, having been supported at its very beginning by Sir David Attenborough. But that hasn’t stopped the latest dubious scheme from council builders ‘Trick by Trick’. STEVEN DOWNES reports

The brown hairstreak butterfly is a protected species. Brick by Brick ignored it on their planning application

Brick by Brick has been accused of submitting a false and misleading biodiversity statement in a planning application in which they completely ignored a rare species of butterfly found on the site, just so that they can build another block of flats.

And the London Wildlife Trust, which manages the Hutchinson’s Bank reserve, says that it has never been consulted by Brick by Brick or Croydon Council over a scheme which would build a particularly unprepossessing four-storey block next to the conservation area.

Brick by Brick are fast becoming better known as “Trick by Trick”, and deservedly so. For instance, their planning application for the site at Corbett Close and Fairchildes Avenue describes the site as simply a “roadside verge”.

Yet it is just a few steps away from Green Belt and the entrance to Hutchinson’s Bank, where over the past four decades some world-leading conservation work has been carried out.

Hutchinson’s Bank won its special status just over 30 years ago after a campaign led by Sir David Attenborough. Continue reading →

Posted in Brick by Brick, Community associations, Croydon Council, Croydon parks, Environment, Fieldway, Housing, Hutchinson's Bank, New Addington, New Addington Residents' Association, Planning, Wildlife | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Huge blow to Croydon as British Airways looks to quit Gatwick

Posted on May 1, 2020 by insidecroydon

Croydon council leader Tony Newman’s flawed and failing business strategy for the borough was dealt another hammer blow yesterday when a leaked internal memo revealed that British Airways is considering quitting Gatwick Airport.

Newman’s Labour council has wedded itself to Gatwick, signing up to the Coast to Capital initiative and backing the airport’s expansion plans because of the prospect of extra jobs for Croydon.

That latter appears to be in tatters this morning with British Airways’ business on its knees because of the coronavirus shutdown. A leaked BA memo, issued after the airline laid off 12,000 staff on Tuesday, has revealed that when the lockdown is lifted, it is considering consolidating what remains of its operations at Heathrow. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Croydon Council, Outside Croydon, Tony Newman, Transport | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Five roads are to be closed under emergency covid measures

Posted on May 1, 2020 by insidecroydon

Cycling on Croydon’s roads is about to become safer

Five Croydon roads are to be closed to motor traffic from Sunday under special coronavirus emergency legislation, in efforts to make streets more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly and to open up new cycle routes for use by key workers riding bikes to work at Mayday Hospital.

The council’s propaganda department finally got round to issuing a press release with the detail of the closures nearly 48 hours after cabinet member Stuart King had first made public the plans for widening pavements and reducing car parking spaces, and as was first reported by Inside Croydon.

In the press release (which the council’s press department did not send to Inside Croydon), they said, “The temporary schemes… aim to reduce rat running in residential roads, improve road safety and better facilitate social distancing.” Continue reading →

Posted in Commuting, Cycling, Stuart King, Transport, West Croydon | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Even Labour councillors are turning on Brick by Brick plans

Posted on April 30, 2020 by insidecroydon

PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent, on how members of the council’s ruling group are now criticising Brick by Brick’s latest attempts to concrete over the borough’s green spaces

The BxB block proposed for Theobald Road has ‘all the kerb appeal of a Stasi prison block’

Croydon Council’s already shaky green credentials are under more pressure following environmental concerns raised by a respected Labour councillor over one of the latest block of Brick by Brick planning applications.

Robert Canning, one of Waddon’s councillors, is known among the residents he represents for standing up against dodgy developers. Having helped Labour win the ward from the Tories in 2014, Canning now has a well-earned reputation for speaking truth to power – so much so that he no longer features among Tony Newman’s select few on the expenses gravy train.

And now he has delivered a damning verdict on a particularly ugly-looking block of flats, described as “having all the kerb appeal of a Stasi prison block”, that Brick by Brick want to impose on his ward.

Continue reading →

Posted in Brick by Brick, Community associations, Croydon Council, Environment, Robert Canning, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Estate agents predict housing market to fall by up to 10%

Posted on April 30, 2020 by insidecroydon

Market forecasts made by estate agents this month estimate that more than half a million home sales would be “lost” this year because of the coronavirus lockdown, with some saying that house prices could drop by as much as 10 per cent.

Going for a song? Uncertainties over covid-19, jobs and Brexit is doing nothing for the price of houses

Covid-19 has created more uncertainty over future economic prospects even than Brexit (remember that?), and that could mean that, even after the lockdown is lifted, the housing market will remain stagnant for a time, with people unwilling to commit to making what is, after all, usually the biggest purchase of any person’s lifetime.

With thousands of redundancies being announced daily as business takes a massive hit from the lack of economic activity – the John Lewis Partnership will not be re-opening all its stores, while fashion retailers Oasis and Warehouse were the latest to announce their permanent closures today, with a loss of 1,800 jobs, on top of the 12,000 redundancies yesterday at British Airways – even the government’s furlough scheme, subsidising 80 per cent of an employer’s wages bill, together with record-low interest rates, might not be enough to encourage people to take out mortgages for new homes.  Continue reading →

Posted in Brick by Brick, Business, Croydon Council, Housing, London-wide issues | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Army goes on attack at the Fairfield Halls against coronavirus

Posted on April 30, 2020 by insidecroydon

Croydon is to get a covid-19 testing centre – for three days, anyway.

Croydon is to get a drive-in testing centre at the Fairfield Halls for three days

The government announced this morning that a temporary, drive-in testing centre, staffed by the Army, is being set up in the car park behind the Fairfield Halls.

It is operating today, tomorrow and Saturday, May 2.

Testing at this centre is only for key workers and their families who have symptoms of the virus, or those over 65 years old who have symptoms. Tests are by appointment only, arranged via the government website. Continue reading →

Posted in Fairfield Halls, Health | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Wednesday night is Quiz Night for Selsdon’s band of volunteers

Posted on April 30, 2020 by insidecroydon

Wednesday nights have become Quiz Nights, at least virtually for the volunteers working through the coronavirus emergency at the Selsdon Food Hub.

They are all set up for a quiz in Selsdon every Wednesday

The area’s churches, businesses and voluntary sector groups who have come together to help lonely and isolated residents, establishing a network of street champions to carry out errands with the shopping and small DIY jobs, now has more than a thousand members.

But it is also determined to build community and have fun during these challenging times. The group runs an online quiz that anyone in the community can join. Each weekly quiz has a theme.

So far, it has encompassed Easter, chocolate and cocktails.

Local resident Cecillie Sasu helps organise the quiz each week. “The popularity of the quiz has grown each week, last week we had 15 teams each competing over five rounds,” she said. Continue reading →

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Community Action in Selhurst support for vulnerable families

Posted on April 30, 2020 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

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Council in cover-up over planning’s husband and wife act

Posted on April 29, 2020 by insidecroydon

Croydon’s planners have clearly never heard the old saying, ‘when in a hole, stop digging’, as suspicion mounts over the absence of documents to support dubious statements given to a committee, as KEN LEE reports

Croydon Council has been accused of a cover-up over a senior planning official’s failure to declare that he is married to the director of a firm of builders. The council’s refusal to answer straightforward questions over a declaration of interest opens the serious possibility that an executive director may have misled a committee of councillors.

Heather Cheesbrough: told elected councillors that declarations of interest had been made. But now she refuses to provide any evidence to back that up

And Inside Croydon has now discovered a second case where council planning official Ross Gentry “forgot” to mention that his wife just happens to be employed in a senior role at a multi-million-pound firm of builders with more than a dozen planning applications in the borough.

Inside Croydon can reveal that there is already a formal complaint filed to a government ombudsman for an earlier planning application to the council where Gentry failed to declare publicly his relationship with Macar Development’s Natalie Gentry. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Chris Philp MP, Community associations, Croydon Council, Heather Cheesbrough, Kenley, Paul Scott, Planning, Property, Purley | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Patronage has allowed Croydon’s planning to get out of control

Posted on April 29, 2020 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Where he lives, there are 27 blocks of flats with planning permission within a half-mile radius, going against the London Plan. And SEBASTIAN TILLINGER knows why

Geoff James’s Carry On Regardless article about how the council is ignoring important modifications to the London Plan is all based on publicly available documents and reports.

The council’s own infill schemes are contrary to London Plan policy

There’s nothing hidden. Everyone can read this material and see what a pack of lies and half-truths this council administration has been dishing out to the residents of this borough, particularly those directly impacted by inappropriately sited over-development on the back of policy guidance SPD2 and other recently created blunt instrument planning policies.

But let’s not confuse what is being said here. Central government, City Hall and the Planning Inspectorate all say Croydon Council’s over-intensification of development in its suburbs should not be happening. It is wrong, it is not justifiable and it will cause long term damage to our streets and neighbourhoods.

But, hey, we all knew this anyway. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Croydon Council, Paul Scott, Planning, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our frontline heroes could lose their jobs, MP Reed warns

Posted on April 29, 2020 by insidecroydon

The frontline heroes we’re cheering today will lose their jobs tomorrow if the government break their promise to fund whatever’s necessary to get communities through this crisis.

MP Steve Reed OBE: questions in the House

That’s according to Croydon North MP Steve Reed OBE, speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, as estimates of the financial black hole facing local councils caused by the coronavirus emergency range from £5billion to £12billion.

At the beginning of the lockdown, while local firms were open and paying business rates, residents had yet to sign up for three-month Council Tax “holidays” and parking fees and fines were still rolling in to Town Hall coffers, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised local authorities that the Conservative government would spend “whatever’s necessary” to deal with the pandemic emergency.

But Reed, now the Labour Party’s front bench spokesman for local government, echoed the concerns of many Town Halls across the country, including Croydon’s, when he sought an undertaking in Parliament that the government would honour its promises to local government, where much of the frontline burden in coping with coronavirus has fallen. Continue reading →

Posted in Council Tax, Croydon Council, Croydon North, Simon Hall, Steve Reed MP | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Wider pavements and slower cars: King makes road changes

Posted on April 29, 2020 by insidecroydon

The council has announced a range of measures on the streets in West Croydon and Woodside to assist social distancing for pedestrians, improve road conditions for cycling, while suspending parking bays and announcing the intention of enforcing speed restrictions on motor traffic.

Stuart King: measures include cycle lane to Mayday Hospital

The measures are to be introduced from this weekend.

Stuart King, the Labour council’s cabinet member responsible for the borough’s roads, made the announcement last night, in response to the changed circumstances created by the coronavirus lockdown and the significant fall in road traffic as people observe the call to stay at home.

The plans were described as “emergency” and “temporary”, although the announcement was welcomed by environment groups and Greens, who are lobbying for some of the measures to be made permanent after the lockdown. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Greens, Environment, Mayday Hospital, Parking, Peter Underwood, Stuart King, West Croydon, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

ONS: London suffers its worst death toll for more than 40 years

Posted on April 28, 2020 by insidecroydon

London has suffered its highest number of registered deaths in a single week for more than 40 years, according to data released today by the Office for National Statistics. The death toll is even worse than the first weeks of the Blitz in World War II.

Driven by the coronavirus outbreak, there were 2,832 deaths registered in the capital in the week ending April 10, the highest weekly number in London since February 1976. The second highest weekly number since 1976 was recorded the week before, week ending April 3.

The figures for the week of April 10 are nearly three times higher than the average for the same week over the previous five years.

Indeed, the BBC was reporting tonight that the death toll among Londoners for this period is worse than even the first weeks of the Blitz in 1940.

In Croydon, official figures for the four weeks to April 17 show that 480 people died. This is an absolute figure, and not specifically related to whether those who died had coronavirus. The usual weekly average number of deaths in the borough is 53 – so the Croydon death rate for that month is running at more than twice usual levels.

Continue reading →

Posted in Health, Mayday Hospital | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

‘Community energy has come through in these testing times’

Posted on April 28, 2020 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Once all this is over, we can rebuild using the power of communities that has been uncovered through volunteer mutual aid groups, says LAURA WHITTALL

The South Norwood Community Kitchen has been busy delivering hundreds of meals twice each week during the covid lockdown

Covid-19 has laid bare the bones of our communities, who has and who hasn’t, how we are all connected to each other in some way or another.

As many of us are stuck in one place we have become more aware of who is within our immediate vicinity, who the faces really are that we may have passed on the street or seen coming in and out of their front door.

Their lives are laid bare and the reality of who has the resources to support themselves and who doesn’t. The ones that are really vulnerable, the ones that we never knew needed help. It lays on the table all of our preconceptions about people and shows quite clearly how our differences can affect our lives.

Even in times of physical distancing, the social closening has never been stronger, outside of state and official provision, there lives and breathes a rich web of informal and locally organised mutual aid that communities are making for themselves in these troubled times. Continue reading →

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Contact Norbury’s Cassandra Centre for their weekly free meals

Posted on April 28, 2020 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

Posted in Charity, Norbury | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Design a van for the South Norwood Community Kitchen

Posted on April 28, 2020 by insidecroydon

Continue reading →

Posted in Charity, South Norwood | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Two-thirds of businesses yet to receive emergency grants

Posted on April 27, 2020 by insidecroydon

£40million in grants from a government-funded scheme to help businesses through the covid-19 emergency remain to be distributed by Croydon Council, as our business correspondent, MT WALLETTE, reports

Croydon town centre, already devastated by the development blight caused by Westfield, could struggle after covid-19 because businesses have not received their emergency grants

Croydon Council has managed to distribute just one-third of the £60million it has been given by the government in emergency funding for businesses hit by the impact of the coronavirus lockdown.

That’s according to figures published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which also show that after three weeks of the scheme, Croydon had managed to distribute grant funding to just 1,386 out of the 4,218 eligible businesses in the borough – just 32 per cent. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Croydon BID, Croydon Council, Manju Shahul Hameed, Purley BID | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Despite City Hall criticism, it’s Carry On Regardless for Croydon

Posted on April 27, 2020 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: The council will carry on striving to meet unnecessarily high planning targets just because they choose to do so. But their arbitrary targets have already been shown to have unacceptable consequences and to be unsustainable, writes GEOFF JAMES

One of the council-backed BxB intensification proposals for a ‘windfall’ site on Bramley Hill

Jason Perry, a Conservative councillor, recently summarised the current housing target for Croydon Council.

“The council has accepted a high housing target – much greater than Bromley and Sutton – from the London Mayor which it can only meet by building tall. The London Mayor’s Plan was recently modified by a government inspector because its target for intensification of the suburbs was too high.

“In Croydon, it is the small sites target which is too high, to the tune of 8,700 units. The council could have decided to comply with this and reduce its own target by that amount, but it has decided not to do so. This means Croydon has chosen to deliver 8,700 homes more than it is required to: it’s a political choice rather than an obligation.”

Councillor Perry is simply summarising the stated position of the council. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Housing, Kenley, Mayor of London, Planning | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Schools and undertakers come to council’s rescue over PPE

Posted on April 27, 2020 by insidecroydon

School children, dentists and undertakers have come to the council’s rescue by providing vital PPE for frontline staff and care workers, after the Town Hall failed to order in or stockpile sufficient equipment ahead of the covid-19 lockdown.

Croydon Council failed to stockpile adequate PPE equipment before the crisis

The council issued a press release just before the weekend to thank the businesses and organisations that had come forward to provide the PPE – personal protective equipment – required by those workers who might be exposed to coronavirus while performing their duties.

The council blamed “the national shortage” of PPE for its own failings in procurement.

The council has twice in the past month made public appeals for donations of equipment that can be used in its care homes. It had been reported that some care home staff had been reduced to utilising bin bags and Marigold rubber gloves. Continue reading →

Posted in Adult Social Care, Business, Care Homes, Croydon Council, Health, Schools | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment