Prize-winners: the Norbury Manor choir performing at the Cadogan Hall on Sunday
An acapella choir formed of pupils from a Norbury secondary school walked away with a £1,000 prize and the acclaim of judges and the audience after the grand final of the Jack Petchey Perfect Pitch Champions competition held at the Cadogan Hall in central London on Sunday. Continue reading
WALTER CRONXITE, our political editor, watched Monday night’s full council meeting so you didn’t have to
Simon Hall threatened cuts to public services over the council’s spend on a mayor referendum at Monday’s budget meeting
Croydon Council will spend £1million on staging, and contestng, a referendum over whether the borough should have a mayor directly elected by all Croydon’s voters, instead of the current system under which the council leader can be picked by as few as 21 councillors.
Speaking at Monday night’s Town Hall meeting to set council budget for 2020-2021, Simon Hall, the cabinet member in charge of finance, said the council would make sure that “all the appropriate communications” would be sent to voters.
The message from Labour cabinet member Hall (£45,000 in allowances per year) was clear: if Croydon residents want better democracy, we’ll make them pay for it.
Hall estimated that the total cost of a council publicity campaign might be £1million as he speculated that such costs would force him to consider making cuts to children’s services or closing libraries.
Those supporting the referendum have described Hall’s £1million cuts threat as “scaremongering” and “spite and blight”.
MT WALLETTE, our unbuilt shopping malls correspondent, reports on the deep hole that Croydon has got itself into over the aborted Westfield development
Take a good look: Gavin Barwell says that this CGI of the original Westfield proposals should not be used any more
Croydon Council has allowed itself to be mugged by a couple of multi-national developers, and has handed over a vast swathe of the town centre to the Whitgift Foundation with few real guarantees of what development will take place there, or when.
That is the worrying reality that emerged from last night’s emergency debate in the Town Hall chamber – the debate about the collapse of the Westfield scheme that Croydon’s Labour-run council at first tried to block.
Now, though, according to Tony Newman and his cronies, they never wanted a shiny new £1.4billion mega shopping centre anyway.
KEN LEE on some of the more gruesome findings in a council-commissioned report about Croydon’s ineffective council
Tony Newman: blocked any real suggestions for reform of his position and patronage
Even the majority of Croydon’s elected councillors don’t think Croydon Council is “very effective”. That’s just one of the damning findings buried in a council-commissioned report which, when it gets passed at the Town Hall tonight, is likely to deliver little real change.
As Tony Newman flails around trying to preserve his position, and his £56,000 annual allowances, amid the collapse of the Westfield scheme, the crisis at the Fairfield Halls and the full-frontal assault on his authority from “mere” residents and their directly elected mayor campaign, tonight the council leader will push through his version of “reform”.
Along with the discussion tonight of the council’s annual budget, Council Tax increases and a more-heat-than-light emergency debate over Westfield, Newman expects to get approval for the council’s long-delayed governance review.
But as expected, the recommendations of the tightly controlled panel are so watered-down as to be pretty meaningless. Continue reading
Croydon, in blue, playing Kennington at Ashford earlier last month. That match, at least, reached the final whistle. Photo: Paul Davis
Croydon FC’s match at Croydon Arena was abandoned at half-time on Saturday after the referee was racially abused by a player from the visiting side.
This is the second game in a couple of months in the South East Counties League which has failed to be finished because of allegations of racist abuse – and the disciplinary outcome of football officials is still not resolved following the abandonment of Croydon Athletic’s unfinished game against Fisher on December 28.
A Sutton mother who channelled her anger and frustrations over the way her autistic child and family were being ignored and ill-served by the local council has been named “Most Inspirational Volunteer” at the National Autistic Society’s Autism Professionals Awards.
Hayley Harding, centre, receives her award from Carly Jones and Jane Asher, right
Hayley Harding set up the Sutton EHCP Crisis Group to help families in the borough who were being failed by the local authority, with hundreds of children being denied essential education and health care plans, and the services that they would provide, as the council sought to reduce its expenditure.
In a ceremony at Birmingham Town Hall, Harding was presented with her award by the evening’s hosts, Jane Asher, the actor and writer who is president of the NAS, and Carly Jones, the autism advocate and presenter. Continue reading
The second Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House is running over this and next weekend, offering outstanding views, inside and out
Our resident culture vulture KEN TOWL has taken the high ground for an outstanding community event
The second Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House, being staged this weekend and next, features more than 90 artists, ceramicists, photographers, printers, designers and miscellaneous makers of decorative stuff.
So eclectic is the range of art on show in studios and houses, flats above shops, on and around the Crystal Palace Triangle this year that you are bound to find something you will like. Continue reading
CROYDON COMMENTARY: As the debate over whether Croydon should have a directly elected mayor trundles on, DEREK THROWER suggests that some may have a hidden agenda
MP Chris Philp: creating a grievance caused by his own government
If, as Chris Philp, the MP for Croydon South, claims (letter to Inside Croydon reader Steve Whiteside, published earlier this week), the local authority is “abusing the powers that the planning committee has to grant planning applications indiscriminately in the borough, most of all in the south of the borough. Time and time again people have been there to plead with the planning committee to listen, but they never do”, then there is legal recourse.
The public may seek a Judicial Review or, as a Minister of State, Philp may ask his relevant ministerial colleague in charge of this remit to censure a local authority that is taking legally defective decisions. From what I can see, these actions have only been threatened and never pursued.
So Philp creates a grievance which is based on the local authority following the ground rules set down by his own government.
Philp is trying to have his cake and eat it. Continue reading
NON-LEAGUE NEWS: Fixture congestion, cup knock-outs, floodlight failures, losing streaks, ANDREW SINCLAIR reports on a tough February for the local clubs.
Croydon FC pictures: PAUL DAVIS
Croydon FC need to rise to the occasion against Kennington at the Arena tomorrow
Croydon’s non-league clubs have had a tough month, as one saw their promotion hopes badly dented and the other saw themselves dragged into a relegation dogfight.
A combination of scheduling and the wet weather saw Croydon FC play just three league games in the past month, and while they were able to get a morale-boosting 5-0 win over Kent Football United, with Martin Smith nabbing a hat-trick, defeats to fellow promotion contenders Elmstead and Kennington have been a knock-back.
The Trams’ home game against top-of-the-table Kennington at Croydon Arena tomorrow afternoon is crucial if they are to return to the Southern Counties East League Premier Division at the first time of asking. Continue reading
Another day, another planning application which residents fear will destroy a characterful Victorian house, replacing it with a bland brick block of flats. This time, the proposals have been described as “sneaky” and “vandalism on a grand scale”.
275 Addiscombe Road as it appears today. A proposed ‘extension’ has been described as ‘vandalism’
A planning application for 275 Addiscombe Road was originally submitted last October, but has been amended more recently.
This is not the usual knock-down-a-grand-family-home-and-build-flats-in-its=place scheme, though. The revised scheme has been presented to the council planning department as a “mere” “Basement extension, two storey front, side and rear extension and roof extension”.
The reality is somewhat different. In fact, the “extension” will remove the grand Victorian turrets at each corner of 275 Addiscombe Road, and but for leaving some of the original walls standing, will effectively deliver a new-build block of five two-bed-roomed flats. Continue reading
Hold very tight please! Our transport correspondent, JEREMY CLACKSON, is ready to be taken for a ride around Croydon town centre, all in the name of a good cause
Croydon’s beleaguered £220,000 per year chief executive has attracted yet more ridicule after it has emerged that she and some architect chums are planning to stage a guided bus tour around Croydon town centre next month.
All for a one-way ticket costing a cool £81.44. Continue reading
This morning’s Court of Appeal ruling that a third runway at Heathrow is unlawful could put Croydon’s council leader Tony Newman’s bollocks in a vice.
A new runway for Gatwick may cost more jobs than it provides
For not only has the ruling managed to coalesce opposition, legally and environmentally, against airport expansion, but it may yet see Gatwick push the case for their second runway.
And that is something which Newman – now claiming personal credit for his council’s declaration of a climate emergency – has always supported with conspicuous enthusiasm.
The contradictions in Newman’s positions may be obvious to most, but they remain unapparent to the Labour leader at the Town Hall.
This is possibly because Gatwick continues to be a generous sponsor of some activities in Croydon, apparently also because a second runway would generate some jobs for south London residents (though the economic case for this has never been laid out by Newman), and probably also because before Sarah Jones became MP for Croydon Central, she worked for Gatwick Airport for several years.
Yet Newman’s untenable position over airport expansion has become even more so, as his Labour Party colleagues today came out strongly in support of the Heathrow ruling. Continue reading
Further complaints about the council’s planning department suggest that they are reluctant to apply enforcement action, whether in Purley or South Croydon, as KEN LEE reports
Croydon Council has declared a climate emergency, yet continues to receive sponsorship and to support the expansion of Gatwick Airport.
The axeman cometh: despite not having planning permission, contractors yesterday felled several trees in this Higher Drive garden
Croydon Council says it wants to be carbon neutral by 2030, yet remains an enthusiastic customer of incinerator operators Viridor.
And Croydon Council says it is planting more trees around the borough to counter the effects of climate change, and yet its planning department allows this to happen…
The photographs (right and elsewhere in this article) were taken at Higher Drive, Purley, yesterday, were several mature trees were felled – despite the owner of the property having not been granted planning permission. Continue reading
