‘Sir’ is back in the classroom having learned a running lesson

Mr Webb was back in front of his science class of 30 or so boisterous teens at Harris Academy South Norwood yesterday morning, as if nothing had changed.

South Norwood’s fastest teacher, Jamie Webb

But it had. Jamie Webb was now a European athletics silver medallist.

And all the kids at school know his first name is Jamie.

Webb, 24, had raced into second place in the 800 metres final at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow on Sunday night, setting a personal best 1min 47.13sec, although one of his coaches reckons he might – with a bit more confidence and experience – have gone one better. Continue reading

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Black History Month launch, Croydon Town Hall, Mar 18

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Community clean-up day, Manor Farm Nature Space, Mar 17

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Book and Cake Sale, St Peter’s Church, South Croydon, Mar 9

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Old Town underpasses to be filled thanks to £10m TfL grant

Transport correspondent JEREMY CLACKSON on moves to remove a barrier to pedestrians and cyclists which has seen the town centre split in half more than half a century

Intimidating, unwelcoming and piss-tainted, the pedestrian underpasses beneath Roman Way and the Flyover are soon to be filled in

The dingy, often intimidating and piss-tainted pedestrian subways under the Croydon Flyover and Roman Way are to undergo a major refurbishment, with most filled in completely, as the result of a grant from Transport for London worth nearly £10million.

Oxford Street’s loss is to be Croydon Old Town’s gain, with City Hall funding earmarked for the pedestrianisation of the West End high street being re-directed to Croydon and other boroughs after the Tory-run City of Westminster did a strop over the Labour Mayor’s radical approach to road safety and air pollution.

As a consequence, Croydon Old Town is one of 11 “Liveable Neighbourhoods” dotted across London splitting £53.4million between them. And for once, Croydon is batting well above average, with its grant amounting to £9.6million. Continue reading

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Commuting, Croydon Council, Croydon Cycling Campaign, Cycling, Joy Prince, Robert Canning, Stuart King, TfL, Transport, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Photography Forum returns with Xav Beaumont’s lively images

Xav Beaumont’s photographic work will be the centre of discussion next week

After their first real break in almost five years, the Croydon Photography Forum is back next week with another photographer who will be sharing his visually diverse photographic journey.

March’s talk, a week tomorrow, on March 12, will be a talk entitled, Another Day – Another Life – The Photographic Journey of Xav Beaumont. Continue reading

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LibDem by-election candidate whose businesses left £9m debts

EXCLUSIVE: Campaigning in the Wallington North council by-election in Sutton is well underway, with the Liberal Democrats championing a candidate who has a recent record of business failures that have left his employees and the taxman hugely out of pocket.
Our investigations editor, CARL SHILTON, reports

LibDem candidate Barry Lewis: would you buy a used aircraft from this man?

The Liberal Democrat candidate in the Wallington North council by-election, Barry Lewis, in his campaign leaflets being distributed widely around the ward before the weekend, was demanding government money for extra policing in Sutton.

This from a director of two companies that are in liquidation with a trail of debts – including to the taxman – of nearly £9million.

According to Companies House records, on October 25 last year, the board of Cello Aviation Ltd, of which Lewis is a director, agreed to put the company into voluntary liquidation. The administrator’s statement of affairs shows only £35,000 estimated to be available to preferential creditors, while the total liabilities – what the company owes – are stated at £8.58million. About £4.06million of this amount is shareholder debt.

The company owed £220,000 to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in respect of PAYE, £226,200 for employee redundancy payments, and £153,400 in wage arrears and holiday pay.

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Private school’s sports staff enjoyed £30,000 party at The Ritz

EXCLUSIVE: Whitgift School has charitable status and the generous tax breaks that go with it, yet they spared no expense for a piss up at one of the flashiest venues in the West End.
By GENE BRODIE, education correspondent

Whitgift School, the 1,400-pupil independent school in South Croydon, spent £30,000 on a party for its sports staff to celebrate the latest success of its rugby teams, Inside Croydon has discovered.

The extravagance is likely to lead to further calls from those, such as Labour MP Angela Rayner, who already question whether private schools should qualify as charities, and as a result receive generous tax breaks.

The party was held at the swanky Ritz hotel in Piccadilly. It marked Whitgift’s under-15s team’s victory in the NatWest Schools national cup final at Twickenham last March, rewarding the school’s staff for their hard work. Continue reading

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Bread of Heaven: choir raises £1,100 for homeless charity

The Croydon Male Voice Choir has presented a cheque for £1,100 to Croydon Crisis, the charity for the homeless.

Croydon Male Voice Choir’s Kim Ormond presents the £1,100 cheque to Rosie Birch from Crisis

CMVC raised the funds for the charity while singing at the Whitgift Centre during the Christmas period.

CMVC chair Kim Ormond said that the choir was delighted to make the presentation to “this fantastic charity”.

“I feel so sorry that we should need a charity to do this kind of work – but I hope our contribution will make a difference,” Ormond said.

Crisis’s Rosie Birch accepted the cheque at the choir’s rehearsal at the Sandilands sports and social club, Addiscombe, last week. “We are really grateful for this brilliant support from the Croydon Male Voice Choir, who have done a wonderful job in raising £1,100 for Crisis. We could not do this vital work without such fantastic supporters,” she said. Continue reading

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The Big Sleep Out, Croydon town centre, Mar 24

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Trades unions in the 21st century, Ruskin House, Mar 14

The Croydon TUC is staging a talk at Ruskin House on March 14 on the role of trade unions (as the organisers put it in the 19th year of this century), “as we move into the 21st century”.

The speaker is Barry Faulkner, the political education co-ordinator for Unite. Continue reading

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Canning and Clyde residents’ Quiz Night, Clyde Hall, Mar 23

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Brick by Brick’s Fairfield Halls refurb goes £11m over budget

WALTER CRONXITE reports on the latest multi-million-pound overspend by the council-owned ‘house-building’ company that has yet to build a single new home

Work on the Fairfield Halls has progressed slowly since it was closed in 2016, which we were told then was to allow a more speedy refurbishment

The refurbishment works being carried out on the Fairfield Halls arts complex by Brick by Brick will cost at least £41million, according to an official council Freedom of Information response.

That’s £11million over budget for the troubled, slow-running project, which is already nine months overdue and has at least another six months to go until Brick by Brick, the council-owned “house-builders”, are finally off-site.

The council even attempted to suppress the information about the huge overspend on the Fairfield Halls, deliberately breaking Freedom of Information Act laws by withholding its response for longer than allowed.

The council’s response, to an enquiry submitted in January by an elected councillor, was only released yesterday. That prevented the multi-million-pound overspend becoming a matter of questioning for staff from Brick by Brick on Thursday, when they appeared before other councillors in a pre-application presentation to the planning committee in the Town Hall chamber. Continue reading

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Advertiser’s circulation falls below 5,000 per week for first time

Our local meeja correspondent, RAY GREENSLIDE, sifts through some figures which suggest the demise of a once proud Croydon institution

Tomorrow’s chip paper?

The Croydon Sadvertiser, under the editorship of Andy Worden, sold a miserable 3,533 copies in one sorry week last year.

A 21 per cent fall in sales in the last 12 months could mean that the once proud Croydon institution may soon cease to exist in newsprint form. Its owners, Retch, today refused to comment on the future prospects for the 150-year-old title.

The official figures were published yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, with the Advertiser’s average sales for 2018 at a mere 4,918.

That’s down from 6,203 in 2017.

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READER OFFER: Win a pair of tickets for Banter at Oval Tavern

Inside Croydon is delighted to be able to offer a pair of tickets to see Banter play at The Oval Tavern next Thursday, March 7.

Banter have just embarked on their first UK tour, delighting audiences from Sheringham to South Norwood with their eclectic music.

Although just three people, they create a huge sound and have been described as the world’s smallest big band. Continue reading

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Feck! Croydon Tories cry foul as Garratt wins selection ballot

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on a somewhat fractious outcome to the Conservatives’ vote on who  will represent the party in the 2020 London Assembly elections

Neil Garratt: surprise winner

Neil “Father Jack” Garratt, the councillor for Belmont ward, will be the Conservative candidate for the Sutton and Croydon constituency in next year’s London Assembly elections.

This is hugely embarrassing for one of the Croydon-based candidates, used house salesman Joe Lee, who had arranged for a public appearance in Norbury tomorrow alongside the Tory candidate for London Mayor, Shaun Bailey, to announce his selection… Whoops.

But then, Lee, a former Liberal Democrat, has never actually managed to win an election.

The outcome of last night’s meeting, held at the Grand Sapphire Hotel on the Purley Way, means that Garratt – who has a reputation for a sometimes colourful use of language on social media – could very easily land the £56,000 a year City Hall position next May: ever since the first London Assembly elections in 2000, Sutton and Croydon has been a Conservative hold, even with a candidate as lazy and ineffectual as “Silent” Steve O’Connell. Continue reading

Posted in 2021 London elections, Joseph Lee, Neil Garratt, Outside Croydon, Simon Hoar, Stephen Carr, Sutton Council | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

South Norwood ‘nun’ has Rees Mogg on the run at Palladium

A nun hasn’t made as big an impact in the West End since the first night of The Sound of Music.

‘You can’t body search a nun!’ Mother Hysteria being read her rights outside the Palladium this week. Photos: Peter Marshall

Jane Nicholl, of the increasingly notorious South Norwood Tourist Board, arrived outside the London Palladium on Tuesday night in full regalia in the firm conviction that the theatre might need an excorcism after staging An Evening With Jacob Rees Mogg. A bucket of warm water and some disinfectant might have worked just as well.

Nicholl soon attracted a police escort.

Providing a piece of street art without a penny of Arts Council grant, Nicholl assumed the role of Spiritual Leader and Demoniser of Posh Tories, Mother Hysteria. Continue reading

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Croydon Male Voice Choir in concert, St Mildred’s, Mar 16

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Girls’ rugby session, Sparrows Den playing fields, Mar 20

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Suffragette’s cache in the attic auctioned for £18,000

A collection of suffragette memorabilia discovered in a Sutton garage was sold at auction yesterday for more than three times its estimate, at £18,240.

Some of the items in Seymour’s collection

The hammer came down at the auction at Farleigh Court Golf Club on a lot that included a scrapbook kept by Isabel Seymour, a secretary for the Women’s Social Political Union.

According to Catherine Southon, the auctioneer, the vendor of the collection kept the items in his loft until “his daughter said that they should do something with it last year as it was the centenary of the suffragette movement”.

Southon said, “This previously unseen personal archive gives an insightful look into the day-to-day administration of the WSPU, as well as a valuable historic insight into both the suffragette movement, its members and its administrative workings. Continue reading

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Croydon’s Quantum of Solace can’t clear up Fairfield debacle

The relatively modest four- or five-floor blocks of flats originally envisaged for the site adjacent to Fairfield Halls (to the left of this architects’ CGI) have had to be abandoned, with massive 29-storey tower blocks now being put forward

CROYDON COMMENTARY: As exclusively revealed by Inside Croydon, Brick by Brick’s failure to secure the purchase of the Barclay Road Annex building from Croydon College put at risk a multi-million-pound property deal.
At a Town Hall planning meeting tonight, the council’s house-building company presents a much-revised plan for the land beside the Fairfield Halls in a desperate effort to retrieve something from the mess of its own making. ANDREW KENNEDY has pored over the documents

The new scheme being put forward at tonight’s council planning committee is not a planning application, but a pre-application presentation, from developers Brick by Brick for land between the Fairfield Halls and Croydon College. They now want to build 425 flats, compared to previously approved 218, with a slightly higher affordable housing for rent offering, rising from 18 per cent to 20 per cent. It means around 340 of the flats will go for private sale or rent.

And instead of the tallest block being 21 storeys high, as originally proposed, they now want something half as tall again, at 29 storeys.

This is in response to the loss of the main plot of buildings for Croydon College, who are staying in their present location, and of the Barclay Road Annex building, which has been sold off to another developer.

Croydon Council, nor Brick by Brick, the council’s house-builder, never had control of the Croydon College properties and yet they predicated the refurbishment of the Fairfield Halls with the assumption that the profit from acquiring that land and the subsequent large number of flats to be built on it would go towards financing the cultural re-development. Continue reading

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King Lear, Adrian Mann Theatre, Ewell, Apr 25-27

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Honeywood Easter Mini Explorers, Carshalton, Apr 9

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Passengers to be given a lift at Selhurst in £3.5m project

Selhurst Station is to get step-free access, as Network Rail is installing three lifts at the  station.

A Network Rail CGI of how one of the lifts will be installed at Selhurst Station

The lifts will make access between the station entrance, ticket office and platforms much easier for customers with reduced mobility, as well as those with children, heavy luggage or shopping.

Part of the £300million national Access for All station improvement project, work on Selhurst’s £3.5million investment will start on April 8, and is expected to be completed in November.

Currently passengers with mobility issues need to travel to Thornton Heath, the nearest accessible station. The installation at Selhurst is likely to bring further calls to address the lack of similar accessibility at busy Norwood Junction, which is also part of the London Overground network. Continue reading

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Cinema offers a cosmopolitan selection of international movies

While Britain may, or may not, be turning its back on Europe at the end of March on Brexit Day, the David Lean Cinema’s programme for the following month serves as a demonstration that, as far as the movies are concerned at least, it is impossible to be isolationist for very long.

The Clocktower’s arthouse cinema will be screening movies in six languages other than English during April, with productions from 13 different countries, including Israel and Lebanon.

The month’s first offering, Foxtrot, is in Hebrew and is a study of some of the consequences of the Israeli military being on a permanent war footing.

War zones also feature in Rosamund Pike’s portrayal of Marie Colvin in A Private War, the bio-pic about the former war correspondent for the Sunday Times, and The Aftermath, which offers a claustrophobic look at occupied Berlin immediately after World War II. Continue reading

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