Croydon to get £1m from Mayor’s ‘gentrification premium’

Posted on December 21, 2018 by insidecroydon

Croydon has been named as one of London’s six Creative Enterprise Zones, part of the Mayor of London’s initiative to support artists and creative businesses, and develop skills and jobs for Londoners.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the announcement of the Creative Enterprise Zones last week

Croydon has been awarded just £500,000, from a £11million fund, though additional benefits will bring the total value to the borough to close to £1million.

Other schemes which will also benefit from the Mayor’s fund are Lambeth, Hounslow, Lewisham, Haringey and Hackney Wick (a joint bid by Tower Hamlets, Hackney and London Legacy Development Corporation).

According to the Mayor’s office, “This new initiative…”, that’s as opposed to an old initiative, presumably, “… will protect the creative sector in the capital, increase affordable spaces for artists and entrepreneurs, and boost job and training opportunities for local people. Across London, creative communities have demonstrated their important role in revitalising areas, but over time, they can find themselves priced out of the neighbourhoods they have helped regenerate.” Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Croydon Council, Housing, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Oliver Lewis, Sadiq Khan | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Learner drivers: TV producers want you in their programme

Posted on December 21, 2018 by insidecroydon

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Croydon Philharmonic Choir singing workshop, Jan 26

Posted on December 21, 2018 by insidecroydon

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Sutton Through A Lens, Honeywood Museum, Jan 10

Posted on December 21, 2018 by insidecroydon

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MP demands independent investigation into planning decisions

Posted on December 20, 2018 by insidecroydon

WALTER CRONXITE on the latest move over the favourable treatment provided to the council’s house-builders by the council’s planning committee

Architect of his own downfall? Labour councillor Paul Scott has questions to answer over conflicts of interest

A Croydon MP has asked the council’s chief executive to confirm that an independent investigation will be held into allegations that Paul Scott broke planning law and directed fellow councillors how to vote over applications made by the council’s “award-winning” house-builders, Brick by Brick.

Chris Philp, the Conservative MP for Croydon South, has written to Jo Negrini, Croydon’s chief exec, describing a report which appeared on Inside Croydon last week as containing “credible allegations” regarding the whipping of Labour councillors serving on the planning committee. Continue reading →

Posted in Alison Butler, Brick by Brick, Croydon Council, Jo Negrini, Paul Scott | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Beware councils bearing gifts: traffic wardens get two days off

Posted on December 20, 2018 by insidecroydon

Croydon Council called it “an early Christmas present”, after they announced a suspension of car parking fees and pay-and-display charges to “make it easier for residents to prepare for and enjoy the festive season”.

The truth, inevitably, is a somewhat different, according to a well-placed Katharine Street source.

“They don’t want to pay Christmas overtime rates to the parking wardens,” our Town Hall insider said.

The cost of staffing for traffic control is paid for out of the money the council rakes in from resident parking permits and car parking charges, so it ought to be able to budget for wardens to patrol the borough’s streets throughout the year, with the usual exception of public holidays. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Parking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Cabinet member says Brick by Brick could build on libraries

Posted on December 20, 2018 by insidecroydon

GENE BRODIE, our bookish gyms correspondent, on the latest inadvertent slip by a council cabinet member which betrays the next possible target for the council’s ‘award-winning’ house-builders

South Norwood Library: soon to be Brick by Brick flats

Brick by Brick’s insatiable appetite for turning public property into mainly private flats could see the council’s “award-winning” house-builder (Total number of homes completed since 2015: ZERO) next turn its attention to the borough’s libraries.

That’s the conclusion from comments made by a council cabinet member during a scrutiny committee in the Town Hall chamber, after some astute probing on behalf of the people of Croydon by one sharp-witted councillor.

Brick by Brick has already muscled in on one of the borough’s 13 libraries, in South Norwood. Continue reading →

Posted in Brick by Brick, Carillion, Housing, Joy Prince, Libraries, Oliver Lewis, Planning, Selsdon & Ballards, South Norwood | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Friends of Lloyd Park post-Christmas walk, Boxing Day

Posted on December 20, 2018 by insidecroydon

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The Elves and The Shoemaker, Stanley Halls, until Jan 5

Posted on December 20, 2018 by insidecroydon

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Electoral Commission ruling is ‘victory for freedom of speech’

Posted on December 19, 2018 by insidecroydon

A clumsy effort to gag Inside Croydon, thought to have been conducted by Liberal Democrats in Sutton, has failed.

Our free promotional newspaper, Inside Sutton, caused panic and angst for the LibDems

A complaint was filed to the Electoral Commission, and is believed to have been made by LibDems in Sutton, where they are still seething that at the local elections in May they lost 12 council seats and the generous allowances that go with them.

The Electoral Commission this week dismissed the complaint against Inside Croydon that claimed that leaflets distributed to promote the planned launch of a sister news site were in some way election material.

This was despite the leaflets never including any message to encourage readers to vote for any candidate, and only carrying news stories which had previously been published on this website, and by Private Eye magazine, which detailed the Liberal Democrats’ record while in power in Sutton over the previous couple of years. All of our reports have been entirely fact-based, and none have been subject to any libel action or complaint to IPSO, the news regulator.

Each leaflet had a deliberately cynical and satirical “flash” label on its front page, such as “Dombey & Chums Special”, referring to a report inside about the convicted fraudster and ex-LibDem councillor Alan Salter; “The FibDems UnSpun”, detailing how the LibDems’ own party’s leaflets had broken election law; and our special favourite, “Ruth Dombey Erection Special”, referencing the massive erection of the Beddington incinerator.

This, though, was not an obvious enough indicator to the dim LibDems, who although they clung to control of the council, were clearly perturbed to have lost more than £500,000 as a result of their election defeats. Continue reading →

Posted in Inside Croydon, Jayne McCoy, Local media, Ruth Dombey, Sutton Council | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Street art on Surrey Street can’t fill the gap in the market

Posted on December 19, 2018 by insidecroydon

Feeling the squeeze: Surrey Street Market remains one of the best places in the borough for value for money fruit and veg

Armed with his re-usable canvas bag, KEN TOWL strolled down Croydon’s ancient street market to pick up a bargain and find out how the traders are getting along, more than a year after its £1.1million makeover

The scene on Surrey Street Market yesterday morning. Fewer stalls inevitably lead to fewer potential customers visiting the market

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the high street is going to wrack and ruin and, as I passed by the shut-up shop fronts of North End, I wondered how things are going in Surrey Street Market at the heart of Croydon.

The ancient street market, founded by royal charter in 1276, has been providing good quality fruit and vegetables to the people of Croydon for centuries, but was more recently described unhelpfully as “tatty” by a senior councillor, before being given a bit of a facelift last year.

That spruce-up seems to have consisted mostly of the commissioning of some public art and the provision of a lot of coloured gazebos over the stalls.

The question I asked myself as I stood on the footbridge that crosses Surrey Street was, “Why does it look half empty?” In late March last year, the market was cleared and some (but not all) of the stall-holders were moved to a temporary site in North End while radiators in Surrey Street were painted in bright colours, lines and numbers for pitches were painted on the ground, and a blue child soldier with a grenade in his hand was stuck on a wall. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Ken Towl, Surrey Street | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

The lights go down at town centre’s Spread Eagle Theatre

Posted on December 19, 2018 by insidecroydon

The Spread Eagle Theatre, the 50-seater comedy and cabaret venue above the pub next to the Town Hall, is to close.

The Spread Eagle Theatre staged a series of acclaimed plays and acts to regular full houses

The upstairs room was transformed into a studio theatre five years ago, at a time when Croydon’s Warehouse Theatre was killed off by council cynicism over arts grants, Tory cuts saw the David Lean Cinema closed, and a police ban on Bashment music was seeing the town centre becoming a cultural desert, its “best” offerings being performances by the likes of Roy “Chubby” Brown at the Fairfield Halls. Continue reading →

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Fairfield Halls chief tells councillors not to ask questions

Posted on December 19, 2018 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE reports on how the manager hired to run the Fairfield Halls won’t tolerate questions about the venue from the borough’s elected representatives

Neil Chandler: don’t dare ask him any questions

Neil Chandler, the former cruise ship entertainments officer who has been placed in charge of the Fairfield Halls, doesn’t like people rocking the boat – especially when they are elected councillors asking awkward questions about when the arts centre, which was due to re-open in July 2018, will be back in business again.

Chandler was speaking at last week’s scrutiny committee meeting at the Town Hall, where his fraying patience over the many delays in the Fairfield’s £30million, two-year refurbishment programme quickly surfaced.

Chandler has been badly let down by the builders and has had to delay and cancel any performance plans – including a royal gala concert – as the re-opening has been pushed back to September 2019. The building works are overseen by the council’s “award-winning” house-building company, Brick by Brick.

But Chandler appears to be singing from the same song sheet as council leader Tony Newman and council chief exec Jo “We’re Not Stupid” Negrini. For them, any form of question about their performance, or that of their colleagues or staff, is regarded as an affront to their human rights.

Just like Newman (who once really boasted that when re-opened, the Fairfield Halls would rival the South Bank) and Negrini, Chandler wants to be answerable to no one. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Ashcroft Theatre, BH Live, Brick by Brick, Croydon Council, Fairfield Halls, Jo Negrini, Neil Chandler, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

LibDem Sutton’s green credentials are going up in smoke

Posted on December 18, 2018 by insidecroydon

The Viridor incinerator on Beddington Lane is about to go fully operational, polluting the south London air for decades to come

BELLE MONT, our Sutton reporter, on how the incinerator borough is struggling to portray itself as all clean and green

It was an announcement which would have further convinced Tom Lehrer that satire can no longer survive in the face of reality.

“We did it!” the person in charge of Sutton Council’s Twitter account wrote earlier this month. “Sutton is the second greenest borough in London with 50 per cent of all waste recycled.”

They further claimed that government figures published by the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affiars showed Sutton had the second biggest improvement in recycling rates in the country.

And this just a matter of days before one of the country’s biggest waste incinerators, on Beddington Lane on the borough boundary with Croydon, is expected to fire-up and go into full operational mode, burning 300,000 tons of rubbish every year, and generating greenhouse gas CO2 on an industrial scale.

Continue reading →

Posted in Environment, Ruth Dombey, Sutton Council, Waste incinerator | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Fans fear that Saturday’s derby could be last Croydon Clasico

Posted on December 18, 2018 by insidecroydon

NON-LEAGUE NEWS: A spokesperson for Croydon FC this morning denied the rumour that Jose Mourinho, having been sacked by Manchester United, is to be brought in as manager at Croydon Arena.

Croydon FC recently unveiled two new shirt sponsors. They could do with at least two new points in the league

“Not even Mourinho could save them now,” they might have said.

Croydon, the crisis-hit Southern Counties East League club with only one league win all season so far, have gone nearly three months without appointing a permanent successor to Craig Davies, who quit as manager in September. Chris Brown has carried out the first-team duties on a caretaker basis since.

On Saturday, Brown and his squad travel the short distance to Mayfield Road, home of local rivals Croydon Athletic, for what is looking like being the last Croydon Clasico derby for quite a while. Maybe even forever, according to doom-laden Trams fans.

Croydon have lost 16 of their 17 matches so far this season, the latest at Bearstead last Saturday, when a grand total of six travelling supporters from Croydon witnessed a 2-1 defeat. Continue reading →

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Joy to the world: Please don’t wreck our Arnhem Gallery

Posted on December 18, 2018 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on a rare outbreak of critical thinking in the council chamber, as one councillor spells out for the Fairfield Halls management the blatant imbecility of one of their proposed name changes

The Arnhem Gallery, as it was intended

At last, a Labour councillor has spoken out in the interests of the public, rather than toeing the party line and failing to question even the most absurd proposals from council officials or their contractors.

Take a bow, Joy Prince, one of the councillors from Waddon ward, who at last week’s scrutiny committee in the Town Hall chamber spelled out quite how stupid she thinks are the plans to change the long-standing and respected name of the Arnhem Gallery.

Some overpaid marketing genius has decided to rename the Arnhem Gallery as “the Croydon Wreck”. Continue reading →

Posted in Arnhem Gallery, Art, BH Live, Fairfield Halls, Joy Prince, Neil Chandler, Oliver Lewis | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Corbyn aide enters row over Lewis Hamilton’s tax record

Posted on December 17, 2018 by insidecroydon

Andrew Fisher, the chief policy adviser to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, last night jumped into the simmering row about the BBC’s annual sports review show by suggesting that if Lewis Hamilton wants to win Sports Personality of the Year, then the multi-millionaire racing driver needs to pay his taxes.

Lewis Hamilton at SPOTY in Birmingham last night. Did he pay his VAT on that jacket?

The BBC showpiece SPOTY once again attracted plenty of controversy.

This began with the hand-picked short-list of six contenders, branded “a complete disgrace” by some on Twitter, as the public was denied the opportunity to vote for many of their own favourites. The short-list shortcomings also included that it had only two women, neither of whom made it into the male-dominated top three, and that the contenders notably excluded the heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua.

In another break with usual practice, and one only likely to draw suspicion, the BBC refused to publish the voting scores for the contenders after the winners were announced. Continue reading →

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South Norwood friends have Michelle Obama booked

Posted on December 17, 2018 by insidecroydon

The autobiography of former US First Lady Michelle Obama is first up for South Norwood’s book club’s 2019 reading list.

Becoming will be discussed by The Page Turners group when they gather in Yeha Noha café and bar, on Station Road close to Norwood Junction station, from 7.30pm on Thursday, January 3.

Page Turners is a friendly group of friends and neighbours who meet on the first Thursday of each month to discuss what they learned or enjoyed, or didn’t, from a book nominated at the previous meeting. Continue reading →

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£400m+ scheme at risk after council’s failed property deal

Posted on December 16, 2018 by insidecroydon

The balloons have gone up on the scheme to redevelop around Croydon College. These were Rick Mather Architects’ drawings of the residential blocks planned when permission was granted

BARRATT HOLMES, our housing reporter, on how bungling by ‘award-winning’ Brick by Brick has put in serious jeopardy half-a-billion-pounds’ worth of new homes, has damaged the Town Hall’s relationship with Croydon College, and leaves a gaping funding hole for Fairfield Halls

Last week’s announcement that Croydon Council was now starting an architectural competition for a site next to the Fairfield Halls was confirmation that bungling over a multi-million-pound property purchase by house-builder Brick by Brick has left a key part of the town centre’s redevelopment close to collapse.

Council CEO Jo Negrini and Brick by Brick boss Colm Lacey. Who is responsible for the failure to seal the deal on the College Annex?

The failure of the council’s house-builders Brick by Brick to buy the Barclay Road Annex building from Croydon College, which they had been negotiating for more than two years, has been a catastrophic blow to the council’s plans and forced the postponement of plans to build 2,000 flats around what used to be referred to as College Green – new homes vital to the council meeting its housing targets, and potentially worth more than £400million.

This massive set-back to the biggest council-led scheme, which aimed to use Croydon College property adjacent to the Fairfield Halls, has prompted a local MP to accuse Brick by Brick of “incompetence” and to call for the council leadership to “take responsibility for this mess”.

Inside Croydon broke the news in July that Croydon College had earlier in the year sold part of its site to private developers, dealing a body-blow to the council’s “ambitious” plans to create a so-called “Cultural Quarter”  on and around College Green, including more than 2,000 flats next to the Fairfield Halls. Continue reading →

Posted in Alison Butler, Arnhem Gallery, Brick by Brick, Business, Chris Philp MP, College Green, Colm Lacey, Croydon Council, Croydon South, Fairfield Halls, Housing, Jo Negrini, Paul Scott, Planning, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Ends three-day music festival is announced for Lloyd Park

Posted on December 15, 2018 by insidecroydon

At last, Croydon is to get the sort of live music event it deserves, with The Ends Festival being staged over three days next summer in Lloyd Park.

This is The Ends: Wizkid headlines Saturday’s festival line-up in Lloyd Park

There’s a 15,000 daily capacity for the festival, which is being held from May 31 to June 2, where rapper Nas will headline on the Friday, Wizkid – who collaborated with Drake on global hit “One Dance” – will head up the Saturday line-up, and Sunday’s feature is reggae star Damian Marley.

More acts are due to be announced in the coming weeks, with the organisers saying they want to “engage and inspire local, national and international communities of composers, performers, creators and concert-goers through world-class performances”.

Tickets go on general sale next Wednesday, December 19, and are not cheap, starting from £50 for one day, up to £135 for a three-day pass.

But Croydon residents with valid postcodes can get in early on a 48-hour pre-sale window. Continue reading →

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Pantomime spirit is alive and well in Coulsdon. Oh yes it is!

Posted on December 15, 2018 by insidecroydon

The ensemble cast at Coulsdon’s pantomime provided a night to remember

As the Fairfield Halls approaches a third ‘dark’ Christmas, for the first time in living memory, there is no ‘Croydon Pantomime’ this year. Except, as our intrepid arts correspondent BELLA BARTOCK discovered this week, there are community drama groups keeping the season spirit alive and well

Beauty, Lauren Edmonds, and the Beast, played by Sean Young. Wait for the big reveal…

Next week, it will be Cinderella at Ruskin House. Next month, the Sanderstead AmDram group will be taking to the boards with their annual production. And for the past fortnight, it has been Beauty And The Beast that has been wowing the locals down in Coulsdon.

There was surprisingly little space left in the car park when my companion, Claudia de Boozy, and I arrived in my Ford Popular, and given the problems with the clutch, I was grateful that the nice people at Theatre Workshop Coulsdon had arranged a reserved parking spot for me. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Comedy, Coulsdon, Dance, Music, Theatre, Theatre Workshop Coulsdon | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Buck-ing the trend: Croydon Labour staffer challenges Mayor

Posted on December 14, 2018 by insidecroydon

Political editor WALTER CRONXITE reports on wranglings within Labour in south London over the social cleansing of working class areas

Croydon’s Labour party ‘organiser’ Jack Buck: has spoken out against Mayor Khan

An employee of the Labour Party in Croydon has condemned Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan for having a gentrification agenda in south London.

Speaking up for working class and migrant residents, Jack Buck, the Croydon Labour borough-wide “organiser”, has put the people ahead of party interest.

City Hall has this week given approval for a controversial redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, as proposed by Delancey. Delancey is the  private property development company run by Jamie Ritblat which, with Qatari money, bought up London’s Olympic Village after the 2012 Games and made vast profits from the publicly funded development.

Now, they want to take the down-to-earth working class area and transform it into a money-spinning retail and leisure Nirvana.

According to Buck, the approval of the Mayor of London for the scheme at the Elephant has been granted “without addressing the serious concerns of our working class and migrant community”. Continue reading →

Posted in "Hammersfield", Business, Housing, Jack Buck, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Southwark Council, Whitgift Centre | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

GPs told not to prescribe for colic, diarrhoea or threadworms

Posted on December 14, 2018 by insidecroydon

A senior Town Hall figure says that he is “appalled” that Croydon’s NHS has asked the borough’s doctors to stop giving prescriptions for minor ailments.

The move follows guidance from NHS England on those health conditions that should now be treated by the patient through “self care”, and not by a doctor.

Conditions for which GP care will be denied and prescriptions will be withheld include acute sore throat, infant colic, oral thrush, cradle cap, adult diarrhoea, mild cystitis and threadworms.

The cost to the NHS of prescriptions for minor ailments in Croydon last year was £2,542,864.

Croydon NHS thinks that there are savings to be made from getting patients to by-pass their GPs and going straight to Boot’s instead. Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Pelling, Croydon CCG, Health | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Struggling Whitgiftians face tough derby trip to Hamsey Green

Posted on December 14, 2018 by insidecroydon

RUGBY ROUND-UP: Croydon sides are top of Surrey 2 and second in Surrey 1 going into the Christmas break

It’s the Big One at Hamsey Green tomorrow, the hottest derby fixture in Croydon rugby, with the district’s two top sides going head-to-head with plenty of scores to settle.

Old MidWhitgiftians have been in impressive form in Surrey 1 this season

In the senior XVs’ final match of 2018, Warlingham host Old Whitgiftians keen to assert local bragging rights after the old boys’ side got one over their neighbours in London and South-East Div 3SW, back in September.

That remains Old Whits’ only league victory of the season, as the Surrey 1 champions of 2017-2018 have struggled to come to terms with the demands of the higher division.

They meet a Warly team which is determined to go into the Christmas break with a victory, after going three games without a win. Not that all of the last month’s Warlingham performances have been poor: a surprising 17-14 at struggling Petersfield last Saturday was gutting, but the draw at Battersea Ironsides last month was also frustratingly close to the kind of outcome which would have put Croydon’s biggest rugby club well in the mix at the top of the table.

Indeed, a battling 23-12 defeat a fortnight ago to division leaders Winchester (who have a perfect 11-win record), has given Warlingham confidence. Continue reading →

Posted in Old Mid-Whitgiftians/Trinity RFC, Old Walcountians, Old Whitgiftians, Purley-John Fisher, Rugby Union, Sport, Streatham-Croydon RFC, Warlingham RFC | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Christmas superstitions and myths, South Norwood, Dec 17

Posted on December 14, 2018 by insidecroydon

Why do we associate misteltoe with Christmas time?
Do cattle in cow sheds really kneel down at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve?
Has anyone born on December 25 ever seen a ghost?
And how did the tradition of a Yule log (one to burn, rather than the chocolate sponge roll cake bought from Marks and Sparks) begin?

Answers to these questions and many more about the midwinter seasonal superstitions – some of which date back to Medieval and even pagan times – will be provided when George Hoyle, a folk performer, storyteller and music promoter, gives a free talk at the Shelverdine Goathouse pub in South Norwood on Monday night, December 17, from 7pm.

Continue reading →

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