Recent Comments
Jim Bush on Purley’s purdah banner i… William Winterford on Purley’s purdah banner i… derekthrower on Perry makes no formal interven… Gerry Cowie on Purley’s purdah banner i… Arfur Towcrate on Purley’s purdah banner i… John Osborne on Councillors wave through 676 f…
Coulsdon councillor exposed as advising corporate lobbyists
Political editor WALTER CRONXITE on the latest little sideline of one of Croydon’s leading Tories
Downing Street adviser Creatura has been caught out agreeing to advise lobbyists
Coulsdon Conservative councillor Mario Creatura, who has a job at No10 Downing Street as a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Theresa Mayhem, may have broken the Civil Service code after he agreed to speak at a private event for a corporate lobbyist and their wealthy clients.
The oleaginous Creatura used to work as bag carrier to gaffe-prone Gavin Barwell when he was an MP.
When Barwell was rejected by the electors of Croydon Central at the 2017 General Election, he was appointed as chief of staff at No10. Barwell then quickly set about creating a Croydon clique in Downing Street, recruiting a number of his old mates to well-paid Civil Service jobs, including Creatura, who washed up in Whitehall on a SPAD’s generous salary of up to £70,000, basically for looking after the PM’s Twitter feed.
Now the Red Roar website has obtained evidence that shows Creatura lined up as a speaker for a private event organised by lobbyist FleishmanHillard Fishburn this Wednesday.
“The invitation promises to teach attendees how to ‘reach politicians and impact policy’,” the website reports.
More retailers in peril as Green scandal hits the High Street
It may yet become known among retailers as “Black Thursday”, the day when the doomed fate of Britain’s High Street was sealed.
Croydon-born Philip Green: adverse publicity may yet impact his retail empire
It was certainly a day when the business case for the long-delayed £1.4billion redevelopment of the Whitgift and Centrale shopping centres became even weaker.
While the controversy surrounding Croydon-born Philip Green – the one-time “King of the High Street” – was dominating the newspaper headlines and broadcast news bulletins, less attention was being afforded to another announcement which would have sent a chill down the spine of those invested in retailing.
Department store chain Debenhams on Thursday posted record annual losses of £491.5million and said it will close up to 50 stores, putting 4,000 jobs at risk. That amounts to almost one-third of all its stores, and is five times as many closures as the business had previously planned. Continue reading
Posted in "Hammersfield", Business, Centrale, Debenhams, House of Fraser, Whitgift Centre
Tagged Centrale, Debenhams, Hammersfield, Hammerson, House of Fraser, Kate Moss, Philip Green, Westfield, Whitgift Centre
8 Comments
Belmont election shock #1: ‘I didn’t want to quit as councillor’
Our Sutton reporter, BERTIE WORCESTER-PARK, on a stunning admission which fuels speculation that some of the borough’s Tories were keen to find a way to get their deputy leader back on the council
In a remarkable admission made to Inside Sutton just before the polls closed on Thursday, Patrick McManus, the Conservative councillor who resigned his seat in Belmont ward, claimed that he had not wanted to quit at all.
The by-election was called by Sutton Council after McManus’s resignation at the end of August, barely four months after he had stood for and been re-elected to the council in May.
The vacancy was a conveniently early opportunity for Neil Garratt to return to Sutton Council. “Father Jack” Garratt had been Sutton Tories’ deputy leader until he lost his Beddington South ward to the LibDems in May.
Garratt was duly elected in Belmont ward this Thursday, after a sometimes acrimonious little spat of a by-election. Continue reading
Posted in Neil Garratt, Ruth Dombey, Sutton Council, Tim Crowley
Tagged Belmont, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Neil Garratt, Patrick McManus, Ruth Dombey, Sutton Council, Tim Crowley
1 Comment
Croydon social workers ‘demoralised’, say Ofsted inspectors
One year on and Ofsted inspectors are still seriously dissatisfied with the pace of improvement in Croydon’s children’s services department.
Slow progress: Tony Newman and Alisa Flemming have failed to implement the required changes in children’s services
Croydon’s children’s services were declared “inadequate” in an Ofsted inspectors’ report in September 2017, and today the inspectors have issued their latest update, following their visit – their fourth – which took place earlier this month.
According to Ofsted, morale among social work staff is very low, while a high turnover of staff continues to be a problem in providing stability, for the staff and the children they work for, and continuity of service.
This is despite Croydon’s Labour-run council throwing an extra £5million (at least) at the children’s services department in the past 12 months, mainly to recruit more social workers.
Yet social workers’ caseloads remain excessively high, leading to low frequency of visits to clients, the inspectors note. Their report states, “Social workers … report an unsettled period. This is reflected in staff turnover and some staff report that they feel demoralised about working in the service.” Continue reading
Fare rises and jerk chicken: Tory Bailey hasn’t much to offer
Shaun Bailey, left, with some other bloke
Shaun Bailey, recently named as the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, was in Croydon last night for what the local Tories tried to bill as a Black History Month event.
KEN TOWL went along to see what Bailey had to say for himself
First, let me say that the jerk chicken was great.
I mean really good, so much so that I took a photo of it. Continue reading
Southern could have acted to avoid £2 cash machine charges
Southern Rail, possibly the world’s least popular train operators, could have taken steps to ensure that their passengers would not be subject to £2 transaction charges at the cash machines by East Croydon and other stations – but they chose not to do so.
That’s the latest, startling revelation arising from enquiries prompted by the cash machine charges being imposed in the past week at East Croydon, South Croydon and other stations on the Govia Thameslink network, which includes Southern trains.
The head of a banking think-tank called the charges – for rail passengers wishing to access their own money – “A very worrying trend.” Continue reading
Tories retain Belmont council seat after needless by-election
CARL SHILTON, our Sutton reporter, on the outcome of a council by-election which was entirely unnecessary
After a six-month absence, Neil “Father Jack” Garratt is back as a councillor in Sutton.
Garratt, the deputy leader of the Conservatives in Sutton until he lost his council seat in May’s local elections (“Feck! Bollocks!” he is widely assumed to have said at the time), seized the opportunity presented by the apparently unnecessary resignation of one of his erstwhile council colleagues in Belmont ward and was duly elected in yesterday’s resultant by-election to resume the collection his £11,000 allowances with immediate effect.
On a 36 per cent turn out, Garratt took 47 per cent of the vote, with Jean Duster, the candidate for Sutton’s ruling LibDems, on 37.6 per cent. Labour’s Marian Wingrove, despite canvassing efforts by activitists from across Sutton and Croydon, trailed a long way back in third, on 10.7 per cent.
Posted in Neil Garratt, Niall Bolger, Nick Mattey, Ruth Dombey, Sutton Council
Tagged Belmont, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Neil Garratt, Sutton Council, Tory
Leave a comment
Dinner winners look to move into Portland Road building
After 18 months of serving up thousands of delicious meals, using what would otherwise be unwanted and surplus food, the South Norwood Community Kitchen could soon be on the move. But rest assured, they won’t be going far…
Dinner winners: the Community Kitchen team with their recent council civic award
The community initiative is the idea of local couple Laura Whittall and Paul Mitchell, started in April last year, and has been operating out of a church hall in Oliver Grove. Using donations from supermarkets and allotment-holders, it has been providing hot meals and the chance to come together for a laugh and a natter for a couple of hours each Saturday.
But they have been seeking larger, dedicated premises to enable them to expand their operations, and even provide even more free meals for the community.
After months of negotiations, they may be close to getting to use the council-owned Socca Cheta building on Portland Road. Continue reading
Cash machine charges being introduced across rail network
Charges of £2 a time just to withdraw your own money from cash machines at railway stations are here to stay, according to a group of commuter activists.
As Inside Croydon revealed earlier this week, transaction charges have been imposed on the cash machines at East Croydon Station.
Our loyal reader has confirmed that a similar change has been introduced in the past week at South Croydon Station.
And now the Association of British Commuters, the busy battlers on behalf of beleaguered rail passengers, suggest that the charges are being implemented at cash machines throughout the rail network.
Tory MP’s Brexit ignorance that borders on the laughable
WALTER CRONXITE, our political editor, on how Croydon’s Tory MP showed himself to be excess baggage when it comes to finding solutions to some of the tougher problems of exiting the EU
It’s not just Labour politicians in Croydon who, to borrow a phrase, make themselves look like twats on Twitter.
Twit: Tory MP Chris Philp
Chris Philp, the shrinking violet (not) who is Conservative MP for Croydon South, has been widely ridiculed on social media after he tweeted a picture of a dedicated cul-de-sac road from Switzerland over French territory to Mulhouse-Basel airport, to try to make the case that the Northern Ireland hard border issue is easily resolved through technology.
If Switzerland needs no customs posts at its borders with the EU, Philp’s Boris Johnson-inspired argument seemed to suggest, then a similar solution can be used between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom after Brexit Day next March.
“This is what EU Customs Union border can look like – Flughafenstrasse in Basel on Swiss (not in CU) French (in CU) border. There is a little sign and a small camera of the kind seen on every high street. There are technical solutions to ensuring no hard border NI/RoI,” Philp tweeted attaching a picture without a customs officer in sight. Continue reading
Posted in Chris Philp MP, Croydon South
Tagged Brexit, Chris Philp MP, Conservative, Croydon South, Tory
1 Comment
Shared ownership is an unaffordable joke, says Standard
Things must be bad when even London estate agents’ weekly booster pages identify how one of the housing market’s on-trend deals is failing to deliver.
One of these men has no need for shared ownership
Today’s Homes and Property advertorial section in the Evening Standard (Editor: Gideon Osborne) lays into shared ownership in the capital for the unaffordable sham that it has become.
“Is shared-ownership ‘affordable’ for the average Londoner?” the headline asks, before offering its own answer: “You must be joking.”
This won’t do much to prompt laughs at the council-funded housing developers Brick by Brick in Croydon, for whom shared ownership has been a vital crutch in their failing efforts towards their target for providing affordable homes.
Indeed, it does not take much reading between the lines to see that shared ownership is becoming just another ruse used for social cleansing, forcing lower paid workers out of an area to make way for Yuppies. Continue reading
Transport report for £40m school ‘mysteriously’ disappears
Residents in Belmont go to the polls in a council by-election tomorrow, where Tory candidate Neil ‘Father Jack’ Garratt is expected to win. One factor could be the growing concerns over road safety around a new secondary school.
Our Sutton correspondent, BERTIE WORCESTER-PARK, reports
Residents and councillors in Belmont are increasingly worried after a new Harris Academy secondary school has opened in their neighbourhood without the required road safety measures being put in place.
When planning was granted for the six-form-entry Harris Academy last summer, much was made at the planning meeting of the council’s and the school’s “commitment” to road safety issues.
But nearly two months into the school year, and Sutton Council has failed to implement conditions imposed by the planning committee and its own planning department, leading to accusations that the planning process was a sham and that the safety of the borough’s school children is a low priority for the LibDem-run administration.
More sinister is the fact that important transport and travel plan documents that were part of the original application for the temporary school building have mysteriously disappeared from the council’s planning portal. Continue reading
DWP owes council more than £1m for housing, says Butler
Alison Butler, the council deputy leader who failed to declare that her son worked for an agency that was hired by the borough, has today entered the row over the chaos that is Universal Credit, calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide millions more in hard cash to fix the mess of the DWP’s creating.
“Universal Credit is a mess,” says Butler.
Butler, who is also the Labour council’s cabinet member for housing, has written a column for the Inside Housing website, a week ahead of Philip Hammond, the Tory Government’s Chancellor, making his annual Budget speech.
The DWP – Department for Work and Pensions – has come in for withering criticism over its roll-out of Universal Credit, a Tory benefits reform policy which has been described as “friendless and forlorn”.
Former Prime Ministers John Major and Gordon Brown have both likened UC to the hated Poll Tax, and even the Tory politician responsible for dreaming up the new system, Iain Duncan-Smith, has said Universal Credit urgently needs as much as £3billion extra to avoid families sliding into penury.
The reality, though, is that thousands of families are already forced to endure unnecessary hardships created by the botched Universal Credit system. Continue reading
Brick by Brick’s first new homes won’t be occupied until 2019
BARRATT HOLMES, our housing correspondent, on how the borough’s ‘award-winning’ house building company has taken nearly four years to build its first house
House-builder Brick by Brick now won’t have its first home occupied until 2019
The first homes built by Brick by Brick, Croydon Council’s loss-making house builders, won’t be available to be lived in until “early in the New Year”.
That will be nearly four years since the Labour-run council set-up the housing development company, the brainchild of the council chief exec, Jo “We’re Not Stupid” Negrini and run by the council’s senior development executive, Colm Lacey.
It means that in its first four years of existence, loss-making Brick by Brick have received more awards from their architect and developer mates than they have built homes.
Posted in Alison Butler, Brick by Brick, Colm Lacey, Croydon Council, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Housing, Jo Negrini, London-wide issues, Paul Scott, Planning, Property, Tony Newman
Tagged Alison Butler, Brick by Brick, Colm Lacey, Croydon Council, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Jo Negrini, Labour, London Borough of Croydon, Paul Scott, Tony Newman
1 Comment
MP backs Network Rail plans to unblock Croydon bottleneck
Croydon leads the way in one respect, at least: it has become the “most challenging bottleneck on Britain’s railway”.
There’s a lot of work to be done by if Network Rail is to future-proof Croydon’s railways into the 2030s
That’s according to Network Rail, and they should know.
Network Rail has announced a public consultation into its multi-million-pound plans to fix that issue and open up the south coast railway through to central London, including an enlarged East Croydon Station with two additional platforms, and a series of rail “flyovers” at Selhurst to improve what it calls “the current ‘spaghetti junction’”, where lines from the south coast, Sussex and Surrey meet those to and from London Victoria, London Bridge and beyond.
Plus they want to provide improvements at Norwood Junction and a new bridge in Addiscombe. Continue reading
Cash machines that gobble up even more of your money
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Beware hidden banking charges, writes SHEILA ANDREWS, pictured right, as Croydon has more fee-charging cash machines than any other London borough, and has just got itself three more
Sunday afternoon, and I’m on my way to The Oval Tavern for a spot of lunch and a catch up with friends when I realise I’m short on cash.
“Never mind,” my partner says, “there are cash machines at East Croydon.”
The cash machines at East Croydon Station now levy a £1.99 fee for withdrawing your own money
But what’s going on here? £1.99 for the privilege of withdrawing my own money?
I’d never encountered this before at these machines, right beside Boxpark, on the way into the station.
Obviously refusing to pay this on principle, I trundle down George Street to the Co-Operative Bank, being the next nearest cash machine now, since the Lloyds Bank branch has closed and its machine withdrawn. But everyone else has beaten me to it and the Co-Op machine is empty. Continue reading
The Struggles of the Labour left, Ruskin House, Nov 8
The Croydon Assembly’s next meeting will discuss “The struggles of the Labour left”.
The meeting, on Thursday, November 8 at 7.30pm, will be held at Ruskin House when the speaker will be author Simon Hannah.
Left-wing trade unionists and socialists founded Labour in 1900 – since when the left has been an integral party of Labour.
But the left has often been an embattled minority, with the policies and leaders sidelined by the Labour right.
This began to change with Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 – but what are the lessons of the struggle of the Labour left historically to achieve radical social change? Continue reading
Posted in Activities, Community associations, Croydon TUC, History, Ruskin House
Tagged Croydon Assembly, Croydon TUC, Labour, Ruskin House
Leave a comment
Frost Fair, Honeywood Museum, Carshalton Ponds, Dec 1
Posted in Activities, Honeywood Museum
Tagged Carshalton, Friends of Honeywood Museum, Honeywood Museum
Leave a comment
Charity worker named winner of short story competition
A Croydon-based charity worker is one of 21 regional winners of the City of Stories writing competition, a scheme which inspired people to re-engage with libraries in record numbers.
Story-teller: Deborah Torr
Deborah Torr, aged 24, who works for the international development charity VSO, was named as the Croydon winner for her story The Dust on the Windowsill.
The story will be available, together with the other winning entries, in an anthology to be provided at an open mic writing workshop at Croydon Central Library next month.
Torr said: “I was so excited to hear I’d won as it’s the first piece of creative writing I’ve had published. It’s given me more motivation to pursue my writing.
“I started writing short stories when I was 10 years old, that was when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I had a great teacher that gave us the opportunity to be really imaginative.” Continue reading
Posted in Activities, Art, Education, Libraries
Tagged Croydon Central Library, Spread the Word
Leave a comment
Enough to make you physically sick: Labour official Chukas up
Pass the bucket… Croydon Labour’s self-proclaimed ‘borough organiser’ goes all Les Patterson
Our political editor, WALTER CRONXITE, on how the stresses and strains of Brexit are showing themselves in the local Labour Party
A Labour Party official who works in Croydon MP Sarah Jones’s office yesterday courted controversy and internal party division when he used social media to criticise Streatham’s Progress MP, Chuka Umunna.
Jack Buck is paid to be the professional organiser of Croydon Labour’s political campaigning.
Yesterday he posted a tweet in response to Umunna’s awkwardly cosy photographs on social media from the march for a People’s Vote, showing the Labour backbencher arm-in-arm with fellow Remainers, including Tory MP Anna Soubry.
It had all the charm and delicacy of Sir Les Patterson, Barry Humphries’ notoriously disgusting alter ego. Continue reading
Posted in Croydon Central, David White, Sarah Jones MP, Tony Newman
Tagged Croydon, Croydon Central, David White, Jack Buck, Sarah Jones MP, Tony Newman
3 Comments
Peace in our times? Veterans for Peace meeting, Oct 31
Sutton for Peace and Justice in association with Veterans For Peace UK are staging a public meeting:
NEVER AGAIN? 1918 to 2018, 100 years of war
on Wednesday October 31, 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm)
Sutton Quaker Meeting House, Cedar Road, Sutton, SM2 5DA
November 11 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice, when the slogan “Never again” was a common rally cry – never again should the world see the suffering wrought by the “War to end all wars”.
Yet a century later people continue to be killed in military conflict across the world. Continue reading
Posted in Activities, History
Tagged Sutton for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace
Leave a comment
