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Friends of Ryelands Swing Night, South Norwood, Feb 27
Posted in Community associations, Dance, Music, South Norwood
Tagged Friends of Ryelands, South Norwood
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Weekend rambles: Shipley to Knepp and back (2½ miles; easy)
Hammer Pond, one of the features seen on this gentle walk around West Sussex
Our non-resident rambler, WALKER DUNELM has made a welcome return from his travels, carrying notes from an expedition into West Sussex, with tales of Hilaire Beloc and sightings of rare wildlife
Shipley is a small village south-west of Horsham in West Sussex. From Croydon, you can get there by train from East Croydon (buses run from Horsham Station), or it is about a 50-minute drive down the A24.
Shipley was the home of the author Hilaire Belloc, the prolific writer at the turn of the 20th Century who may best be known for his Cautionary Tales for Children‘ such as “Matilda who told lies”, or his satire of the battles of the British Empire:
Whatever happens
We have got
The Gatling gun
And they have not
Posted in Outside Croydon, Walker Dunelm, Walks
Tagged WALKER DUNELM, Weekend Rambles
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Council flogs off Addington Hills cooling station on the cheap
While Croydon Council continues to push through schemes that concrete-over playing fields and public parks – Queen’s Gardens, at Coombe Wood and the site next to Ruskin House – yesterday saw the buffoons who handle the borough’s public property manage to throw away an opportunity to make millions from developing a brown field site in a prime location. Kirsty and Phil would be beside themselves…
Going for a song: £280,000 would have bought you this disused industrial building with tremendous views
A West End property auction saw the disused electricity cooling station in the Addington Hills put up for grabs by our hard-up council at a bargain-basement reserve price of just £75,000. Just across the road from the cooling station, houses on swanky Bishop’s Walk have been known to sell for more than £2million.
In the event, the cooling station reached £280,000. But that still seems cheap since planning permission to redevelop the site lucratively should be a foregone conclusion. The vendors – the council – are also the local planning authority, of course. They had been showing a bit of leg to potential buyers by having the auctioneers make it abundantly clear, “It is considered that the property may be suitable for redevelopment/change of use subject to the necessary consents. Interested parties should refer to The London Borough of Croydon planning department in this regard…”. Continue reading
Posted in Addington, Brick by Brick, Croydon Council, Croydon parks, Environment, Health, History, Housing, Jo Negrini, Planning
Tagged Addington Hills, Brick by Brick
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Brick by Brick ignore public again over Coombe Road scheme
The green space next to Ruskin House: Brick by Brick wants to squeeze nine dwellings on this patch of green space
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Today is your last chance to lodge comments – supportive or objecting – to the planning application from the council’s Brick by Brick house-builder to squeeze eight one-bed flats and a three-bedroomed house on a corner of open space next to the Grade II-listed Ruskin House on Coombe Road.
VALERIE HUNTER has read the council builders’ application in detail, and found a number of faults, errors and attempts to mislead
As far as I know, the only public engagement staged over the application for the small site next on Coombe Road was held at Ruskin House on December 13 by consultants NewmanFrancis. They reported back that residents who had seen the proposals were mostly concerned about traffic, pollution and loss of green space. They said that they would make Brick by Brick aware of this in their community engagement report.
In their planning application, Brick by Brick says that it “has responded to the feedback from residents by addressing the following key concerns”.
Yet none of the concerns expressed by residents to NewmanFrancis have been included in the planning application by Brick by Brick. Why not?
May Day! #SouthernFail get in their excuses for new timetable
Promising the biggest overhaul of commuter network timetables for decades, Southern and Thameslink’s boss does not sound too confident, reports transport correspondent JEREMY CLACKSON
Could the end of Croydon rail passengers’ misery be within sight?
Coming soon: a railway network that might provide something recognisable as a ‘service’
Passengers on new Thameslink trains will be stuck with the rigid, ironing board seats for years to come, but Govia, the rail operators in charge of Southern and Thameslink services, are gearing themselves up for the introduction of a completely overhauled timetable from May 20.
Yesterday, Nick Brown, the chief operating officer for Govia, wrote to “stakeholders”, outlining the benefits of the impending changes, following five years of track engineering works and two years’ worth of public consultations – you know the sort, ask people what they want, and then tell them what they’re going to get anyhow.
Certainly, Brown’s letter contained plenty of caveats, suggesting that work on managing expectations is already well underway. So don’t get your hopes up just yet… Continue reading
Posted in Commuting, East Croydon, Transport, West Croydon
Tagged East Croydon station, Govia Thameslink, Nick Brown, Southern Railway, Thameslink
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Sutton’s LibDems make a meal out of KFC planning decision
BELLE MONT threw a late shift last night at Sutton Council, and couldn’t even get a takeaway on the way home
Cheam Village, the epitome of Surrey suburban quaintness, is not ready for a KFC. With or without its supplies of chicken.
Cheam villagers prefer its Waitrose and Wildwood. The busy road junction and faded mock-Tudorbethan retail centre, it is felt, is a cut above Tony Hancock’s East Cheam. And it’s definitely superior to North Cheam.
Last night’s Sutton Council planning meeting brought high drama in front of an audience of more than 200 residents distressed by the prospect of Colonel Sanders’ Finger Lickin’ Good chicken reaching the streets of Cheam – and all that regardless of KFC’s recent “challenges” – Kentucky Fried no-chicken, thanks to shortcomings of new delivery partner DHL.
Sutton holds its planning meetings near the locations of its planning applications, encouraging council politicians to play up to a local audience on controversial proposals. That temptation for hyperbole gets even greater when there are just 10 weeks to local election day. Continue reading
Posted in Sutton Council, Tom Brake MP
Tagged Cheam Village, KFC, Mary Burstow, Sutton Council, Tony Shields
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CEO Negrini threatened legal action to protect The Godfather
There’s even more fall-out in the council’s botched attempt to cover-up the £787 per day IT consultant nepotism scandal
Jo Negrini: threatened legal action by the council to protect ‘The Godfather’
Jo Negrini, the council’s chief executive, threatened to use tax-payers’ money to sue this website on behalf of Graham Cadle, “The Godfather” at the centre of nepotism allegations first published by Inside Croydon.
Cadle, together with his colleagues and personal friends Karen Sullivan and Harwinder “Harry” Singh, have all left Croydon Council since the new year.
Last week, Inside Croydon published a confidential email from the chief exec, sent to elected councillors which many interpreted as a blatant attempt to “gag” them over a matter of legitimate public interest and a potential case of misfeasance of public funds.
But now we are able to reveal for the first time how Negrini has been using her public office in an effort to shut down all reporting of the matter.
Croydon needs to be in the zone to allow children to breathe
CROYDON COMMENTARY: The Mayor of London is consulting on the capital’s air quality, and PETER UNDERWOOD says it is important that people in Croydon make him aware that we need to be included in the extended Ultra Low Emissions Zone
The 1956 Clean Air Act was supposed to end London smogs
Air pollution is Croydon is a real problem and it is time we made our politicians act on it.
It is just over 60 years since the Clean Air Act was introduced. This Act followed the Great Smog of 1952 that killed more than 4,000 people and harmed the health of tens of thousands more. When the new legal controls were introduced – mainly over the kind of coal which homes and businesses could burn – the damage caused to our health and environment by that type of smog was greatly reduced.
But in the 21st Century, we face new threats, and yet again thousands of people are dying and suffering poor health as a result of filthy air. Evidence has shown that children growing up in polluted areas suffer life-long impacts in their health.
This year, according to New Scientist, London reached its annual air pollution limits before the end of January. That’s an entire year’s worth of pollution in less than one month. We have another 11 months of filthy air to come.
Posted in Caroline Russell, Croydon Council, Croydon Friends of the Earth, Croydon Greens, Environment, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Peter Underwood, Sadiq Khan, Waste incinerator
Tagged Caroline Russell, Croydon and Sutton Greens, Croydon Council, Croydon Friends of the Earth, London, London Borough of Croydon, Mayor, Peter Underwood, Sadiq Khan
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Local contractors hit as Viridor incinerator builders go bust
Our Sutton reporter, BELLE MONT, on the business collapse of the construction firm working on a £250m project at Beddington Lane
The construction firm which has been leading on the £250million build of the Viridor incinerator at Beddington Lane has gone into administration.
All fired up and ready to go: the Viridor incinerator at Beddington is almost completed
Initial reports on the Carillion-like collapse of Lagan Construction Group focused on the 200 jobs at risk at four companies based in Northern Ireland.
But here in south London, the collateral damage could spread far wider, as contractors on the Beddington Lane site were observed packing up their tools and equipment to leave, potentially unpaid by tens of thousands of pounds.
Inside Croydon understands that at least one contractor is owed £180,000 for work carried out on the incinerator site, and they fear that they may now get very little of their bill to Lagans paid off.
The construction of the incinerator was largely completed last year, and “hot trials” have been undertaken by operators Viridor since December. The operators still expect to fire up their industrial-scale furnaces later this year, as scheduled.
“Viridor is aware that four companies associated with Lagan Construction Group Holdings Limited are set to enter into administration,” a Viridor spokesperson said. Continue reading
Transport report for free school site rates it ‘poor’ to ‘worst’
Traffic on just a typical weekday morning rush hour on Coombe Road – but this is before the new free school adds at least 2,000 extra journeys daily to the location
Residents in South Croydon, living close to the site of the £30million free school which has been granted planning permission by Croydon Council, fear that the decision will make the 180 11-year-old first-year intake vulnerable to the high volume of traffic which races along Coombe Road when the school opens in September. Continue reading
Faithful hounds will have much to celebrate on birthday walk
The Surrey Sighthound Walking Group welcomes owners, and their dogs, for frequent group walks around some of the most beautiful countryside in and around Croydon
The Surrey Sighthound Walking Group will celebrate its first anniversary this Sunday, February 25, by returning to Mogador, near Kingswood, the site of its first group walk.
The group will set off from The Sportsman pub at 11am for a two-mile route around adjacent Banstead Heath, which takes in open grassland, the woods and passes the pond. Continue reading
Posted in Activities, Charity, Community associations, Walks
Tagged Surrey, Surrey Sighthounds Walking Group
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Tree planting day at Manor Farm Nature Space, Feb 25
Posted in Activities, Croydon parks, Environment, Norbury, Wildlife
Tagged Manor Farm Nature Space, Norbury
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Volunteers needed for South Norwood Community Festival
SNCF is seeking volunteers for this year’s festival
This year’s South Norwood Community Festival, staged in and around Norwood Junction with a week of varied activities staged over a week in late June, is seeking volunteers to help make the festival better than ever.
“Without volunteers we could not make this large free entry event happen,” the organisers say.
“There are wide variety of volunteer jobs available from organising areas of the festival to handing out programmes, placing signs and moving barriers on the day.” Continue reading
Posted in Activities, Music, Poetry, South Norwood
Tagged SNCF, South Norwood, South Norwood Community Festival
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Thames21’s Norbury Brook spring spruce up, Mar 10
Posted in Croydon parks, Environment, Norbury, Thornton Heath, Wildlife
Tagged Friends of Thornton Heath Rec, Norbury, Norbury Brook, Thornton Heath
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Whitgiftians move closer to securing Surrey rugby title
It’s not just the men rugby players who have been in winning form recently. Streatham-Croydon women (in maroon) won their fixture against Oxford University at Frant Road on Feb 10. Photo by CHRIS BOVELL
RUGBY ROUND-UP: With four local clubs in the division, Surrey 1 was always going to provide some keen interest this season. As Old Whitgiftians, MidWives, Walcountians and Chipstead enter the final lap of the 2018 club rugby race, no one might have predicted that they would occupy four of the top five places in the league.
It may be mid-February, but for the doughty amateurs of club rugby who have been slugging it out for six months, the finishing post is in sight, with just five league fixtures remaining after Saturday’s round of matches.
And with an eight-point lead in the division, Old Whitgiftians look like they are on their way to the Surrey title and promotion.
Following a good away win earlier this month at Law Society and a win over Old Freemans, Saturday’s 32-26 victory at Croham Road over Old Georgians, who had been their closest challengers, has put the Surrey 1 championship within Whits’ grasp.
But Saturday’s game was a tight-run thing. Continue reading
