Inside Croydon

Croydon’s cyclists seem likely to snub the £150 entry fee being demanded by the organisers of a charity event being staged as part of the town centre bike race next month.

It is the second year that Croydon has staged the evening criterion cycle race, after last year paying £148,000 to race organisers Sweet Spot to bring the event to south London. The council belatedly said that it spent £107,721 on last year’s race, and tried to claim the event generated £106,000 income, though it failed to provide any independent verification for its arse-covering figures.

Council leader Tony Newman is freewheeling towards another expensive night for Croydon

This year, it is attempting to add a chimera of respectability to its spending on the race by including a charity ride in its day-long timetable. Yet so half-baked has been the promotion of the event that one of Croydon’s biggest cycling clubs had not even heard of the charity race before they were contacted by Inside Croydon this week.

The night of cycle racing has become something of a vanity project for Croydon’s council leader, Tony Newman, who has insisted on going ahead with the event again after his ego got a massage through a brief TV interview which was broadcast at the dead of night by ITV4 last year.

After the 2015 event, the council said that the staging costs were all covered by sponsors – who included Croydon Council itself and some of its own contractors (from the profits they have made from working for the council). This year, the event appears to have attracted fewer local sponsors, as the council has so far listed just business group Croydon BID, TfL and builders Willmott Dixon.

The local council will doubtless again be picking up the tab for road closures and other works required to prepare the course for a couple of “international races”, which are largely contested by journeymen riders and watched – if 2015 is anything to go by – by disappointingly small crowds.  Continue reading →