Car crash: the wreckage from the two-vehicle smash parked up outside Lidl this morning All photos © A Cooper/InsideCroydon 2025
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOSTORY by AUSTEN COOPER
The Purley Way is best avoided on most Saturday mornings, but that was especially the case today after a two-car crash saw a mile-long stretch of one of Croydon’s busiest urban motorways closed to traffic.
Both drivers needed hospital treatment, with one, a man in his 50s, in a critical condition. Continue reading
Hundreds of members of the London Renters Union took to the streets of the capital today to protest at soaring rents while landlords, and their agents, continue to record often obscene profits.
Time for action: London Renters Union members have been protesting for rent controls and an end to S21 evictions
The protest is part of a Global Day of Housing Action, joining tens of thousands of people across the world to demand homes for people, not for profit.
Outside the Shoreditch offices of estate agent giant Foxtons, Londoners rallied against ever-rising rents, corporate greed and a housing system that’s pushing families to the brink.
In Croydon, we have heard of a case of someone working as a porter at an NHS hospital forced to spend 90% of their modest wage on rent – leaving precious little for food, heating, transport or just… life. Continue reading
INSIDE SUTTON: With Nigel Farage’s limited company picking up council seats across the country, BERTIE WORCESTER-PARK reports on how they might impact the latest by-election in Carshalton South and Clockhouse
Limited company: might Farridge sway the outcome of a Sutton council by-election, where Reform’s candidate is a ‘top fan’ of a Tommy Robinson associate?
With the far-right Reform UK riding high in the opinion polls, and Nigel Farage’s mug a constant feature of news bulletins and spouting his anti-immigrant rhetoric in a televised party political broadcast this week, the party has opted to select a “top fan” of a Tommy Robinson associate as their candidate in the upcoming Carshalton South and Clockhouse council by-election.
The full list of nominations for the by-election, to be held on May 22, was released by Sutton Council yesterday and comprises six candidates. Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: The new owners of The Dog and Bull on Surrey Street are installing new sound systems for DJ sessions in the beer garden of the Grade II-listed building, as £125,000 refurb works over-run
Tradition erased: the new owners claim that the pub’s customers are fine about the name change
Surrey Street Market shoppers and pub regulars are in for a bit of a shock, and some disappointment, when they next pop in to Croydon’s oldest pub for a swift one. For The Dog and Bull is to be no more, and there won’t be any trace of Young’s bitter or Special on offer at the bar of the historic boozer.
The local branch of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, has criticised the pub’s owners’ decision to change its historic name, calling it an “unnecessary change”.
The pub changed hands at the end of March, bought by Punch Pubs and shifted into what they call their “Laine portfolio”. The first thing they did was to close the doors and start a £125,000 refurbishment, mostly of the beer garden area. Continue reading
RUGBY ROUND-UP: The 2024-2025 Surrey Veterans’ competition ended much as the 2023-2024 season did – quietly, in farce, another signal of the grassroots’ game’s sad decline
A 50-season career of playing rugby, old man and boy, has staggered to an unsatisfactory end for Johnny Dobbyn, and through no fault of his own.
Hanging his boots up: Johnny Dobbyn’s final game came a month sooner than he had hoped
Dobbyn, who played his first match as a John Fisher schoolboy in 1975, was hoping to turn out for his last game tomorrow, in the final of the Surrey Vets’ Cup.
But, as last year, the composite veterans’ team made up of players from Purley John Fisher and Chipstead, Fish ’n Chips RFC (geddit?) have advanced all the way to the final without once having to play a match, and yesterday they were advised that they win the cup by default once again, as their hoped-for opposition, Trinity, can’t get a full team together for the auspicious occasion.
And Dobbyn, the occasional rugby correspondent for this website who has dug deep into the difficulties of local grassroots clubs in recruiting and retaining playing members, has a typically forthright message to those he regards as responsible for this disappointing and farcical situation: “Fuck the RFU!” Continue reading
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, on the grumblings of disaffection among ‘loyal’ Labour members in Croydon
What’s left of Labour’s membership in Croydon, even those described as being part of the “loyal mainstream”, are getting increasingly unhappy with the way the party is run under Keir Starmer and his all-powerful henchman, Morgan McSweeney.
A motion was raised at last night’s all-members’ meeting of the Croydon East Constituency Labour Party which was strongly critical of officials in London Region for their delayed and bungled organisation of the party’s mayoral selection earlier this month, and demanding some indication of when Croydon Labour will be removed from “special measures”.
The motion was passed without a single dissenting vote. Continue reading
Croydon Airport and the Aerodrome Hotel have teamed up to host a series of events over the May Bank Holiday to mark the 95th anniversary of one of the most significant flights in aviation history.
High-flyer: the 95th anniversary of Amy Johnson’s record-breaking flight to Australia is being celebrated on bank holiday weekend May 3-4
In 1930, Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, setting off in her little biplane from Croydon Airport.
Now, with funding from Arts Council England, Amy 95 is being staged at venues just off the Purley Way (and beyond) on May 3 and 4, with a family-friendly programme of events aimed to inspire future aviation enthusiasts.
Activities will include guided tours of the world’s first Air Traffic Control Tower, children’s workshops, a temporary Amy Johnson exhibition and even a rare biplane flypast.
The Flying High weekend will celebrate Johnson’s legacy, over the anniversary weekend of her incredible Australia flight. Continue reading
Our education correspondent, GENE BRODIE, on how private equity firms are circuling around a profitable private schools business
Profitable business: Cognita, which owns Cumnor House, is up for sale
The company which owns Croydon’s Cumnor House prep schools and nurseries is reported to be considering putting their global business up for sale for £5billion.
The news was broken yesterday in a report in The Times newspaper – just before Cumnor House stages its annual open days for prospective customers parents.
Cognita, the parent company, operates more than 100 fee-paying schools across 17 countries around the world.
“We are proud to be part of this community and actively help to shape it,” the Cumnor House schools say of Cognita on their website. Continue reading
The ‘slum-like’ conditions of ‘dangerous squalor’ in council flats on Regina Road caused a national scandal in 2021. Only now, and £30m of spending later, is the housing regulator satisfied that council housing in the borough meets proper standards. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Demolition work: four years after the shocking reports on ITV News, the Regina Road tower blocks are coming down
In what the council’s housing chief calls “a milestone”, Croydon’s social housing provision has been taken out of special measures, four years after the Regina Road scandal that shocked the nation.
In an internal memo distributed to council staff, Susmita Sen, Croydon’s “corporate director of housing”, said: “I am really pleased to announce that the council has received confirmation that the regulatory notice placed on housing services for breaches of the Regulator’s Consumer Standards in 2021 has been removed.
“This is a big milestone for Croydon and shows how far we have come in our housing improvement journey.” Continue reading
The Big Lunch returns on June 7 and 8 – the annual event for neighbours and communities to come together for friendship, food, fun and celebrating where you live.
The deadline to apply to Croydon Council to hold a Big Lunch event in your local park or on your street is Friday May 9.
More details can be found on the council website. Continue reading
Deadline: 12pm 16 May 2025
The Pavilion, London Road
On behalf of Big Local Broad Green, Local Trust is seeking an organisation to take on a long-term lease and management of a new community hub on London Road, Broad Green.
The Pavillion is a key legacy project of Big Local Broad Green (BLBG), a 10-year initiative which has seen £1m invested into the Broad Green area since 2016. The Pavilion will become a vibrant and inclusive community space, delivering services and activities collaboratively with a range of local stakeholders for the benefit of Broad Green residents long into the future.
Broad Green and the surrounding area of West Croydon has a rich history of voluntary and community sector activity led by strong and credible community partners. Local Trust, in collaboration with the residents of BLBG, now seeks a locally rooted organisation with strong community connections to take on the long-term lease and management of The Pavilion and surrounding community garden.
The successful organisation must demonstrate experience in delivering community services and activities within the Broad Green area of West Croydon. Crucially, they must also be committed to realising the vision of transforming the Pavilion into a dynamic and thriving community space, which supports the residents of Broad Green to feel connected, resilient to change and proud to live in the area. Continue reading
Race to the line: getting into the city centre for Sunday’s London Marathon could prove more difficult than many might have hoped, due to Network Rail engineering works on Thameslink
Runners and spectators travelling into the city for this Sunday’s London Marathon face disruption and possible crowding on Thameslink services from East Croydon, as Network Rail is conducting engineering works on the day of the world’s biggest 26.2-mile road race.
Despite such a big event going on in the capital, with runners and spectators needing to get to the race start at Blackheath, to other points along the route or to the finish on The Mall, Network Rail has decided that it will close the main Thameslink route, which usually carries 11 trains per hour on Sundays. Continue reading
CronxWatch’s latest video report is out, taking a close look into the murky depths of monopoly supplier Thames Water.
From Thames Water’s company’s head office in Reading, to the much-polluted River Wandle, via the Croydon Water Tower, Cronxwatch tries to find out exactly why our bills are rising while our service deteriorates, and what the government is planning to do about it, as evermore sewage gets pumped into our rivers, streams and waterways.
CronxWatch is Croydon-centric video journalism with a YouTube twist. Think Brass Eye meets Private Eye, but for the internet age. Continue reading
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Without any advance notice, the borough’s bureaucrats have unleashed on the public an imperfect system to handle Council Tax enquiries. EXCLUSIVE by KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
Live now!: how council staff were advised of the launch of the AI Assistant on the Fisher’s Folly intranet
The robots have started their takeover of Croydon Council. And so far, the council admits, they are only working properly 80% of the time.
Croydon Council is, of course, the local authority that bans its staff from finding out about what is going on in their own borough. It also seems to be a council that doesn’t want Croydon residents to find out that they are being used as part of an experiment for the borough’s bureaucrats’ new “customer-facing” Artificial Intelligence.
The council quietly slipped out an announcement in a remote corner of the authority’s little-read official website yesterday. Continue reading
Katie Hurley’s hit show from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe is finally coming home.
The co-producer of the annual Croydonites Festival wrote and starred in her one-woman show at the world’s biggest fringe festival last summer, where You’re So F**king Croydon! was praised for being “Sharp, clever and fun”.
And now there is a long-awaited chance to see Hurley perform her play actually in Croydon, when she rounds off a brief tour with a one-night only performance at Stanley Halls on Friday, May 16. Continue reading
CROYDON IN CRISIS: In sinister moves that raise fundamental questions about freedom of speech and democracy, council officials have ordered a block on elected councillors emailing this website.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Siege mentality: Katherine Kerswell’s council has blocked access to this website for staff – though they can still read The S*n online or watch YouTube videos
There’s a growing sense of a siege mentality and paranoia among the executives who inhabit the loftier floors of Fisher’s Folly, after it was confirmed that Croydon Council staff have been blocked from reading Inside Croydon.
In an extraordinary anti-democratic attack on freedom of speech, even elected councillors have found that they are banned from using their Croydon Council email accounts to contact this website.
Jason Perry, the elected Tory Mayor at the crisis-hit council, has just awarded himself and the borough’s 70 councillors a pay rise, as well as nodding through hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of added costs with generous salary increases for senior staff.
For example, chief executive Katherine Kerswell’s handsome £192,000 per year, plus exes, pension contributions and the nice little earner that is her fees as election returning officer, has been deemed to be inadequate. So Kerswell was handed a £12,000 per year pay hike, putting her on £204,000 pa.
The pay bands of the council’s other top earners remains something of a mystery. The Tax Payers’ Alliance’s annual Town Hall Rich List has drawn a blank on Croydon for 2025, the second year running. All because under Kerswell, Croydon has failed again to file its accounts.
Quite properly, this ought to be a matter of considerable concern, since despite Perry’s pledge to “Fix the Finances”, Croydon continues to be burdened by debts of £1.4billion, while it has a projected overspend for this financial year of £100million. And all this, and Kerswell’s pay rises, are to be paid for by residents who since 2023, under Mayor Perry, have been hit by Council Tax increases of 27%. Continue reading
London Rivers Week returns from Friday May 30 to Sunday June 8, with a theme for 2025 being “quality rivers for all” – emphasising access to nature and good quality blue and green spaces.
“From river restoration to litter-pick sessions, guided walks and webinars, London Rivers Week has something for everyone,” the organisers say.
The festival will offer a wide range of free activities, including a series of walks, talks, events, and seminars focusing on nature and rivers.
The principal organisations running London Rivers Week are the Environment Agency, Thames21, the South East Rivers Trust, London Wildlife Trust, the Zoological Society of London, CPRE London and the Thames Estuary Partnership. In addition to these organisations, many other groups run and contribute to events, walks, talks and seminars to demonstrate the value of rivers. Continue reading
Oil fire: the London Fire Brigade believes that hot oil in the takeaway kitchen was the cause of the fire on South End on Sunday night
Half of the ground floor and the ducting in the extraction system from the ground floor to the roof were damaged by a fire on Sunday night at the less-than-Perfect Chicken takeway on South End.
Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus led a woman and a child to safety from the flats above the fried chicken shop via an internal staircase. There were no reports of any injuries. Continue reading
Like Banquo’s ghost, Jo Negrini has returned to haunt Croydon after her latest jaunt to the south of France for the annual “booze and hooker fest” – or prestigious international property conference – that is MIPIM.
Haunting Croydon: Jo Negrini, the former chief exec at Croydon, was back at MIPIM this year
When “Negreedy” was the over-paid and over-rated chief executive of Croydon Council, she would make the trip to Cannes on an annual basis with her closest work colleagues, such as the recently departed and unlamented Heather Cheesbrough (now the council’s former “director of planning and sustainable regeneration”).
Even discredited ex-council leader Tony Newman saw MIPIM for what it is: he called it “a junket”, but that didn’t stop him allowing Negrini to head off for almost a week each March on an all-expenses-paid mini-break. Continue reading
Croydon Cougars Basketball Club made history last week, as their under-16s boys’ squad became the first team from Britain to win at the Globasket youth tournament staged each year in Barcelona.
Globasket champions: the victorious Croydon Cougars under-16s
Globasket, in its 10th year, features more than 4,000 players across a range of age groups drawn from clubs in 20 countries.
Led by standout performances from Jerome Williams and Aziah Brown, the Cougar under-16s went undefeated through the pool stage, won their semi-final in a nail-biting one-point thriller and mounted a dramatic comeback in the final to seal victory in the closing minute.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct has been called in to investigate the circumstances surrounding a high-speed police chase from South Norwood to Shirley on Friday night that left one man dead and six others needing hospital treatment.
Police pursuit: the car chase began when a vehicle failed to stop for a search
The driver of the car being chased by police died after a crash with two other cars on Wickham Road, close to the often busy roundabout off Shirley Road.
According to the Metropolitan Police, the man who died, who was 63 years old, was suspected of using cloned number plates on his car.
His two passengers, both men aged 61, were arrested on suspicion of being carried in a stolen vehicle. One was also arrested for possession of Class A drugs. Continue reading
A haven of calm in the centre of Croydon: Archbishop Whitgift had the Almhouses quad based on that of a Cambridge college
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: There will be an opportunity later this year to take a sneak peak back in time, to 400 years ago. DAVID MORGAN recently visited one of Croydon’s oldest buildings, that trace their history back to the time of the Spanish Armada. Photographs: LEE TOWNSEND
Generous benefactor: the portrait of Archbishop John Whitgift that hangs in the Chapel of the Croydon Almshouses
Picture a scene in Croydon where there are a lot of people unemployed, several living on the streets, begging for food or a few coins in order to survive.
What might be done to help?
Many people wrung their hands, do nothing or even looked away. A few found a coin or two to help people out. One person, however, realised the seriousness of the situation and understood that he was in a position to help. He set out to improve the plight of many lives.
It was the late 16th Century, in the reign of Elizabeth I. Her Archbishop of Canterbury was moved to action. John Whitgift was on a mission. Continue reading
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