The Crystal Palace Triangle is proud of its many diverse, independent traders and family buisnesses who provide an antidote to the increasingly identi-kit high streets found all over London. As part of this year’s Small Business Saturday, dozens of businesses in SE19 are joining forces to bring a bit of extra cheer to festive shoppers.
There’s more than 40 small retailers in the Crystal Palace Triangle, many of them co-operating for Small Business Saturday
On December 5, visitors to Crystal Palace will be able to whizz through their Christmas lists and be rewarded with a free beer, coffee or treat. Crystal Palace shops are “buddying up” with cafes, restaurants and pubs to show customers that Christmas shopping is to be enjoyed rather than endured, and that supporting small businesses benefits us all.
So where would you position a lamppost? Right in the middle of the pavement, obviously, if you’re Skanska working in Purley
There have been plentiful and regular complaints about the quality of workmanship and service from some of the council’s out-sourced contractors, whether it be the shabby My Croydon App mishap, the trail of rubbish left after the bin men have been, or the poor quality of road repairs.
The loss of the old-style light stands, replaced by the supposedly modern and efficient but unappealing street lights, the hideous stumps left for months at a time after de-commissioning, and the glacially slow progress of the project have all been raised repeatedly by Inside Croydon‘s loyal reader.
Chris Philp wants Croydon to be able to offer a traditional grammar school education for future generations. It never did him any harm…
CROYDON COMMENTARY: Croydon South’s Conservative MP, CHRIS PHILP, pictured left, makes his case for backing the establishment of the first grammar school in the borough for nearly half a century
Croydon parents wanting a grammar school education for their sons or daughters have to send their children to a neighbouring borough. But we recently saw news that the Weald of Kent Grammar School in Tonbridge has been given permission to expand on to a satellite (or annex) site in Sevenoaks. This has opened up the possibility that one of the grammar schools in Bromley or Sutton might open up a similar satellite school here.
At a recent Croydon Council meeting at the Town Hall, Labour’s cabinet member for education, Alisa Flemming, claimed that enough new secondary schools are being created to cater for demand until 2020, thus making the possibility of any grammar annexes being built redundant for the next four years. However, recent reports have suggested that the council’s school expansion plans are already behind track, and population growth is in any case accelerating.
Furthermore, the demand from parents for grammar school places is extremely high and far outstrips supply – for example, Sutton’s grammar schools have 10 applicants for every available place; 30 per cent of these schools’ pupils come from Croydon. With the population going up and housing developments such as Cane Hill being built, demand is only going to increase. The presence of a new grammar school in Croydon would help satisfy this demand and avoid pupils as young as 11 having to travel into other boroughs to get the education their parents want for them.
That’s the value that Tom Brake has had put on his reputation.
Brake is the last London LibDem MP standing. The MP for Carshalton and Wallington, in Sutton, served as Deputy Leader of the House in the ConDem coalition.
No longer in government, lately Brake has been bandying around threats on Twitter against some constituents who have dared question his involvement with a property deal with Sutton Council.
Sutton’s Liberal Democrat-controlled council has handed a 125-year lease on The Lodge, a landmark building by Carshalton ponds, to EcoLocal for around £1 million less than the property’s full commercial value. Brake just happens to be a trustee of EcoLocal, and two of the Sutton councillors who took the decision on The Lodge also happen to be members of the MP’s own staff. But they forgot to mention this among the disclosures of interest before the council meeting when the decision was taken.
Now Inside Croydon hears that Brake has set his lawyers on the Guido Fawkes website and on the Sutton Conservative opposition group, for “smearing” him.
Brake’s lawyers have written to demand an apology, and Sutton Tories have been told to pay £500 to cover his legal costs. Yep… all of 500 notes. Is that all that Brake’s lawyers think the MP’s reputation is worth? Continue reading →
NHS Croydon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) plans and buys most health services in Croydon.
The current contracts for urgent care services end in March 2017, which means that they have started reprocurement for these services. The CCG needs to make sure that they have new contracts in place in April 2017.
Future urgent care services must provide safe, high quality care for more people, using changing technology and using the budget as effectively as possible. Continue reading →
If our education correspondent GENE BRODIE had to do an end-of-term report for the borough’s academised secondary schools after the 2015 GCSE results, then “Could do better” might be regarded as an understatement
If you’re a parent seeking an educational oasis of calm and achievement for your children’s schooling, then the Oasis academies in Croydon may not be the answer you were hoping for.
All badged up: but Oasis Shirley Park’s GCSE results have displayed a worrying trend since 2013
Oasis are having another shiny new school built for them, costing £22 million of public money, but imposed upon local residents in a tight-fit site next to Croydon Arena.
With the 2015 GCSE exam results now in, it can be seen that in the last three years, of the 14 secondary schools Oasis run, only two have managed to improve the percentage of children achieving the benchmark measure of five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including maths and English.
The Oasis organisation benefits from having charity status. In recent years, it has received more than £200 million of public funds towards the building and running of state schools. Its Arena school, which had a Year 7 intake this September, is linked through what the strongly Christian religious organisation calls its Ashburton Park “Hub”, together with Ryelands primary and the all-through Oasis Shirley Park schools, where their GCSE results have been tanking over the last couple of years.
If the hard-working volunteers behind the Save the David Lean Campaign keep putting together programmes as they have for December, then calls for them to offer season ticket deals for regular attenders will have to be looked at.
There are so many screenings in December, with films in the mornings, afternoons and evenings, it is almost as if the volunteers are determined to demonstrate how the arthouse cinema really could operate as a stand-alone, viable movie house, just as it did before the council decided to close it in 2011, only relenting to allow the campaigners to re-open it in 2014.
One of the eponymous master’s Oscar-winning cinematic masterpieces, plus the latest film from Lean’s successor as the greatest living British movie director, Ridley Scott, and the highly recommended Brooklyn are just three of the highlights of the coming month, which also offers a fascinating documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the inspiring teenaged Nobel Peace Prize-winner, with a Question and Answer session after the screening.
Oh, and another couple of screenings for the much in-demand Suffragette.
For a cinema named after David Lean, the Clocktower venue doesn’t overdo the association with the Croydon-born film-maker. Which makes the screening of Doctor Zhivago in the week after Christmas a particular festive treat, marking the film’s 50th anniversary, and the death recently of one of its stars, Omar Sharif.
The cinema campaigners have risked the ire of another great Oscar-winning British director, though, by describing in their monthly bulletin The Martian as Ridley Scott’s “best film for decades”. Ouch.
Council leader Tony Newman and the man pulling his strings, council CEO Nathan Elvery, clearly remain uncomfortable with being in… well, Croydon.
This week’s Carve-up Croydon Conference was full of talk of “city status” from some of the estate agent-types. They seem to have forgotten that it’s just three years since the council wasted thousands of pounds of public money on a deeply flawed city status bid, only to be told in no uncertain terms that Croydon is already part of the greatest city on the planet.
Others, who really ought to know better, are also suffering delusions of grandeur: Newman and Elvery, having been rebuffed in their previous attempts to rename East Croydon Station “Croydon Central”, this week suggested that the station could be re-titled “Croydon International”. Apparently in all seriousness.
Not to be outdone, the bold enthusiasts at the South Norwood Tourist Board have sprung into action. Tonight, they’ve sent off a letter to some of the highest authorities in Britain, and the world, including No10, Her Maj, the Dalai Lama and William Shatner. And Winston McKenzie.
“Inspired by innovative suggestions from Croydon Council that East Croydon should be renamed Croydon International due to its location between central London and Gatwick Airport, we are writing to you to request that Norwood Junction Station be renamed Norwood Intergalactic,” they have written.
Sutton Council have been accused of vindictiveness and of trying to gag one of their fiercest critics, after their lawyers issued a demand for £5,400 for legal costs seven months after the end of a court case.
Shasha Khan: pursued by Sutton Council
Shasha Khan received the demand for costs plus seven months’ worth of interest this week, following his attempt through a Judicial Review to stop the controversial development of an industrial scale waste incinerator at Beddington Lane, on the borough boundary between Sutton and Croydon.
Khan could face losing his family home if he fails to pay the demand from Sutton. “I am stunned by the demand,” Khan told Inside Croydon today. “I don’t have £5,400 readily available.
“As soon as Justice Sales refused permission for an Appeal back in late April, I spoke to my solicitor about the £5,000 capped costs that I was liable for. “I was advised that there was a potential that the defendant wouldn’t come after the £5,000. So we decided to wait.
“Seven months have elapsed and suddenly Sutton has decided to come after £5,000, with interest! I am wondering if they’ve done this deliberately to accrue as much additional cash as possible – far better than putting the £5,000 in the bank.
The Croydon Partnership is staging a not-so-public public event tomorrow. You may not be aware of it. It is so hush-hush that the people behind the £1 billion redevelopment scheme haven’t even bothered to mention it on their own website.
Croydon Partnership’s “Community Roadshow” sets up shop in Addiscombe and Ashburton tomorrow, at St Mildred’s on Bingham Road from 1pm to 4pm, to discuss “Delivering Our Community Plan”. But you’d only know about this meeting if you were lucky enough to have a leaflet thrust through your letterbox.
That’s the thing with “public consultations”: if you make sure as few members of the public take part in them, then you reduce the risk of anyone twigging what you’re up to, or trying to contradict whatever “masterplan” you might have.
In this case, it’s something called the “Partners in the Town” initiative, and it has undertones of a private security scheme for the centre of Croydon.
The average rent for a two-bed home in London will hit £2,007 a month by January 2020 if rents continue to rise at their current pace, according to research by a London Assembly member. That would mean that in little more than four years’ time, a single-earner household would need to earn almost £120,000 a year for their rent to be affordable by 2020.
Analysis of Valuation Office Agency data by Tom Copley, Labour’s London Assembly housing spokesman, has found that the average private rent for a two-bedroom home in London grew by 0.42 per cent a month between November 2004 to March 2015. That means that the average rent for a two-bed London home in 2015 is now £7,700 a year more than in November 2004.
Modelling, based on the average rate of rent inflation over the past 11 years found that if the rate of rent growth continues, the average two-bed private rent in London will hit £2,007 a month in January 2020. One-bedroom properties could reach £2,010 by 2025.
Despite not being able to provide any tables for hexagonal chess, which was invented by Wladislaw Glinski, a long-time resident of nearby Streatham, nor for Risk, which is believed to be the favourite game, if played with public money, of some of Croydon’s councillors, the Upper Norwood Library is offering a lot of other fun and games on Saturday – which has been burdened under the title of “International Gaming Day”.
Local resident and role play gaming enthusiast Andy Horton will be holding a special Upper Norwood Library Games Club session from 1.30 to 4.30pm for more serious gamers.
“If you’re already a gamer or would like to try adult board games and role-playing games for the first time, please come along – and bring anybody else who might be game with you,” the organisers say.
There’ll be something for everyone on the day… let the winds howl; hole up in your warm and dry library for games this Saturday.
The man once labelled as “Britain’s most over-paid local councillor” has come under fire for failing to serve his constituents in Croydon and Sutton and not managing to register any comments in a public consultation held by Transport for London.
Steve O’Connell: £73,000 a year for doing very little
But the local councillor for Kenley ward who is also the Conservative candidate for Croydon and Sutton at next year’s London Assembly elections, still receives nearly £73,000 per year in combined “allowances” from City Hall and Croydon Council.
Over a full four-year term at City Hall, former mortgage salesman O’Connell is paid at least £220,000 to represent the people of the two south London boroughs.
Yet when TfL conducted its public consultation on proposals for Fiveways junction earlier this year – an £85 million scheme which will affect thousands of residents living along the A232 and A23 in Croydon and in Sutton – O’Connell couldn’t be bothered to submit even a single sentence to represent his constituents’ interests.
O’Connell’s failure to lodge any comment with TfL came to light last week, when the preliminary report was published. The report details the various observations and objections from a range of elected officials and other bodies, from Waddon ward’s Labour councillors, from the Croydon Green Party, and from the LibDem-controlled Sutton Council.
But from our Conservative London Assembly Member? Not a peep. Continue reading →
Warlingham rugby club’s new women’s section is going from strength to strength, with a full team squad enjoying a training session at Harlequins’ Stoop ground last weekend – in diabolical weekend weather – before taking seats in the stadium to watch England take on Ireland.
“Despite the extreme weather misery, it was a very good session, as can be seen by the smiling faces in the picture above,” according to club official Ella Leonard. Continue reading →
News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com
