Children hurt by ‘burning rocks’ at Croydon BID fireworks

Posted on November 13, 2015 by insidecroydon

It could turn out to be a metaphor for the whole £1 billion Hammersfield redevelopment of our town centre: Attract thousands of people, many with small children, into central Croydon with promises of a few (short-lived) bright lights and sparklers.

fireworksAnd then unleash a whole host of crap to rain down on the people’s heads.

Croydon’s ceremonial Christmas light switch-on last night, “organised” by the Croydon BID business lobby group, saw several spectators, many of them children, burnt and injured by fireworks that had been set-off on the roof of Centrale. Inevitably, some might suggest, these fireworks fell to the ground nearby, in the midst of the crowds of spectators.

“There were hot rocks actually falling into people’s heads,” one spectator said, according to the Evening Standard.

Others have said that there was screaming and some panic, with children diving to the floor to take cover.

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Ruskin Square considered for HMRC’s new tax supercentre

Posted on November 13, 2015 by insidecroydon

Senior officials from Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenues – HMRC – were in Croydon on Wednesday visiting the Ruskin Square development as a potential office location for a new tax supercentre.

HMRC logoThe Government announced yesterday a plan to close 170 HMRC offices around the country – many of them Local VAT offices – to save £100 million a year by axing thousands of jobs from the tax staff, who are to be re-organised into 13 regional centres. Croydon could be the first of those, planned to open in April 2017.

Five years ago, when he was first seeking election, Gavin Barwell, the Tory MP for Croydon Central, promised to bring government departments to Croydon to help boost the local economy. Until yesterday, he had singularly failed to deliver on his promise.

Even Barwell gave an indication of his failure when he tweeted a link to the news: “Finally,” he, or whoever it is operating his Twitter account these days, said, “some progress on relocating public sector jobs to Croydon – very encouraging news.”

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Posted in Business, Croydon Central, Croydon Council, Gavin Barwell, Planning, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Up to 600 Town Hall jobs at risk in latest council redundancies

Posted on November 13, 2015 by insidecroydon

Croydon Council yesterday launched another round of voluntary redundancies, as it tries to balance the Town Hall budget from a £3.5 million overspend.

Could this Grade II piece of public property soon be the next thing Croydon Council flogs off to cover-up for their mismanagement of public funds?

Croydon Town Hall: will there be any staff left?

Some estimates suggest as many as 600 more council jobs may need to go. The budget short-fall will surely make inevitable a 1.9per cent Council Tax increase from April – likely to yield an additional £1.5 million from residents who receive ever-diminishing services.

The council’s hard-pressed staff have endured annual culls for more than five years under the six-figure-salaried chief executives Jon Rouse and, more recently, Nathan Elvery, who continues to preside over a failure for which he is principally responsible. The 2015 edition of job cuts was announced yesterday through an unsigned missive via the somewhat remote council intranet system, and comes just in time for Christmas. All staff will have also received an email from Elvery. Continue reading →

Posted in Croydon Council, Jon Rouse, Nathan Elvery, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Could do better: council chief gets low marks and no Marx

Posted on November 12, 2015 by insidecroydon

Tony Newman has got his bucket and spade ready for a weekend break at the seaside. As WALTER CRONXITE delivers his mid-term report on Croydon’s Labour council, he’s not expecting the Town Hall leader to bring him back a stick of rock

Many of Croydon’s 40 Labour councillors are off on a jolly tomorrow and Saturday, down to Eastbourne for the weekend. The seaside break is indirectly subsidised by the borough’s Council Tax-payers, because the bills are being met out of the councillors’ Town Hall “allowances”.

An ageing rocker reviews the plans for Fairfield Halls favourably. And Francis Rossi, of Status Quo, looks on approvingly. Council leader Tony Newman has become very fond of easy photo-ops

An ageing rocker reviews the plans for Fairfield Halls favourably. And Francis Rossi, of Status Quo, right, looks on approvingly. The latest easy photo-op for council leader Tony Newman

The Labour “away day” gives them the opportunity to look at what they have achieved as they approach the half-way point in their four-year administration.

Tony Newman, the council leader, heads for Eastbourne armed with his own scorecard of what manifesto promises have been implemented since May 2014.

After 18 months of running the Town Hall, Newman has been able to list nine “achievements”. It makes for modest reading. And it may not be a strong enough track record to persuade voters to back Labour in enough numbers when the next local elections are held in 2018.

That’s certain to be the thought occupying many of Newman’s team as they gather in Eastbourne.

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Posted in 2018 council elections, Alison Butler, Boris Johnson, Croydon Council, CVA, Fairness Commission, Fly tipping, Housing, Mark Watson, Mayor of London, Nathan Elvery, New Addington, Paul Scott, Phil Thomas, Policing, Refuse collection, Steve Reed MP, Stuart Collins, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

So You Think I’m Crazy, Fairfield Halls, Nov 25

Posted on November 12, 2015 by insidecroydon

Crazy poster Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Fairfield Halls, Theatre | Tagged | Leave a comment

Norbury fire engine facing axe as Boris plans more cuts

Posted on November 12, 2015 by insidecroydon

Further Tory cuts to public services could see the lives of Londoners, including Croydon residents, put at risk with the capital served by 13 fewer fire engines, if a proposal from London Mayor Boris Johnson is passed at a City Hall meeting this morning.

The proposals include taking a fire engine based at Norbury fire station permanently out of service.

Crews at Norbury fire station, where one fire engine has been earmarked to be taken out of service in the latest round of cuts

Crews at Norbury fire station, where one fire engine has been earmarked to be taken out of service in the latest round of cuts

If agreed, it will bring to 27 the number of fire engines cut from service in London under the Conservative Mayor in just two years.

A resources committee meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) has the cost-cutting move on the agenda.

The proposals are part of the Fire Brigade’s plans to deal with the £13.2million cut from its budget by Johnson.

The full budget report can be read here; the latest Boris cuts can be found on page 7.

Alternative proposals have been put forward by Andrew Dismore, a Labour London Assembly Member, which would see a range of back office efficiencies to meet the budget gap.

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Posted in 2016 London elections, Boris Johnson, London Assembly, London Fire Brigade, London-wide issues, Mayor of London | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

£85m Boris Flyover scheme might yet be overtaken by events

Posted on November 11, 2015 by insidecroydon

Transport for London’s plans for more and wider roads around the Fiveways junction on the Purley Way may be delayed so long that the £85 million Boris Flyover to the Croydon Flyover might yet fail to be built, with any final decision not likely now for 12 months.

Have your sayTfL today published its report on the consultation it held earlier this year. That was entitled Have Your Say on Transforming Fiveways Croydon, although someone at City Hall appears to have missed out the vital caveat in a sub-heading: “Provided it complies with the road scheme we wish to inflict upon you”.

But there is a chance that the decision on a new urban motorway along the A232 into central Croydon might end up being kicked into the long grass of Duppas Hill Park, the public open space which was under threat from the Boris Johnson bulldozers.

The road builders at City Hall, determined to speed traffic from Sutton and the A23 Purley Way towards the much-delayed new Westfield supermall, only ever offered two options in their consultation – the frying pan or the fire.

TfL’s preferred option, an engineer’s wet-dream of a flyover across the railway tracks at Waddon Station, would threaten hundreds of homes and required the bulldozing of parts of the park. The slightly-less-good-option, of widening the A23’s bridge at Waddon and turning Epsom Road by the station into two-way traffic to ease congestion at Fiveways, would do nothing to reduce traffic nor the scandalously high levels of air pollution in the area.

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Posted in "Hammersfield", 2016 London elections, Andrew Pelling, Boris Johnson, Environment, Joy Prince, Mayor of London, Planning, Purley Way, Robert Canning, Transport, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Little orphan Annie with Strictly judge is not a drag

Posted on November 11, 2015 by insidecroydon

DIANA ECCLESTON waltzed over to Wimbledon to witness a fab-u-lous musical performance

Even Craig Revel Horwood might score his own performance in Annie with a 10

Even Craig Revel Horwood might score his own performance in Annie with a 10

I don’t actually approve of men taking women’s plum roles on stage – as David Suchet has done with Lady Bracknell – since there are so few decent roles for women about. Gender-swapping should be confined to panto.

Or at least that’s what I thought until I saw Strictly Come Dancing‘s resident Mr Nasty Craig Revel Horwood in action in the latest version of Annie, the musical, being performed this week at the New Theatre Wimbledon.

He plays the orphanage harridan Miss Hannigan, and to borrow a phrase from Strictly‘s notoriously critical judge, he is absolutely FAB-U-LOUS dahling!

All tits and pointed toes, he plays the lady straight and when it comes to his singing (better than OK) and dancing, he is as good as his words and gives the character a real wow performance. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Dance, Diana Eccleston, Music, Theatre | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tory MPs grandstand after voting through 40% council cuts

Posted on November 11, 2015 by insidecroydon

STEVEN DOWNES on the abject politicking of Croydon’s Tory MPs over the application of council cuts that they have supported at Westminster

Even by Tory standards, the rank hypocrisy of Croydon’s Conservatives over Chancellor Gideon Osborne’s austerity cuts is staggering.

A typical Tory voter: or at least Croydon's Conservatives seem to take the electorate for fools

A typical Tory voter: or at least Croydon’s Conservatives seem to take the electorate for fools

Both of the borough’s MPs, Croydon Central’s Gavin Barwell and South’s Chris Philp, dutifully toed their party line and have voted through benefit cuts and other austerity measures put forward by David Cameron’s Government. But now, they’ve taken to grandstanding on social media to bellyache about the impact of those very same Government cuts when the reality comes closer to home.

So with all the predictability of partisan professional politicians, instead of doing something about the cuts as they are affecting the borough – such as voting against them, or lobbying the Treasury for a fairer settlement for their borough – Barwell and Philp are trying to blame someone else. They must think that the electorate in their constituencies are fick or summat.

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Posted in CALAT, Chris Philp MP, Coulsdon, Croydon Council, Croydon South, Education, Environment, Fly tipping, Gavin Barwell, Nathan Elvery, Refuse collection, Stuart Collins, Tony Newman | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UKIP’s Farage failed to act over McKenzie’s homophobic text

Posted on November 10, 2015 by insidecroydon
Happy days: Nigel Farage, left, and Winston McKenzie share a laugh. Such japes

Happy days: Nigel Farage, left, and Winston McKenzie share a laugh. Such japes

Inside Croydon has discovered that Winston McKenzie, UKIP’s most high-profile black member until he resigned last week amid accusations of racism in the party, openly used homophobic language in communication with Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader.

McKenzie texted a message to Farage complaining about “bloody queers”, but the high-profile UKIP leader neither rebuked his friend and colleague nor took any sanction against the sometime chair of his party’s Croydon North branch.

And McKenzie, who has admitted that his political ambitions in the past were thwarted by a police investigation into his running of a pub in Thornton Heath, may yet be subject to further enquiries over his accounting for thousands of pounds of donations made to UKIP towards election campaigns in 2014 and 2015.

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Posted in 2012 by-election, 2016 London elections, Croydon North, Mayor of London, Winston McKenzie | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thornton Heath high street public meeting, Nov 21

Posted on November 10, 2015 by insidecroydon

Thornton Heath Continue reading →

Posted in Community associations, Connected Croydon, Croydon Council, Environment, Planning, Thornton Heath, Thornton Heath Community Action Team, Thornton Heath Neighbourhood Association | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

South London Theatre perform Oliver!, Dec 10-19

Posted on November 10, 2015 by insidecroydon

Oliver poster Continue reading →

Posted in Music, Stanley Halls, Theatre | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tory benefit cuts about to make Croydon £27m poorer

Posted on November 9, 2015 by insidecroydon

WALTER CRONXITE tots up the financial impact of benefit cuts on Croydon – which were loyally voted through by the borough’s two Tory MPs

benefits officeGovernment cuts to benefits could affect 35,000 Croydon residents and will take more than £27 million a year out of the borough’s economy by the time of the next local elections.

Detailed research conducted by Croydon Council, published ahead of next week’s cabinet meeting, shows that 1 in 10 of all the borough’s adults will be victims of so-called  “welfare reform”, piled on top of the Bedroom Tax and abolition of Council Tax benefit measures introduced since 2013.

Both of Croydon’s Conservative MPs – Gavin Barwell and Chris Philp, recent recipients of a 10 per cent wage increase – voted in favour of this latest grab of money from the hands of those in greatest need.

Continue reading →

Posted in 2018 council elections, Business, Chris Philp MP, Council Tax, Croydon Council, Fairness Commission, Gavin Barwell | 1 Comment

TfL’s Dingwall tram loop wastes millions on ‘gold-plated’ pipes

Posted on November 9, 2015 by insidecroydon

John JefkinsCROYDON COMMENTARY: Transport for London has announced that it will steam ahead with its costly Dingwall Road tram loop, on the basis of a consultation which offered no real alternative and got just a couple of hundred positive responses. JOHN JEFKINS, pictured right, helped to organise a petition submitted last week with 2,000 signatures opposing the loopy £28m misuse of public money, and he reveals here that the new tram platforms just opened at Wimbledon are inadequate for projected increases in passenger use

Two thousand people signed our petition asking for “money proposed for the Dingwall Road loop to be spent instead on longer trams and longer platforms to cope”. The petition was handed over to London Mayor Boris Johnson last week by London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon, the transport committee vice-chair at City Hall, on behalf of a cross-party group which had organised the petition.

This petition was signed by four times the number of people that responded to the Transport for London consultation.

Soon to be a scene from history, a tram crossing the Dingwall Road junction headed for Beckenham Junction

Soon to be a scene from history, a tram crossing the Dingwall Road junction headed for Beckenham Junction

Our trams are crowded. We would agree with money spent on extra trams, dualled track or anything that actually adds capacity to the tram network.

But most of the £28 million cost of this loop is to move utility pipes out of the way of track,  and would actually cut the tram system into two, instead of adding extra passenger capacity.

A large percentage – perhaps most – of the project’s budget is being spent on moving phone, gas, electricity and  sewer service pipes out of the way, so that when BT or British Gas want to dig up the road, the tram services won’t be interrupted – even though they still interrupt the trams for plenty of other reasons, such as track replacement and “Connected Croydon” works. Continue reading →

Posted in "Hammersfield", Boris Johnson, Business, Caroline Pidgeon, East Croydon, London Assembly, Mayor of London, New Addington, Planning, Tramlink, Transport, West Croydon, Whitgift Centre | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Ruskin House rocks to its weekly folk and blues music clubs

Posted on November 8, 2015 by insidecroydon

Ruskin House’s weekly schedule of events has lots to offer music fans, with low-cost folks and blues club nights – and the cheap prices in the bar.

ruskin houseThe Folk and Blues Club meets at 8pm every Sunday, with a charge of just £2.

Mondays are Croydon Folk Club night, with a modest charge for some performers, but there is also a shanty group – both start at 8pm each week. For details of the shanty group, call Jamie on 8462 5160 for more information. Continue reading →

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Green Berry promises an end to City Hall vanity projects

Posted on November 8, 2015 by insidecroydon
Sian Berry, the Green Party's candidate for London Mayor, visited the under-threat Upper Norwood Joint Library on Friday

Sian Berry, the Green Party’s candidate for London Mayor, on Friday visited the Upper Norwood Joint Library, which is under threat from cuts by Lambeth and Croydon councils

Sian Berry, the Green Party’s candidate for London Mayor, on a visit to Upper Norwood on Friday, pledged to make City Hall drop its grand projects, and set-up a unit to support community trusts trying to run Crystal Palace Park and the National Sports Centre, Upper Norwood Joint Library and housing estates.

On her visit, Berry met various local community groups, including the Crystal Palace Park stakeholders, the Crystal Palace Sports Partnership and the Save Upper Norwood Library Campaign.

“I was struck by the frustration and anger with City Hall and councils which obstruct these groups and impose flawed top-down proposals that they have to fight off,” Berry said.

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Posted in 2016 London elections, Community associations, Croydon Greens, Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace Park, Environment, Housing, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Mayor of London, Sian Berry, Upper Norwood Library Trust | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Croydon and Sutton Fabians meeting, Ruskin House, Dec 1

Posted on November 8, 2015 by insidecroydon

Fabian Society logoThe next meeting of the fledgling Croydon and Sutton branch of the Fabian Society will be on Tuesday December 1 at 7.30pm in Ruskin House.

On this occasion, the primary purpose of the meeting is to approve our draft constitution before it is submitted to our HQ in Petty France. Continue reading →

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Council closes CALAT’s Coulsdon centre as austerity bites

Posted on November 7, 2015 by insidecroydon

Croydon Council is to close the CALAT centre in Coulsdon, with job losses and hundreds of students affected, the latest evidence of Government austerity being applied across the borough with potentially profound and long-term damaging effects to the provision of public services.

calatCALAT is the award-winning Croydon Adult Learning And Training service, established more than 70 years ago and which is one of the largest adult education providers in the country which provides more than 1,200 part-time courses every year from – until now – centres at the Clock Tower, in Thornton Heath, New Addington and from the old Smitham School premises off Chipstead Valley Road in Coulsdon. CALAT offers courses in IT, business administration and book-keeping, teaching English to those for whom it is not their first language, and training for those with learning difficulties and disabilities.

It is instructive that the Labour-run council has opted to close the one CALAT centre in the largely Tory-voting south of the borough, though course provision at the remaining three centres may also be affected.

The penny-wise, pound-foolish closure of the Coulsdon centre, according to one senior council figure, is “austerity politics” which “just makes no sense as it damages the very educational means to promote economic growth”.

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Posted in Alisa Flemming, Andrew Pelling, CALAT, Coulsdon | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Wilde night in a pub that felt a little bit like hard labour

Posted on November 7, 2015 by insidecroydon

OPENING NIGHT: DIANA ECCLESTON reviews a tour de force at The Spread Eagle Theatre on Katharine Street

Gerard Logan as Oscar: one for fans of Wilde

Gerard Logan as Oscar: one for fans of Wilde

I’ve always been a huge fan of Oscar Wilde. What’s not to love? His elegant flair for fashion and words, the brilliant plays the world enjoys more than ever today and the unforgettable epigrams, such as “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”. I have the fridge magnet.

So I was hugely looking forward to Wilde Without the Boy. And rather disappointed by it.

Gerard Logan’s one-man performance as Wilde is a tour de force, an hour-long dramatisation of the epic De Profundis followed by a recitation of The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Diana Eccleston, Spread Eagle Theatre, Theatre | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Corbyn has ‘full confidence’ in aide, as Labour suspend Fisher

Posted on November 6, 2015 by insidecroydon

The Progress pogrom against Jeremy Corbyn claimed its first victim tonight, when Andrew Fisher, the Labour leader’s policy adviser, had his party membership suspended.

Andrew Fisher: questions the use of race issues by George Galloway and Gavin Barwell

Andrew Fisher: Corbyn aide has had Labour Party membership suspended

Fisher, however, seems set to continue to work in Corbyn’s office and he confirmed to Inside Croydon tonight that, in an act of some defiance, he will be fulfilling his speaking commitments this weekend.

Fisher must be re-assured that he has the support of his employer. Corbyn said tonight: “I have full confidence in Andrew Fisher and his work. I respect the integrity of the General Secretary’s office and trust that this matter will be settled as quickly as possible.”

Fisher’s suspension came in response to a complaint from that well-known Women’s Equality Party supporter, The Hon Emily Benn, as Inside Croydon reported here last month.

Fisher’s offence? At a time when he held no office within the Labour Party, he expressed his own opinions on Twitter, including one attempt at sarcasm about the oxymoronic anarchist who was standing as a candidate against The Hon Emily in the Croydon South constituency.

And someone in Labour in Croydon filed away that tweet from 18 months ago and has used it to try to embarrass the party’s new leadership team.

Continue reading →

Posted in Andrew Fisher, Croydon South, Emily Benn | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Empire-building architects’ department doesn’t add up

Posted on November 6, 2015 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: A former member of the borough’s engineering department, DAVID WICKENS wonders why the council is to re-establish an in-house architects’ department

I read with interest the council’s decision to resurrect an in-house architects’ department. As I recall the previous incarnation was disbanded in the mid 1980s.

architect plansGovernment legislation for compulsory competitive tendering in the 1980s to early 1990s resulted in the demise of a number of in-house services including architects, engineers and other professionals.

This legislation was replaced in 2000 with a slightly different approach, as it required that councils sought best value for which issues such as performance, effectiveness and quality became important criteria.

One of the main difficulties for in-house bids was that their council was the sole client and that, especially for construction-related services, continuity of workload could not be guaranteed. When councils were responsible for some utilities (for instance, water supply and sewerage) and major house-building and schools programmes, they could be quite competitive, with local knowledge helping keep costs down. However, in more recent times utility companies took that work back and housing associations took over most new social house building.

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Posted in Colm Lacey, Croydon Council, Housing, Jo Negrini, Planning | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arena Academy build causing mounting anger for residents

Posted on November 6, 2015 by insidecroydon

Woodside councillor Paul Scott could be in for a rowdy reception when he speaks at a public meeting at the Stanley Halls on Monday evening. If, that is, locals are allowed to raise matters which their councillors have been avoiding talking about for months on end.

Paul Scott: will he allow discussion of Oasis Arena Academy at Monday's public meeting?

Paul Scott: will he allow discussion of the Arena Academy at Monday’s  meeting?

Monday’s meeting, ostensibly to discuss council plans for the regeneration of South Norwood, has nine specified agenda items, including the status of The Ship pub and the South Norwood Arts Festival (which receives sponsorship from Croydon Council, and in which Scott is involved in the organisation).

But there is nothing on the agenda about the growing concerns of residents living in the vicinity of Croydon Arena over the development of the Oasis Academy, which is being built on the site.

Some Woodside residents have been seeking a meeting with their Labour councillors – who also include council leader Tony Newman and Fairness Commission deputy chair Hamida Ali – for nearly four months.

“The best Councillor Scott has done so far is to offer us an appointment after his monthly ward surgery on November 21 – even though we’ve already told them that we cannot manage to attend a meeting on a Saturday,” said one frustrated resident.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Environment, Hamida Ali, Oasis Academy, Paul Scott, Planning, Schools, South Norwood, Tony Newman, Transport, Woodside | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Labour’s London list candidates display a Croydon bypass

Posted on November 6, 2015 by insidecroydon

Labour has announced its “list” candidates for next year’s London Assembly elections, and there is not a single figure associated with the council in Croydon included.

Emily Brothers will be campaigning for Sadiq Khan to be elected as London Mayor

Emily Brothers will be campaigning for Sadiq Khan to be elected as London Mayor

As well as the 14 London Assembly Members elected from constituencies, a further 11 Assembly Members are elected from party lists to make the total members from each party proportional to the votes cast for that party across the whole of London.

In 2012, when the last London elections were held, Labour won eight constituency seats, topped up with four more Assembly Members from their list; the Tories won six constituencies, including Croydon and Sutton, and nabbed a further three AMs off the list. The Greens and LibDems swept up the other proportional places, getting two seats each from their London-wide lists.

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Posted in 2016 London elections, London Assembly, London-wide issues, Marina Ahmad, Mayor of London, Steve O'Connell, Tony Newman, Waddon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Norwood Society looks at history of The Salvation Army

Posted on November 6, 2015 by insidecroydon
William Booth: the subject of the next Norwood Society local history talk

William Booth: the subject of the next Norwood Society local history talk

The next meeting of the Norwood Society will be about William Booth, the Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army and who spoke to audiences of thousands at the Crystal Palace.

It is 150 years since Booth’s foundation of the Army, and historian Tony Fletcher has compiled rare film footage the accompany the evening’s local history meeting at the Upper Norwood Library, Westow Street, SE19 1TJ, from 7.30pm on Thursday, November 19.

Continue reading →

Posted in Church and religions, Education, History, Norwood Society | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

We need quality homes, not quantity, to avoid ghettoes

Posted on November 5, 2015 by insidecroydon

CROYDON COMMENTARY: Location. Location. Location. LEWIS WHITE is less concerned about the need to build flats in the redevelopment at College Green, provided they offer enough open spaces and are of the right quality, and not mega-sized tower blocks

David Wickens’ article on the plans for the Fairfield Halls and College Green – “Can two-bedroom flats really be the solution for Fairfield Halls?” – was very clear-sighted, and very helpful, whilst Arno Rabinowitz’s contribution as a comment adds in just a few words a cautionary floodlight to help us avoid the pitfall of naive acceptance.

The Fairfield Halls, with College Green top left of picture, is about to be changed forever

The Fairfield Halls, with College Green top left of picture, is about to be changed forever

One thing I would like to add is the observation that, for central Croydon, we have to be looking at flats, for two reasons. The first is land values. Taberner House could never be replaced with semi-detached houses, thatched cottages, or even Addams Family-sized mansions: the land value is too high and the setting is wrong.

In town centre locations, flats look right – if the designs are good, if daylight comes in through correct placing and massing of blocks relative to the sun (too often, it is squeezed out by ignorance, and greed, the two main supporters of bad design) and if materials are well-chosen and domestic in feel, for example, the right type of brick, not smooth machine-aesthetic metal panels like certain office blocks, or guaranteed to stain and look very grubby within two years.

The next questions flow on rapidly from the conclusion — how high should the blocks be? Seven-storey, 15 to 20, or Mega Mental… sorry Menta Tower-type developments of 50 to 60 storeys? Next question: how many bedrooms? One would have thought that a mix would be right.

Continue reading →

Posted in Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon College, Croydon Council, Education, Environment, Fairfield, Fairfield Halls, Housing, Planning, Property | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments