Inside Croydon

Late on a sunny April afternoon last year, David Walcott and Rammon Mali, together with a third man, strolled down Surrey Street, still busy at the end of the market day, then crossed Croydon High Street and popped into the Spread Eagle pub, where they went to the bar and ordered three pints of Guinness. They paid with a £20 note.

As they started their stouts, they phoned for a taxi, but they walked out of the pub on to Katharine Street, leaving their drinks unfinished, when bar staff asked them to remove their hats, as it was against house rules.

Steve Reed OBE, the “townie” environment minister, was exposed as being out of his depth once again when he tried to give a speech to the annual conference of the National Farmers’ Union held in Westminster yesterday.

The Labour MP for Streatham and Croydon North, local party members will say, has spent much of his first 12 years in Parliament dodging difficult questions and any scrutiny of his conduct.

Yesterday, there was no hiding place for Reed.

Housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES, looks at a planning application for a £75m scheme that the developers hoped you might never notice

What do you mean, you had no idea that there have been plans submitted for a massive development of nearly 300 homes and a 84-bed care home on a 21-acre sports ground in Norbury?

That’s probably because while the site borders Croydon, the old NatWest Sports Ground on Turle Road, Streatham, comes under Merton Council.

Thousands of homes and businesses, including 11 care homes and 29 schools, in the Streatham, Penge and Sydenham areas are without water or enduring low water pressure for a third day today, following a burst water main in Crystal Palace on Tuesday.

Thames Water has issued a statement saying that as it resumes supplies, householders who experience some cloudy water or water with bubbles in, this “is still safe to drink”.

ANDREW FISHER on the contradictions, ironies and utter inadequacy of the government’s approach to the water company polluters; plus even more Council Tax rip-offs coming our way

At the end of January, the government passed the Water (Special Measures) Bill through Parliament. Labour claims it heralds “tough penalties for law breaking water bosses”, “new powers to ban bonuses for rogue water execs”, “severe fines for water companies” and “more investment into our water system that works for you”.

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: A former Music Hall performer used his modelling genius to brighten the lives of countless children in one Croydon department store, while creating famous stage dummies including Archie Andrews and Lord Charles. DAVID MORGAN looks back on the work of Len Insull

Memories and reminiscences are still plentiful when talking about the three department stores – or departmental stores, as they called themselves – which once adorned Croydon High Street.

Many of Croydon’s residents have fond memories of Kennards, which originally opened on North End in 1853.

Drug dealers McNeil Colly and Keston Redhead, who tried to buy a handgun by mail order, have been jailed following a National Crime Agency investigation.

The Taurus self-loading pistol was seized by Border Force officers at Stansted Airport in July 2023. It was hidden inside the packaging for a metallic safe box, along with two empty 9mm magazines.

Colly, 48, from Streatham, and Keston Redhead, 35, an asylum seeker from Trinidad and Tobago, were found guilty of importation of a firearm and conspiracy to import Class A drugs following a seven-week trial.

Residents who have become increasingly concerned about the climate emergency have taken their protests to the doorsteps of Croydon’s four MPs.

Campaigners from the Croydon Green Network rounded off their lobbying by meeting Croydon East MP Natasha Irons, ahead of the Climate and Nature Bill having its second reading in Parliament tomorrow.

The CAN Bill is a landmark piece of environmental legislation, with cross-party support in the Commons and House of Lords, as it seeks to address the full extent of the climate-nature crisis in line with the most up-to-date science.

Labour-controlled Lambeth Council is being taken to the High Court accused of unlawfully renting homes in the private sector under insecure assured shorthold tenancies and of having made a decision which will see these tenants made homeless – using the dreaded Section 21 no-notice eviction rule which Labour nationally has promised to ban.

The “regeneration” of five council estates across Lambeth began when Steve Reed, now the MP for Streatham and Croydon North, was the council leader at Brixton Town Hall.

New owners of The Norbury, the big old boozer on London Road that closed its doors nearly five years ago, have put forward a set of proposals for public consultation to refurbish the building as an Islamic community centre, to be called the Norbury Hive.

The landmark building on the main road between Streatham and Thornton Heath was built in the 1930s as a hotel.