Sutton Council’s decision over building an incinerator at Beddington Lane was deferred on 24 April. Now, sooner than expected, the Planning Committee is sitting again to make its deferred decision. The Citizen will bring you the result as it happens

At 8pm on Wednesday, the Sutton Planning Committee will reconvene at Sutton Civic Centre to approve or block an incinerator at Beddington Lane. The controversy stems from … Read More »

Tom Black got more than he bargained for when he livetweeted last night’s planning meeting – and not just from the Stop The Incinerator campaign. Read our complete livetweet here

The atmosphere was tense last night at Sutton Civic Hall. The protest against the incinerator by the Stop The Incinerator campaign (whose arguments are partly laid out here) was a friendly but determined affair, featuring various … Read More »

The HPA say there are no significant risks and the planning officer report approves it. Why are so many people passionately opposed to an incinerator on the Croydon/Sutton border?

You don’t have to be an eco-warrior to think that building an incinerator on Metropolitan Open Land (effectively Green Belt) is a probably a bad idea. I’ll come clean. I think it’s a shocker. So much … Read More »

With St George’s Day almost upon us, Andrew Dickinson laments the neglect of a site bearing the Anatolian dragon-slayer’s name

I will never cease to be amazed at the lack of interest and occasion that St George’s Day brings. It reminds me of one evening last week when I took a walk into town (after not having gone in for a couple of … Read More »

Andrew Dickinson sheds some light on the river that was once our ancestors’ lifeblood

We humans are watery creatures. Evolution tells us that life started in the seas and then moved on to dry land and evolved from there. In pregnancy, the foetus is carried in a watery sac of amniotic fluid and we are born with a mammalian diving reflex. Our bodies … Read More »

Croydon’s coffee shops could lead the country in perking up our allotments as well as our mornings

Like many people, one drink that I look forward to each day is a cup of good filtered coffee, purchased from a local independent café. I’ve long been in the routine of a cup of delicious frothy cappuccino or two to get me … Read More »

In the second part to her spotlight on the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, ‘A Cold Wind Blowing’, Liz Sheppard-Jones explains what impact the recession has had on efforts to curb needless waste, what the role of businesses is in all of this, and what Croydonians can do to get involved

A cold wind blowing

A socio-economic elephant squats dead-centre in the room when it comes … Read More »

In this first part of a series, Liz Sheppard-Jones notes some startling news about the state of recycling in Croydon

Croydon has received some extremely good news. We waited a long time, we made a lot of effort, powerful forces weighed in to make it happen – basically, we’d earned it. But the big announcement still came as a surprise. It’s not often that we … Read More »

Why Brendan Walsh spent January demanding to see the manager

I couldn’t help myself really. It’s an inbuilt instinctive childhood reaction. Snow starts falling and you rush down to the high street to spot shivering retailers. I barely had time to grow a beard. There was some good news. The number of doors shut was now at 50% (January 19th 2013), up from 29% in early December. A Pyrrhic victory, … Read More »

How amazing would it be if a Croydon restaurant could say that 75% of the food on that plate came from within three miles of the kitchen?

We once had some great, unique places. Kennards, Grants, Allders (which was initially one of a kind, but became part of a chain), The Swap Shop, Turtles, and Beanos are just a few that spring to mind. The regeneration … Read More »