The area around East Croydon station, which serves the town from which the borough takes its name, can be tricky for visitors to get a fix on even if, like me, you’ve been there many times before. It feels, all at once, a bit old, a bit new, a bit temporary, a bit unfinished and, here and there, a bit uneasy.
There is a London Tram stop (very progressive) and there are wide, fast roads (thought very progressive when built). There is a Boxpark, a “pop-up” venture that’s been there for ten years, and a cluster of new tall buildings that have a box-fresh air. More iconic (as they say) is the One Croydon office building, nicknamed the Threepenny Bit when completed in 1970 – to a design by Richard Seifert’s architecture practice, previously responsible for Centre Point – and then, post-decimalisation, the 50p Building.
Venture further and find the Whitgift Centre, a shopping complex name that’s been synonymous with Croydon since its foundation in the late 1960s. It made a cameo appearance in the title sequence of Terry and June, a popular BBC sitcom of the 1980s. Set in Purley, the show portrayed the suburban side of Croydon, a borough that reaches all the way from its interface with inner London Lambeth to wary Surrey fringe redoubts.
Croydon Council had Conservative majorities from 1968 until 1994, when Labour at long last got a go and stayed in power for three terms. This century, borough control has oscillated between the two big old parties before attaining a novel state of No Overall Control in 2022, with a Conservative directly elected Mayor heading a deeply split councillor intake.
A lot has changed since the days of Terry and June, which, when its long run ended in 1987, was described by a critic as “Macmillanite”. Today’s Whitgift, for example, modernised as part of an unfinished regeneration, is pretty much a retailer-free zone. The word “Croydon” has become more associated in the public mind with destruction and violence than with patio deckchairs, thanks to the burning down of a family furniture store during the 2011 London Riots and, these, days with terrible and tragic youth violence.
Meanwhile, the council has been mired in financial problems that emerged during the pandemic when Labour was in control. These were inherited by Tory Jason Perry, narrow winner of the borough’s first mayoral race, and have continued. The electoral upshot is difficult to divine. In London Decides, our guide to this year’s borough elections, Lewis Baston and I conclude our Croydon section as follows:
“Croydon’s Conservatives must hope that the electorate will be patient with them, rather than reversing 2022’s swing in their favour. Their path to a council majority looks tricky, but so does Labour’s, given the likelihood of losses to the Lib Dems, Greens and Reform and the limited scope for gains from the Conservatives. It might be easier for Labour to win the poisoned financial chalice of the mayoralty.”
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Fighting for that chalice is Rowenna Davis, former schoolteacher, current Croydon councillor, journalist, author, associate partner of the think tank Global Future Foundation and Labour’s mayoral candidate.
Yesterday, we met at East Croydon, her choice of location. The town centre is a prime focus of her campaign. “Croydon’s becoming a ghost town,” she declares in her resolutely upbeat social media output, striding and pointing at dead shells of buildings that once were full of life: “Grants cinema, over there, closed*, Waitrose gone, the Nestlé tower decaying“. Then there’s the “hole in ground” to which she led me, a site surrounded by black-painted hoardings. “It’s been there so long,” she said, “that no one can remember what was there before.”
The problem, Davis argued, has been lack of political will. If “the market says no,” she said, the Town Hall response has been that “there’s no point even trying”. And trying, she continued, means a Mayor who will try everything. “I’ve said to people over and over again, ‘I don’t own the land. The council does not have money. But if you want a Mayor who is going to fight the big fights and have the courage to fight them, and to narrate the story and tell you everything that can be done, then you choose me’.” For the “hole in the ground” even a good “meanwhile” use would do for now. The ex-Nestlé pile has been a grievous eyesore since the company upped sticks and moved to Gatwick way back in 2012,
Davis said carrots and sticks would be deployed to deal with all empty or neglected sites around the place: “Step one, day one, is a land commission.” She’s identified 50 sites around Croydon that are “derelict and decaying” and proposes that a “bespoke action plan” would be drawn up for each one. Then, “a big, open, welcoming conversation” with landowners and potential developers, exploring all the options, grants that could be applied for, introductions that could be made to help to get things moving. Lack of initiative would be rewarded with visits from health and safety inspectors and the suggestion that “maybe you need a fine”. Compulsory purchase, though laborious, is there as a last resort.
The rest of Davis’s top five pledges centre on crime, fly-tipping, nurturing “a beautiful Croydon” involving better links between parks, stations and shops, and measures to help with the cost of living.
On crime, she was optimistic that the Met can be persuaded to take fewer officers from Croydon to help deal with central London protest marches, she praised the efforts of local youth work partners and she highlighted Sir Sadiq Khan’s recent announcement about late-night youth club funding.
She also made a point about violence in the home: “Croydon has a huge problem of domestic abuse. More knife crime happens in the home than on the street, but we don’t hear about the bit behind closed doors.” Davis attributes this to the combination of “a very high level of deprivation with a very transient population”. She concludes: “If you grow up in a violent household, you are going to take that outside.”
Davis has promised to levy less Council Tax than has Perry, who received Conservative government permission to hike it by 15 per cent for the financial year 2023/24. It was a decision made in the context of the council’s financial predicament, with Perry insisting there were no other viable options. How would a Mayor Davis handle the issue better?
The key, she said, would be a good relationship with the current national government. “I think I’m best placed because I’ve got the most trusted relationships, and I’ve already been having those conversations,” she said. “Keir [Starmer] came here this year, Rachel [Reeves] came here this year. I’ve spoken to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, I’m making the case all the time, because it’s grim. But what I hear, and what is fair, is that to get a deal, you need to do something else, which is get your council in order. Why would anyone help you if you haven’t helped yourself?”
That’s the hard reality part. But Davis’s campaign is can-do positive, stressing her belief in “visionary leadership” and the cultural strengths of Croydon, home of the BRIT school. Unaccompanied when we met, she wore a bright Labour-red coat and was twice spotted by admirers who came over to wish her well. Her slogan is “people first”, and people in Croydon seem to like her. Will the borough swing her way against the London tide?
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This year’s elections in Croydon are distinctive for two big political reasons: one is that all five national parties are competitive there at least in some wards; the other is that the borough could provide a crumb of comfort for Labour, possibly its only one, if Davis becomes Mayor.
It is a powerful position. Executive Mayors have the whip hand in a centralising local government model, and major policy decisions can only be impeded by a two-thirds councillor majority. Labour, which won the largest number of the council’s 70 seats last time – 34 compared to the the Tories’ 33, the Greens’ two and the Liberal Democrats’ one – might end up with fewer this time, but Davis is confident “that we can get a third” which would see her through. Mayors also get a vote in full council decisions.
As for the mayoral race, which will be a First Past The Post affair this time, London Decides points out that “much may depend on whether Perry loses more votes to Reform in the south of the borough than Davis does to the Greens in the north”.
In 2022, the two Greens won their seats in three-seat Fairfield ward, with Labour taking the third. They will be looking for a clean sweep there this time. Davis’s Waddon ward is in the same “downtown Croydon” territory and was also split last time, with the Conservatives winning one seat to Labour’s two. Davis topped the poll, but the possibility exists of her becoming Mayor and losing her council seat on the same day (though if she wins both, she will have to resign as a councillor, just as Perry had to four years ago).
The Lib Dems’ single seat is in the very north, Crystal Palace & Upper Norwood ward, where Croydon meets the junction of boroughs around Crystal Palace Park. Reform’s ambitions lie in the far south and far east of the borough. In the former, they will hope to at least erode Conservative dominance in an area associated in the minds of political historians with a breed of 1970s right-wing Tory Harold Wilson dubbed “Selsdon man”. In the latter, at the far end of a tram line, New Addington (pictured above), a large and largely local authority-built estate created either side of World War II, is described in London Decides as one of Reform’s “more obvious targets in all of London”.
I paid a flying visit, enjoying the smooth tram ride through fields and villages that seem a million miles away from the urban ambience around East Croydon station. The New Addington vibe still feels informed by the “outer estates” ideal of modern homes for working class people in a countryside idyll. The London Borough of Croydon is nothing if not varied. “It’s a very special place,” candidate Davis said, in full revivalist mode. “I think it’s ready to be the capital of south London again.”
PS: *It has been reported today that the owner of the Grants centre has said that a major cinema chain could move into the empty space. And in other news, one of my brothers-in-law, Sean Fitzsimons, a long-serving Labour councillor in Croydon, is defending his Addiscombe West seat this year. If I lived there, he’d definitely get my vote.
Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky and at LinkedIn. Dave and elections expert Lewis Baston have compiled the definitive guide to the 2026 borough elections in partnership with public affairs specialist Lowick Hedry. Read it here.
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