Category: News

We have received the following from Croydon Voluntary Action, and have been asked to draw attention specifically to the 24 April date ofthe next meeting.

Thank you to Celestina and Lynda for Co-chairing the meeting and to Oasis Academy in Shirley for being such good hosts. It’s good to see a variety of community spaces that are open to hire for events and to familiarise ourselves with their activities. For more information on Oasis Academy here.

Last November’s LCP Partnership Showcase event was a well-attended, informative celebration of the organisations that were successful in their applications for funding from the new Localities Commissioning Fund. Their exciting plans were outlined and Commissioners voiced their commitment to these new ways of community-led commissioning.

For this locality, the local priorities identified are: Transport, Digital Inclusion, Mental Health and ‘Heating/Eating’. These key elements of the Central East Locality’s Community Plan will be linked in with public health data and will also inform Croydon’s new Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2024-29. With the general election coming-up this year, a Community Manifesto based on the six LCP’s Community Plans will give residents a stronger voice, identify the most important local issues and will help highlight the excellent partnership working that is taking place in Croydon.

It was good that we were able to secure some ‘Ageing well’ funding that has been used to sustain some of the good work that is already happening in this locality through Addiscombe Neighbourhood Care Association.

Community Hubs in the Central East Locality

·      Ashburton Park Hub – Oasis Academy schools have a commitment that, wherever there is a cluster of schools, they need to set up a Community Hub. Andrew Gill is the Lead for the Shirley Park site. Andrew helpfully told LCP members that the school tragically lost two of their students to knife crime in a short space of time. Part of the work to change and positively impact the community around this is to redesign the nearby Ashburton Park through a Heritage grant and to work closely with the community in the process. The work will focus on developing the currently vacant Lodge in the park and also look to set up at a food growing project with Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) partners such as South Norwood Community Kitchen and Reaching Higher, together with racing driver, Lewis Hamilton’s mentoring project ‘Mission 44’ to provide an initiative with 360 wrap-around support. This area has also been selected as one of the sites that will benefit from a new Multi-Use Games Area (MUGA), as part of the play zone funding that has been made available through the council.

ACTION: To be connected to this exciting work and explore potential partnership opportunities please contact: andrew.gill@oasisuk.org / 07917 243 665

·     Woodside Community Hub – part of Croydon East Wellness Support Network- ‘CrESNT’– The winning bid for this locality last year was CrESENT an alliance that is made up of five partners in the locality: Floating Counselling, ‘Welderlies’, Woodside Community Pop-In, Clear Community Web and ‘Mandem Medley’, who are supporting 120 men. The Hub has been running for a month in November last year and has started again in the last two weeks. It is being held at Woodside Baptist Church on Spring Lane from 1.30- 3.30

ACTION: LCP members to help publicize the Hub to maximize engagement. For more information, please see the flyer attached and the website link.

ACTION: Nasreen and Mariah, (Community Facilitator), Celestina and Lynda to keep LCP members informed of progress, sharing Change Stories whenever possible.

Strengthening Community Plans: Befriending (as part of the work on Mental Health) and Communication. With the extensive knowledge and expertise of those LCP members in attendance, it was also agreed that the area of Youth-related opportunities would be discussed.

Befriending– Lynda our Co-chair and Social Prescribing Link Worker has highlighted the need for face-to-face befriending schemes to tackle loneliness and isolation. We were reminded of the Street Champions network which discussed in previous meetings and that there was an outstanding need for training for potential Champions before they go door-to-door and do informal welfare checks with light signposting. This could be a way of befriending and supporting residents to make initial connections with new community-based activities.

It was also mentioned that activities should have a ‘Welcome’ person to assist new residents with engagement. CNCA have a befriending and home service. We heard a wonderful story about a gentleman who had been very nervous and isolated, but through meeting with his befriender he was now going with them to a lunch club for the first time. CNCA are taking referrals for this service and they even support with transport to get the resident engaging with community. For more information please email: Amanda@cnca.org.uk

The need for more Volunteers was raised. We have looked at promoting this opportunity through Ross at Emmaus SOC and the Croydon Cares initiative. We spoke about collecting and promoting stories of volunteers to show it as an opportunity.  The concept of a Timebank was mentioned, if we could pledge an hour of our time each, we could collectively help cover the volunteering needs in the area. This would need to be effectively coordinated to work.

ACTION: A Befriending Action Group of Celestina, Amanda Esparon from Croydon Neighbourhood Care Association (CNCA), Norman Till from Addiscombe Neighbourhood Care Association (ANCA) and Andrew Slegg, with the support of the Volunteer via Lynda Graham, will meet to discuss and plan these issues more fully. They will feed back to LCP members at the next meeting.

ACTION: Andrew to contact Ben Taylor and Paul Voden about training for Community Champions

ACTION: LCP members to contact Amanda Esperon at CNCA about potential befriending support for local residents – Amanda@cnca.org.uk

Communication: £5000 is available from the King’s Fund’s ‘Healthy Communities Together’ budget to increase engagement by improving the promotion and publicity of LCP meetings and Community Hubs. Avenues for such communication mentioned were, residents’ associations, Link Workers, hubs, the excellent CNCA fortnightly bulletin, faith forums and church networks, as well as school networks. A localized Facebook page was mentioned and a website specific to this locality

ACTION: An Action Group for Communication was set up, with Celestina and Neil Chamaroo from See way Youth being the initial members. The group will explore these ideas in more detail and update LCP members at our next meeting.

Youth – The importance of engaging parents of young people to reach / support young people was raised. How do we effectively do this? What are the issues that young people are facing in this locality? We need to hear from them on this. Neil shared with us the success of providing value-driven activities as a possibility to be explored. Parental Army, an initiative that has been successful in the South-East LCP, where there is a booklet of listed services that support parents accessible to them. This has been a great help. Could this work in this locality? Connecting with Reaching Higher, Addiscombe Boys and Girls and Sir Phillip Gain club were suggested.

Floating Counselling have a holiday camp that supports young people during the school holidays. For more information on that holiday camp here.

ACTION: An Action Group for Youth was set up, with Celestina, Neil, Andrew Gill, Norman and Arlene being the initial members. The group will explore these ideas in more detail and update LCP members at our next meeting.

THE ACTION GROUPS WILL ALWAYS BENEFIT FROM HAVING A SOLID MEMBERSHIP, SO IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO JOIN THE BEFRIENDING, YOUTH OR COMMUNUICATION ACTION GROUPS THEN PLEASE CONTACT THE CO-CHAIRS, CELESTINA AND LYNDA, OR SARAH OR ANDREW. THANK YOU.

Croydon’s Health and Wellbeing strategy 2024-29 – Your views on the new Health and Wellbeing draft strategy were much appreciated.

Acting upon suggestions from LCP members about how to reach new participants, the next Central East LCP meeting will be take place on Wednesday 24^th April, in the EVENING, between 6-8 pm. Please promote this far and wide so we can get as many new voices joining the conversation as possible. Please book your place here.

To see previous meeting notes OR the Community Plans for your locality here.

Thank you for your continued support and engagement in this great work

Warm wishes,

Lynda, Celestina., Sarah and Andrew

With thanks to Chloe Smith for the notes.

C/O Sarah Burns

Director of Communities

Mob: 07540 720106

Email: sarah.burns@cvalive.org.uk

CVA Resource Centre

82 London Road, CR0 2TB

Recent talks between our local politicians, local headteachers and the Borough’s police have yielded good results in reducing the amount of crime affecting young people travelling through central Croydon on their way to and from school.  Theft of mobile phones has been a particular problem.  Police have recently intensified their activity against this crime type, tracking down and targeting perpetrators. This resulted in 11 arrests being made and a substantial decline in offending afterwards. Police Officers analysed crime patterns which enabled them to target hot-spots where the perpetrators were likely to be.  They concentrated on several known suspects and cleared the area of further robberies through persistent high-vis patrolling.

In addition, Schools officers attended school assemblies to provide crime prevention advice, while uniformed officers spoke to students on how to keep themselves and their possessions safe.

We have lifted this article about a new “tool” available to our Police, from an MP’s website. SPRA is a non-(party) political body and has no association with the MP in question

I am delighted to report that multiple arrests were made in Croydon town centre [in late January] following the experimental deployment of Live Facial Recognition (LFR).  This is something I am pushing for nationally in my role as Policing Minister, and I am glad that the Met accepted my suggestion to further trial LFR in Croydon

LFR starts with a “watchlist” of images of people who are wanted for serious offences or who are wanted by the Court for failing to attend a criminal hearing.  A camera is then set up by Police in a location with high footfall, and advanced facial recognition software is used to see if anyone walking past matches one of the images on the watchlist.  Is there is a match, the officers running the system are alerted and they intervene to see if the person is indeed the one wanted.  The matching software is now incredibly accurate and advanced.

This has been deployed in Croydon town centre several times recently, on London Road and North End, and on the junction with Church Street. Arrests for the following offences were made in a matter of just a few hours:

• Possession of firearm
• GBH
• Failure to appear in court for theft
• Failure to appear in court for GBH
• Failure to appear in court for assault on an emergency worker
• Possession of a weapon with point or blade, drugs and burglary
• Breach of non-molestation order
• Failure to appear in court for ABH on police and drugs offences
• Failure to appear in court for ABH
• Fraud by misrepresentation
• Failure to appear in court for theft
• Failure to appear in court for GBH
• Failure to appear in court for assault on an emergency worker
• Possession of a weapon with point or blade, drugs and burglary
• Breach of non-molestation order
• Failure to appear in court for ABH on police and drugs offences
• Failure to appear in court for ABH
• Fraud by misrepresentation
• Failure to appear in court for theft
• Failure to appear in court for assault on an emergency worker
• Failure to appear in court for drunk and disorderly behaviour
• Breach of tag conditions by a convicted drug supplier

This deployment took 14 potentially dangerous people off the streets (SPRA note – as there are more than 14 offences listed, it is clear that at least one of the 14 persons had committed more than one of these offences).  The identity of the people stopped was verified separately from the facial recognition system, and no false alerts were generated.
 
There are safeguards around privacy and accuracy.  Any passer-by who is scanned and who is not on the watchlist is immediately and automatically deleted. The system is governed by detailed rules set out by the College of Policing, and there is case law setting out the legal requirements of the system.  This includes accuracy and no bias. The system has been tested by the National Physical Laboratory and at the setting used meets the legal requirements (it delivers no bias and a 1/6000 accuracy rate). There are also signs displayed that LFR is being used.
 
I am delighted that these potentially dangerous people have been taken off the street.  There are further LFR deployments planned in Croydon in the near future and I am pushing for this technology to be rolled out nationally, within the rules and guidelines to safeguard privacy. This technology has the potential to ensure that huge numbers of wanted criminals are caught.

If you want to check your dates, here is the link on the Council’s website, to the new refuse/recycling dates from the start of December, to download and print off. Just enter the address, or postcode on this link;

https://service.croydon.gov.uk/wasteservices/w/webpage/bin-day-enter-address

This is the link to the revised Christmas/New Year refuse and recycling days;

https://www.croydon.gov.uk/rubbish-and-recycling/christmas-and-new-year-waste-and-recycling-collections

As you may know, the Council no longer delivery the leaflets to households.

We are grateful to “Inside Croydon” for bringing to our attention the opportunity being offered at Croydon Libraries.

See their article at https://insidecroydon.com/2023/08/09/libraries-to-offer-computer-training-to-tackle-digital-exclusion/

Malcolm Bell, Croydon Council’s Energy Projects Manager, has written a warning as follows …

Unfortunately I am writing to inform you, a resident has informed me a company called UK ECO solutions (or someone on their behalf) is doing door knocking in the borough about grants for solid wall insulation, claiming they are working with Croydon Council.  I have recently seen Facebook adverts from them hinting they work with and/or the funding is from the Council.

I can confirm Croydon Council not working with this company, nor are they a sub-contractor for one of our partner companies, nor has the team had any discussions with them.   The sub-contractor working with our partner AgilityEco currently installing solid-wall insulation for home owners is called Simple Green Energy, and they will only be contacting residents who have applied, or been referred into the scheme with their consent.     None of the companies we are working with are doing any cold calling/door knocking promotions.

All the private sector grant providers/schemes we work with are listed on our Energy Advice webpage   www.croydon.gov.uk/energyadvice     Although residents can apply directly for these schemes (as opposed to a referral through Croydon Healthy Homes), we do recommend residents use one of our partner organisations to access grant funding if they are eligible.  For some schemes eligibility/grant may be dependent upon a signed declaration from Croydon Council, and we only do this with companies we have an agreements in place with.

I would strongly advise residents to check the web page to ensure any company claiming to work with the Croydon Council is genuinely working with us.  Alternatively they can email healthyhomes@croydon.gov.uk or call the Healthy Homes Freephone number to check 08002922529 (the number currently diverts to an answerphone, but we aim to call back all residents as quickly as possible, and all within a week).

May I also take this opportunity to notify you the Croydon Heathy Homes team will be hand delivering leaflets about our services to homes in areas with high-levels of fuel poverty, especially older properties.  This week we delivered leaflets in the Waddon area.  The letter we delivered was in the name of our Healthy Homes Advisor, Jayesh Patel.

We have been asked to alert members tothe following …

The British Trust for Ornithology and the behavioural science research group at Middlesex University have just started an online project where volunteers can submit observations of birds for research. I was wondering whether this might be a of interest to your community group?
The first aim of the project is to study how commonly different species in different areas of the UK eat human foods and litter instead of “natural” food like worms and insects. The second aim is to engage more people in birdwatching: a common barrier is that most citizen science projects require bird ID skills, so we designed this study in a way that bird names aren’t required at all. Our hope is that this will help to engage more people with nature and birds. 

https://mdxl.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cON8ssxLcI8T6Wq

Could you help us spread the word and distribute this among your group members please? The study will be open until 26th August and volunteers can participate as many times as they like.