I am no fan of the Council leadership historically. Awful people running Croydon awfully. However, it was really COVID thank drove the final nail home.

We need to look to the future. I do not believe the Conservatives would do better, although maybe they could stop the Government sh*tting on Croydon quite so much. We for sure need a whole new generation, especially in the Planning Directorate.

Local authority ‘spending power’ – that is, the amount of money local authorities have to spend from government grants, council tax, and business rates – has fallen by 18% since 2010.

This is largely because of reductions in central government grants, which have been the most sharply cut component of local government revenue since 2009/10. Central government grants – including retained business rates – were cut 38% in real-terms between 2009/10 and 2018/19, from £34.6bn to £24.8bn in cash terms

While grants from central government were cut, rates of council tax were increased. This contributed to a 21% increase in real terms in the amount that local authorities raised from council tax between 2009/10 and 2018/19.

Local authorities have not been able to raise council tax rates by more than 2% annually without holding a referendum since 2012/13. Theresa May’s government increased this threshold to 3% for 2018/19 and 2019/20, but Boris Johnson’s government has since reduced it to 2% for 2020/21.

Between 2010 and 2015, the coalition government encouraged councils to freeze council tax rates by offering them higher grants if they did so. In effect, councils who froze council taxes did not lose revenues. In some years, these grants were a ‘one-off’ – local authorities were given additional money for a single year – whereas in others they were permanently ‘rolled in’ to central government grants to local authorities.

This meant that local authorities were compensated with higher grants for several years. However, after 2015, the government ceased to incentivise council tax freezes.

Croydon was badly positioned to weather the Covid crisis. Its earmarked and unallocated reserves – that is, money which the council could use to cover any unexpected increase in costs or decrease in revenues – were equivalent to just 8.1% of council spending, compared to a median of 37% across all councils responsible for social care in England. The council had one of the lowest levels of usable reserves as a percentage of annual spending of any council, and had been warned by its auditors for two years running that its reserves were too low.

Croydon also invested to buy commercial properties – ranging from a shopping centre to a hotel – in the hope of generating a steady stream of rental income to supplement locally-raised tax revenue and central government grants. While this strategy might have worked prior to coronavirus, closures during the pandemic sharply reduced the income they received from these investments. The Croydon Park hotel, acquired in September 2018, went into administration in June this year, and the Colonnades retail park, acquired in May 2019, closed in March 2020.

Probaby all true maple, and to be fair to the original poster I had also noticed the lack of grass cutting in and around the parks, including the cemetry. There was a write up about it in the Croydon guardian and thankfully they started cutting again, the whole country is going to the dogs!

Just.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I thought this thread title was about you successfully parallel parking your cab. Everything has two meanings

Down here in chavam the verges have been cut and strimmed. They look very pleasant I might add.
Croydon is a s*** hole and has been for 20 odd years.
Get out while you can as the purge is still only at the planning stage!

Perhaps Maple kept getting hit on the head by footballs whilst he was kneeling?