Council and democracy

Unfair levy should pay for local amenities says Croydon

At present £384,000 a year disappears north from Croydon to help fund the upkeep of a 26-mile strip of land that few of the borough's residents have heard of and even fewer have visited.

As it stands, the Lee Valley Park can count on more than £12 million of revenue from London taxpayers this year.

In Croydon, however, there is mounting interest in developing the Wandle Valley as an attractive and accessible regional park. Nearby Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth councils are also backing the green initiative, which follows the course of the River Wandle from the centre of Croydon through to the Thames.

While the potential of the Wandle Valley is as great as that of the Lee, the council is obliged, under an Act of Parliament dating from 1966, to pay a substantial levy towards the upkeep of the linear park that stretches from Ware, in Hertfordshire, and through Essex before joining the Thames at the East India Dock basin.

Annually, Croydon households contribute more than £3 each to the upkeep of the park and the council calculates that in the last ten years some £3.4 million has gone to the north and east London amenity. This money would go a long way to establishing a similar initiative in south London.

In fact, the annual payment is around £60,000 more than what Croydon spends on operating one of its leisure centres.

Said cabinet member for culture and sport, Councillor Steve Hollands: "The prospect of establishing a regional park along the course of the River Wandle is really exciting for us in Croydon as well as the boroughs through which the river passes on its way to the Thames. A series of linked open spaces would provide scope for all kinds of leisure uses but finding the money to realise its potential will be a problem.
 
"It’s all the more galling, then, to see such a substantial sum extracted from Croydon each year to pay for something no one down here has a clue about. We want that money kept in south London to allow us to enjoy our own regional park, not subsidise somebody else’s. It’s time for the Government to end this deeply unfair levy on Croydon residents."