Residents' Associations Excluded

The other week, Croydon Council proudly held an Expo showing their vision of the future of Croydon.

The Expo at the Whitgift Centre was accompanied by a market research exercise, the results for which will doubtless be used by the council in their ongoing propaganda exercise to try to bulldoze their arena development plans through the opposition from the local residents.

Now here is the funny thing, normally when market research is carried out certain groups, such as journalists or connected parties, are excluded.

So far so good.

However, there was an extra group excluded from the Expo market research survey.

Can you guess who they were?

None other than members of any local residents' associations.

Why would that be?

Seemingly members of local residents' associations are considered to be "better informed" than other members of the public. In fact a cynic might argue that the council knows that the local residents' associations oppose the arena development, and don't want the embarrassment of having their views "muddy" their propaganda exercise.

It would appear that for the purposes of Croydon council's propaganda exercise, the views of the "better informed" are not required or indeed welcome.

Does this not rather skew the results of the survey?

This "cordon sanitaire" around the survey may be a tactical mistake, for market research companies are meant to follow the Market Research Society Code of Practice. The exclusion more than likely violates part of this code, as such a formal complaint may be expected.

The Croydon Expo

Next week the Expo comes to town, EXP07 is (to quote the website):

"your chance to experience the amazing things happening in the borough today and in the next 15 years. Croydon Council and our partners in Industry and the community are working together to establish Croydon as London’s 3rd city."

EXP07, according to Councillor Pollard, will be financed entirely by private sponsorship.

Therefore it should not be of any surprise to learn that the EXP07 website is but a one page list of links to property developers et al who are operating, or who wish to operate, in Croydon. Needless to say Arrowcroft, Croydon Council's preferred developer for the Gateway site, is listed.

However, Stanhope Schroders are not listed. This is somewhat surprising given that they have a development scheme for the Gateway site, and actually own a large amount of the land on which the Gateway development will be built.

EXP07 will feature a large 3D model of the future Croydon town centre. The question is, will this model feature the arena (which is currently subject to the public enquiry) and therefore is unlikely to be built?

Anyone care to take a bet on that?