Many of you will recall that a project to improve the bridge lighting under the Portland Road Railway Bridge has been ongoing from 2015.
A public drop-in session was held in 2019 and a design selected and an architect was appointed.
This was to be partially funded by the Good Growth Fund – part of the South Norwood Regeneration project, with money added from Councillor’s Discretionary Ward Budget and funds from S106 Planning Obligations.
Since this time, it has been our understanding that negotiations have been ongoing between Croydon Council and Network Rail. We were assured that as recently as last year that this long-awaited project was still going ahead.
Last week, our local Councillors were informed that this project will no longer be fulfilled. According to Croydon Council this is because “The legacy costs of the non -standard lighting equipment are not supported by the Council’s lighting term contract and projects with unfunded maintenance costs are not approved for delivery.”

We really can’t understand why it has taken so long for the Council to come to this decision. This is extremely disappointing news!