Croydon Council Election · 7 May 2026

A West Thornton that works. For the people who actually live here.

I'm standing for your seat on Croydon Council. Three specific promises. Weekly accountability. No spin. No absentee councillor. No more waiting.

Count me in→ See the plan first→
Plank 01
Freeze the rent. Make landlords accountable.
Plank 02
Clean streets. Safe streets. In 90 days.
Plank 03
Your councillor on your doorstep. Every week.
The stakes

This is what's happening to us.

Not rhetoric. Not slogans. These are the numbers from Croydon Council's own records.

+33%
Council Tax rise since 2023
Typical households pay around £600 more per year. Services cut. The same councillors voted themselves pay rises.
£50m+
Spent on temporary accommodation last year
Families in converted office blocks. Bedbugs. Single rooms for families of four. The system is broken.
8x
Times Croydon has been named a "rotten borough"
Private Eye's annual list. Eight of the last nine years. We deserve better.
73%
Of us did not vote last time
That's how they stay. Low turnout rewards incumbents. Showing up is the one thing they cannot outspend.
The Plan

Three promises. Specific. Measurable. Mine.

I don't believe in vague language. Every promise below is something I can and will work on with the powers a councillor actually has. Next to each one, you'll see a "challenge me" button. Tap it. I've thought about the hardest questions before you ask them.

Plank01

Freeze the rent. Make landlords accountable.

West Thornton is majority renters. Too many of us are living in damp flats, with dodgy landlords, and no one listening. The new Croydon Selective Licensing scheme rolls out in 2026 and covers 74% of the borough's rental stock. It gives us a weapon. I will use it.

What I promise

  • Fight for a real rent freeze in West Thornton by pushing the London Mayor and Parliament for the powers a council needs
    How can a ward councillor freeze rent? Westminster sets rent law, not Croydon Council.
    You're right — I can't unilaterally freeze rent. No councillor can. What I can do is use this seat to make noise that Westminster has to hear. Sadiq Khan has been asking for rent-stabilisation powers for years. West Thornton has some of London's most squeezed renters. That's political leverage I will spend.
    What I directly control
    Ward-level advocacy, motions to full council, public pressure campaigns, building a coalition with other renter-heavy wards
    What needs pressure applied
    London Mayor's office, local MP, national government. I'll make noise until this changes.
  • Every landlord in West Thornton must prove decent conditions under Selective Licensing, or face enforcement
    How will you actually make landlords lose their licence? Isn't enforcement always slow and rare?
    Enforcement IS slow. That's precisely why this matters. Selective Licensing in Croydon launches in 2026 with proactive inspections and penalties up to £30,000. My job is to track every failed property in this ward, escalate in writing, and publish the response times. What the council does in the dark, I'll drag into the light. Slow enforcement survives because no one is counting.
    What I directly control
    Ward casework escalation, Environmental Health referrals, council scrutiny questions, monthly public reports
    What needs pressure applied
    Croydon Council's licensing team, Veolia, private landlords. I can't enforce — but I can make sure somebody does.
  • A renters' surgery every fortnight at the VHP Centre, Thornton Row — face to face, not online forms
    Nice promise, but won't you stop showing up after three months like every other councillor?
    Fair. Show, don't tell. Two things will hold me to this: I'll publish attendance at every surgery on my monthly report (you can check), and I'll bring a legal advice partner or Shelter caseworker to as many sessions as I can arrange. The second bit means if I'm missing, people notice — because professionals they already trust are showing up alongside me.
  • A public register of the worst landlords in the ward, drawing on the council's own data
    Isn't naming landlords publicly going to get you sued for defamation?
    Only if I invent names. I won't. The council already publishes a Rogue Landlord Database under national legislation, and Selective Licensing will produce clear records of who has been prosecuted or had a licence refused. My job is to make that information visible and local — not publish rumour. Every name on my monthly report will already be in a public council record. I'm shining a light on what's already there.
  • Direct advocacy for families stuck in unliveable temporary accommodation — Concord House, Windsor House, anywhere the council has forgotten about
    Councillors don't control housing allocations. How will you actually move anyone out of these buildings?
    I won't move anyone directly — that's the housing team's call. But I will be the councillor who keeps showing up for Concord House families at council meetings, in writing, in the local press until their cases are heard. Right now, these residents have written collective letters the council has largely ignored. They need a councillor on their side who will not drop it.
    What I directly control
    Casework, scrutiny questions at full council, press attention, connecting residents to legal support (PILC, Shelter)
    What needs pressure applied
    Croydon Council housing team, private TA providers, government funding. I make the noise. They have to act.
Rogue landlords out. Families in. No more bedbugs. No more damp. No more silence.
Plank02

Clean streets. Safe streets. In 90 days.

Fly-tipping. Missed bins. Drug use at the Recreation Ground. ASB at Winterborne Road. You've reported it. Nothing happens. CCTV went up in February but the council treats it as window dressing. This stops on day one.

What I promise

  • Push for a 48-hour fly-tip response standard in West Thornton. Publish every failure.
    Veolia runs the bin contract and they're already failing. How is a councillor going to fix that in 48 hours?
    I can't fix Veolia. What I can do is make their failures impossible to ignore. Right now, when bins are missed, councillors have been told to stop filing complaints internally. That's why it keeps happening. I'll do the opposite: every missed collection and fly-tip report I receive gets logged publicly on my monthly report, with the date reported, date resolved, and days between. Contract performance becomes a public scoreboard. That's how you make a £40m contract behave.
    What I directly control
    Public reporting, Love Clean Streets escalation, council scrutiny questions, coordination with community reporters
    What needs pressure applied
    Veolia (the contractor), Croydon Council's waste team. The 48-hour standard has to come from them. My job is to demand it loudly.
  • Weekly ward walks with residents and the Safer Neighbourhood Team, from day one
    The Met Police already do their own patrols. Why does this add anything?
    Because a patrol with residents is different from a patrol without them. The SNT knows policing. Residents know which corner the fly-tipping happens on, which basketball court kids are scared of after dark, which street corner the drug dealing moved to last week. Weekly walks put those two sets of knowledge together. It's also how I find out what I don't know — every week.
  • Secure youth provision at Thornton Heath Recreation Ground within three months, using the Community Ward Budget
    Ward budgets are tiny. Safeguarding takes months. Can you really open youth provision in 90 days?
    Three months is tight — you're right to push. Here's the plan: the ward budget (~£15-20k/year) can't build a new youth centre, but it CAN commission sessions with an existing qualified youth work provider. Croydon has established providers like Legacy Youth Zone and church-run groups with safeguarding already in place. My job is to get the right partner signed up and running by month three, not to build something from scratch. If it takes four months, I'll tell you at month three why. No spin.
    What I directly control
    How the ward budget is allocated, which providers I bring to the table, the timeline I hold myself to
    What needs pressure applied
    Parks team (venue permissions), existing youth providers (contracting), safeguarding checks (DBS takes time)
  • Monthly public report on CCTV footage, prosecutions, and enforcement — what worked, what didn't, what's next
    Isn't CCTV data confidential? How will you access enforcement numbers?
    Council enforcement statistics are public data — they just aren't reported in a way ward residents can see. I'll use Freedom of Information requests and the councillor's legitimate data access rights to pull the West Thornton numbers every month and publish them in plain English. What the council files in a PDF buried on page 47, I'll put on a single page you can read in 90 seconds. No confidential footage. No personal data. Just performance numbers.
48-hour fly-tip response. Weekly ward walks. Youth provision at the Rec by month 3.
Plank03

Your councillor on your doorstep. Every week.

Access Croydon has closed its walk-in doors. Residents in crisis are told to fix everything online. The council's own website tells you to email. That's not representation. That's abandonment. I will not govern from behind a computer.

What I promise

  • Weekly surgeries, rotating locations so no corner of the ward is left out
    Every councillor says this. Six months in, attendance dies and the schedule quietly disappears. Why will you be different?
    Because this one is 100% under my control — there is no one else to blame if I don't show up. I'll publish the attendance numbers on my monthly report, along with the anonymised types of issues raised. If attendance drops, you'll see it. If the schedule moves, you'll know why. Accountability is what I'm running on. Not showing up is the cardinal sin.
  • A real WhatsApp number you can message directly — answered within 24 hours, by a human
    Can one person actually answer thousands of WhatsApps within 24 hours?
    Honest answer: it depends on volume. West Thornton has ~17,000 voters. If every single one messages weekly, no — I'd need a team. What I'll commit to: every message gets a reply within 24 hours, even if the reply is "I've received this and I'm working on it." A one-line acknowledgement is better than silence for three weeks, which is what residents currently get from Access Croydon. For complex cases, I'll triage and set realistic expectations.
  • A monthly public report to every resident: what's been fixed, what's still broken, what's coming next
    Who reads councillor reports? Isn't this just busywork nobody sees?
    Depends on the report. A dense PDF? Nobody reads it. A one-page visual scoreboard pushed to the volunteer WhatsApp community, the ward Facebook group, and leafleted to people who've signed up for it? Different story. The format is the message. I'll make it readable in 90 seconds. If people stop opening it, I'll change the format, not stop doing it.
  • Campaign to restore face-to-face housing support at the council for people in emergencies
    A judicial review is already underway. How will one councillor change what the council has already decided?
    The judicial review by PILC might or might not succeed — courts are slow and the outcome is uncertain. What I can do regardless of the court case: build the ward-level coalition (community groups, legal centres, other councillors, the local MP) that makes digital-only access a political liability for whoever runs Croydon after 7 May. Courts can order change. Politics makes it stick.
    What I directly control
    Ward-level coalition-building, public campaigns, scrutiny questions, connecting residents to legal support
    What needs pressure applied
    The new mayor's office post-7 May, council officers, government funding decisions
I'll be on your street every week. Not just every election.
Jahir Hussain, candidate for West Thornton
Why me

I'm not from the machine. I'm from this ward.

I've lived in Croydon for 25 years. A decade of that has been rooted in West Thornton — not because I moved here to run for a seat, but because this is where my community lives, works, and worships. When we built the Alhidaya Croydon mosque on Brigstock Road in 2013, it wasn't just a building. It became a hub for hundreds of families — Tamil, South Asian, and beyond — who'd been told by everyone else in this borough that they'd have to fend for themselves. For the last ten years, if you've lived in West Thornton, it's almost impossible you haven't crossed paths with the work that comes out of that building.

Soup kitchens. Education support. Careers help for young people who weren't getting a look in anywhere else. Neighbours helped with everything from forms to funerals. I've done all of this for ten years without a councillor's title, without a press release, without needing a vote to make it happen. Here's what I want you to know: whether you elect me on 7 May or not, I will keep doing this work. The seat would give me more accountability and more leverage to get things done faster. It wouldn't give me more reason.

I'm not going to spend this page attacking other candidates. That's not how I work. Instead, I'll tell you this: most people who run for local office ask you to trust them on promises. I'm asking you to trust me on a track record. If you've lived in West Thornton for the last ten years, you've either seen my work or you've seen someone I've helped. If you know me, you already know whether I'll do what I say. If you don't — ask a neighbour. Ask someone at the mosque. Ask anyone who's walked into a soup kitchen, a careers session, or a community event in this ward over the last decade. I don't think there are many candidates in this borough who could say that and mean it.

I don't promise what I can't deliver. That's why every promise on this page has a "challenge me" button — I've thought about the hardest questions before you asked them. I won't speak in slogans. And I won't disappear after 7 May. If you give me this seat, I will spend every week earning it again.

— Jahir Hussain Candidate for West Thornton
The Campaign

The campaign is you.

I won't outspend the incumbents. I have neighbours. You are how we win. Every door knocked. Every conversation at the bus stop. Every WhatsApp message to a cousin who didn't know there was an election.

Message people believe in + Volunteers who replicate + Conversations at doors = Votes
Miss any of the three and it falls apart. Hold all three and we win.
Week 1

Foundation

  • Lock the three planks
  • First 10 canvass leaders trained
  • Two small canvasses
  • Script sharpened with door feedback
Week 2

Multiplier

  • 50 volunteers trained by the first 10
  • Daily short videos on the planks
  • First full voter ID sweep
  • WhatsApp shift groups live
Week 3

Convert & Get Out

  • Second pass on undecideds
  • Supporters only in final 4 days
  • Polling station shifts
  • Every vote counted, every supporter reminded
The Civic Mission

Last time, 73% of us stayed home.

27%
Turnout at the last council election. Nearly three out of four of us did not vote.

That is the real scandal. Not the council tax rise. Not the potholes. The silence. Because when three out of four of us stay home, the people who keep failing us don't even notice. Low turnout is how bad councillors keep their seats.

We have significant Tamil, Somali, South Asian, African-Caribbean, and Eastern European communities in this ward. Many of us grew up in places where voting changed nothing, or where voting was dangerous, or where the council never heard us in our own language. That is not apathy. That is history. But on 7 May, history doesn't have to repeat.

If you've never voted in a council election before — this is the one. Because your street, your bins, your rent, your kids' youth club, your safety — that's all decided by this vote.

So here's the deal: whoever you vote for, vote. If you're still undecided on 7 May, vote anyway. If another candidate convinces you more than I do, vote for them. The movement I care about is bigger than this election. It is you showing up.

Pledge to vote below. We'll remind you when it matters. We'll help you find your polling station. We'll help with postal votes. And if you need a lift on the day, we've got a car.

Pick your level

Four ways to change this ward.

Whichever one fits your life today. No judgement. Every level moves the needle. You can always come back and do more.

Questions & answers

Before you ask, I've probably thought about it.

Can a councillor really deliver on freezing the rent?

Honestly: not entirely. Rent caps are set by national law. But selective licensing — the new scheme rolling out in West Thornton in 2026 — gives councillors real power to force landlords to meet decent housing standards or lose the right to rent. I will use every power a councillor has, escalate every case, and publish the results. That's what I can promise.

How is 48-hour fly-tip removal possible when Veolia can't even collect bins?

It's not possible without pressure. That's the point. Councillors don't run Veolia — but we can escalate every failure, publish the misses monthly, and make the contract performance a public issue. The incumbents were told to stop filing complaints. I will file them in public instead.

What makes you different from every other candidate promising everything?

The three planks are all things a ward councillor has real power to influence. I've deliberately not promised things outside my remit — like fixing schools or lowering council tax alone. If you read my three planks and they sound less exciting than others, that's on purpose. Specific beats vague. Deliverable beats aspirational.

Why should I vote if it never changes anything?

In a ward where 73% of us don't vote, the 27% who do decide everything. That's not a failure of democracy — that's math. If another 30% of us show up on 7 May, we don't just change the council. We change who bothers listening to us for the next four years. The people in power right now are counting on you to stay home.

I don't have time to volunteer. Can I still help?

Yes. Pledge to vote. Tell three neighbours. Repost the three planks on your WhatsApp status. The campaign is not a volunteer club — it's a network. Even if you never knock a single door, you are part of how we win.

What happens after 7 May?

If I win: weekly surgeries, monthly public reports, a WhatsApp number that actually answers. If I lose: I still live here. I'll still show up. The campaign trained hundreds of us. That doesn't disappear because of a ballot.