Croydon has agreed £1.79m with TfL for crossings, school road safety, buses and cycle routes this year. In December it bid for £3.36m. Here is what it asked for.
Croydon will get £1.79m from Transport for London this year for safer crossings, road safety outside schools, bus improvements and cycle routes. That is a little over half the £3.358m the council asked for last December.
The council announced the deal on 21 October. It said the revised sum “is lower than the amount originally sought, reflecting the time remaining to complete schemes within this financial year”. The financial year ends on 31 March 2027.
It is also less than Croydon received last year. The December Cabinet report said the 2025/26 award was £2.2m, including £0.2m of provisional funding (Cabinet report, 3 December 2025).
What the money is for
The Local Implementation Plan (LIP) is the main way TfL pays for borough road schemes in London. Each council bids every year against TfL’s own priorities.
The council’s announcement lists what this year’s £1.79m will pay for:
- safer pedestrian crossings
- road safety improvements outside schools
- road safety improvements on Portland Road, South Norwood
- new cycle routes linking parks and neighbourhoods
- more cycle parking
- improvements to bus journeys
It has not published how the £1.79m splits between those schemes, or which ones from the December bid have been dropped or delayed.
What Croydon originally asked for
The council agreed its bid at Cabinet on 3 December 2025. The council said it later resubmitted an updated plan at TfL’s request, after May’s mayoral election. That revised plan has not appeared on the council’s decision register.
This is the December bid for 2026/27, scheme by scheme:
| Scheme | Asked for, 2026/27 |
|---|---|
| Addiscombe East-West (safer corridors) | £500,000 |
| Healthy Neighbourhoods | £420,000 |
| School Streets (changed to safer crossings to schools) | £435,000 |
| Portland Road (safer streets) | £500,000 |
| Cycleway: Mitcham Common to Wandle Park | £100,000 |
| Cycleway: Lloyd Park to Addington Park | £500,000 |
| Cycleway: Lloyd Park to South Norwood Country Park | £100,000 |
| Bus priority: Kent Gateway | £270,000 |
| Bus priority: Davidson Road | £115,000 |
| Bus priority: rolling programme | £170,000 |
| Micromobility (e-bike and e-scooter bays) | £75,000 |
| Cycle parking | £97,000 |
| Cycle training | £76,000 |
| Total | £3,358,000 |
The same bid sought a provisional £3.603m for 2027/28.
A few details from the report:
- School Streets money was to be switched to “safer crossings to schools”, cycle and scooter parking and behaviour change work.
- The micromobility bid was to look at extending TfL’s rental e-scooter and e-bike trial into the north of the borough, around Crystal Palace, where Southwark and Lambeth already take part.
- Cycle parking (£97,000) and cycle training (£76,000) follow TfL formulas, so those sums were largely set by TfL rather than bid for.
Separately, Cabinet agreed on the same day to put £1,574,358 of developer (Section 106) money towards LIP projects over 2026/27 and 2027/28, plus £596,149 for schemes paid for by Section 106 money alone (decision 2623).
What the Mayor said
Executive Mayor Jason Perry said: “When residents and businesses raise concerns about a scheme, I will listen and press for those concerns to be addressed.”
He added that “supporting walking and cycling goes hand in hand with tackling congestion and keeping Croydon moving”.
The council said the TfL money comes on top of the £17.58m it is spending on roads, pavements, bridges and flood management this year.
What it means for you
- If you use Portland Road, it is the one scheme named in both the December bid and the October announcement, so it is the most likely to see work this financial year.
- If you were waiting for a School Street outside your child’s school, the December bid had already moved that money to crossings near schools instead.
- Schemes not named in the announcement, including the Addiscombe East-West corridor and the Lloyd Park cycle routes, may be smaller or later than planned. The council has not said which.
- Any scheme that changes a road needs a traffic order, and the council publishes those on its temporary and permanent traffic orders pages. Our Croydon roadworks and travel page carries the orders that affect traffic each week.
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