Coulsdon residents and businesses are asking – what has happened to our Christmas lights?
We’ve been very fortunate in previous years in that the small but enthusiastic Yulefest group have organised the lights with funding from our Community Ward Budgets. The Budgets are funded by Croydon Council. Unfortunately, due to the serious state of the Council’s finances, the Budgets were stopped, restarted and stopped again at a late stage. So there was a large degree of uncertainty surrounding funding and ultimately no funding was available.
A number of interested parties including the East Coulsdon Residents’ Association, local businesses and ourselves have been working behind the scenes to see if we can come up with some lights at short notice with the required funding. The official lighting provider to the Council had said no lights would be available, but it has since come to light (pardon the pun!) that there is a stock of basic Christmas lights that they can rent to us. A local businessman has agreed to fund this but, we understand, will seek contributions from other Coulsdon businesses. Understandably we won’t see the same quality of lights as in previous years but, if things go according to plan, we will see at least some festive cheer at the end of a difficult year for all.
If you would like to help fund this year’s lights please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-raise-money-to-light-coulsdon-this-chri…;
As another positive, we have been approached by a good number of local people offering to donate to next year’s Christmas lights, support the small but enthusiastic Yulefest team and help us to form a Coulsdon Business Partnership that will benefit the District Centre. As ever we still need more support for each of these, so if you are interested in helping in any of these ways or would like more information please do let us know: [email protected].
If you’d like to donate to help the 2022 lights and Yulefest please click here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/coulsdon-yulefest?utm_term=qGqw…;
We thought this information would help residents to understand why we are not seeing the usual Christmas light display in Coulsdon. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested.
