A HOMELESS man jailed for attempting to break in to a house claimed he just needed somewhere to sleep.

Krysztof Dziedzic, 42, was spotted trying to open the door of a home in Birdhurst Road, South Croydon, on November 26 year.

A neighbour called the police and when officers arrived they searched the Polish national and found a spanner and a pair of pliers.

Dziedzic, who was drunk at the time of the break-in on November 26 last year, said he was looking for somewhere to spend the night.

However, he pleaded guilty to attempted burglary when he appeared at Croydon Crown Court on Friday.

Dziedzic had previously burgled another home and been fined £100.

Judge Nicholas Ainley rejected his version of events, adding: "This was obviously a burglary. Whether you were drunk or sober, you were out in the middle of the night with a wrench and pliers, and you were trying to force the door.

"You've done the most sensible thing you could have done – which is to plead guilty."

Dziedzic was sentenced to 12 months in prison, which was halved due to his plea. He had served four months on remand.

PARENTS and teachers opposing government demands for their school to be incorporated into the Harris Federation's academy empire have been given a ray of hope following an upbeat Ofsted report.

Roke Primary School's teachers and parents were angered this month after being told by the Department for Education (DfE) its request to become part of Riddlesdown Collegiate was being refused.

However, a fresh report released by Ofsted this week after a recent inspection outlines a number of improvements since damning findings were reported on last summer.

Becky Carrier, 31, who launched the Save Roke campaign, said she hopes the DfE will now allow the school, which her eight-year-old daughter attends, to be sponsored by Riddlesdown.

She said: "It is still early days but we are headed in the right direction.

"From this new Ofsted report, it proves changes have been made and we are moving in the right direction.

"We want this to be dropped completely or if they are still intent on us becoming an academy, let us be part of Riddlesdown, as this proves the partnership we set up with Riddlesdown after the bad report last year is working.

"This should be as much about what the parents want as much as what the DfE want. We don't want our school interfered with any further, and we want Riddlesdown rather than Harris."

The latest Ofsted report issued found that:

In 2012, the proportion of pupils making expected progress in both English and maths exceeded the national average

The quality of teaching has improved steadily

Teachers are starting to provide greater challenges for pupils, including those who are more able

Much work had taken place in making more effective use of information on pupils' academic performance and measuring the performance of groups of pupils

The school is making satisfactory progress in addressing the issues for improvement and in raising the pupils' achievement

Recent legislative changes mean education secretary Michael Gove can impose conversion to academy status on schools that are underperforming.

Caroline Phillips, Roke's head teacher, hailed the recent improvements while expressing "determination" to carry on working with Riddlesdown.

She said: "This report tells us we are on the right track and recognises the hard work of staff and pupils.

"I can give a guarantee that we shall maintain our focus on further improvement, for the benefit of our whole community, and we look forward to continuing to work with Mr Smith, principal of Riddlesdown Collegiate, through to the end of the academic year.!

A DfE spokesman would not comment on whether Harris is still the department's "preferred" sponsor, but said: "We want to help under-performing schools to improve. Ofsted gave the school a notice to improve last year.

"We have now received the report from their latest monitoring visit and we'll take into account Ofsted's findings and judgment, any representations from the school and all other relevant information, when considering the way forward for Roke."

BUDDING entrepreneurs from the John Fisher School will have the chance later this month to pitch their ideas for a new health drink to a panel of tycoons worth an estimated £300 million.

Don McCarthy, chairman of House of Fraser; Tony Purnell, former F1 chief of Redbull; and Katherine Merry, Olympic bronze medallist, will scrutinise the boys' ideas minutely and offer trenchant and valuable business advice.

Mr Andrew Dean, head of business, economics and enterprise at the school, is excited by the event which will highlight the importance the school puts on being enterprising.

He said: "The Young Apprentice series has been a real success, capturing the imagination of the boys and encouraging them to be enterprising." He added that the winners would receive "fantastic" prizes.

The event, on Thursday, February 7 at 7pm in the School Hall on Peaks Hill, Purley is free and open to the public.

There will be a leaving collection for a charity supported by the school: 'Love in a Box'.

Mr Dean said: "The boys will have access to some of the most successful and competitive business talent in the country as well as being in with a chance to win some of the most fantastic prizes the school has ever offered."

NEARLY 20 homes and an old people's home suffered a power cut after workers building a fence accidentally struck the underground electricity cable.

Six homes and the Woodcote Grove House care home were cut off when the cable was hit and a further 11 customers had their supply cut so the line could be safely fixed.

Gordon Bell, course manager at Woodcote Park Golf Club, confirmed he was with a small team digging next to The Mount to install fence posts when they unexpectedly struck the cable shortly before 9.30am on Tuesday last week.

He added: "We cordoned off the area and phoned the electricity board. No one was hurt.

"We have moved it [the fence] now and marked out where the cable runs."

A spokesperson for Woodcote Grove House, a secluded home next to the golf club, confirmed parts of the home had been affected.

She said: "The cut in the power supply did affect us in that it knocked out one of our lines but this was restored within a couple of hours."

A spokesman for the UK Power Networks confirmed power had been interrupted to six customers.

She said engineers switched off supplies to a further 11 customers just before noon to repair the lines - reconnecting supplies at 3.25pm.

She urged anyone considering doing building work to contact them beforehand and find out the whereabouts of electricity cables.

She said: "We are committed to providing a reliable supply of electricity and, in a bid to reduce the number of power interruptions caused by contractors damaging underground cables, actively encourage any firm undertaking work to contact us in advance for advice and free cable-locating maps, to help them avoid our cables."

One nearby resident said the workers appeared to have had "a lucky escape."

He said: "They hit the 250-volt cable rather than the 1000-volt, which is just below. When we realised what had happened, we realised it could have been much worse."

PARALYMPIAN David Weir has given a thumbs-up to the borough's newest leisure centre.

The gold medallist opened the council's Waddon Leisure Centre at a ceremony on Tuesday evening.

At Fiveways Junction, the centre includes a 25-metre pool, 65-station gym, multi-purpose sports hall and creche. It has been designed to offer "exceptional" access to physically disabled users, the council claims, including a lift into the swimming pool and disabled facilities in the changing rooms.

Mr Weir said: "I was very impressed with the pool and the changing rooms. It's great to see so much equipment that is so suitable for disabled people."

Councillor Phil Thomas, Croydon's cabinet member with responsibility for the borough's sports facilities, said: "This is part of a wider package of commitments that we made to the people of Waddon and residents of Croydon as a whole, and so I'm delighted to see this centre opening."

The centre is open seven days a week, from 6.30am to 10pm, Monday to Friday, and 8am to 8pm at weekends.

For more information, call 020 8760 0657 or visit www.croydon-leisure.com

A SINGLE candle was lit in the foyer of Croydon Town Hall on Monday to remember the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

The ceremony was performed by Mayor of Croydon Councillor Eddy Arram, who also read out Croydon's pledge to strive to bring about mutual understanding among communities and oppose discrimination. His sentiments were echoed by Marilyn Arbisman from the Croydon Synagogue, who said communities learning to respect each other was the way forward.

The candle-lighting ceremony was followed by a civic commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day at which the main speaker was Agnes Grunwald-Spier, who with her parents survived persecution by the Nazi-allied regime in Budapest, Hungary, when she was a baby.

But she told her audience the memories had left a lasting mark on her family – her father committed suicide ten years after their escape from Hungary and her mother had never displayed "joie de vivre".

She added that, as well as leaving millions dead, the Holocaust had continued to impact on those who came though it, and that "generations to come" had been lost because of it.

Mrs Grunwald-Spier, who lives in Sutton, said she had decided to talk about her own family because no one could really conceive of the overall number of six million Jews killed.

She said: "Telling one person's story is something we can hang on to and identify with."

Mrs Grunwald-Spier explained how she and her mother had been saved from being sent to Auschwitz because, when they were lined up to be chosen, her mother told her, "the man in charge sent back women with children". The family managed to survive living in the ghettos in Budapest until they were liberated by the Russians in 1945.

As part of the civic ceremony students from Oasis Academy, Coulsdon, Addington High School and St James the Great Primary School in Thornton Heath performed drama and read poems with a Holocaust theme.

SANDERSTEAD councillor Yvette Hopley is set to become the new Mayor of Croydon.

Her nomination was reported to the full council meeting on Monday and her election will be confirmed at the annual council meeting in May.

Councillor Hopley, 52, was first elected to the council in 2006 and will be relinquishing a number of posts when she becomes mayor.

At present she is deputy cabinet member for finance, asset management and performance, chairman of the audit committee, vice-chairman of the pension committee a member of the council's scrutiny and overview committee. She will be mayor in the run-up to the 2014 council elections and expects council proceedings to get increasingly heated as polling day approaches.

She said: "I think meetings are going to be extra busy and I am going to have to be robust."

She said she was "ecstatic" about her nomination and believed the mayor played an important role in the life of the borough, adding: "Being mayor is an opportunity to integrate with the community and voluntary organisations and help them to feel supported.

"I am a great believer in our heritage."

NEW Addington could get its own council in a bid to help the estate "take greater control of its own destiny".

Labour councillor George Ayres has pledged to introduce the measure if his party wins next year's council elections.

The council would – much like village parish councils – have its own budget to spend on the estate and convey residents' concerns to Croydon Council on matters such as planning and schools.

It would be made up of representatives from the local community, schools and businesses.

Cllr Ayres told the Advertiser: "We want to see the community take on greater control of its own destiny by encouraging greater enterprise through the formation of a number of social enterprises."

Former Labour councillor Brenda Kirby welcomed her successor's idea.

She said: "New Addington has traditionally had a very strong community. We need to reinforce that."

However, the estate's Tory councillor, Tony Pearson, said the idea was "pie in the sky" and questioned the need for another layer of representation.

Ken Burgess, chairman of the Central Parade Business Partnership, also fears the idea is not practical.

He said: "We used to meet regularly as a community but, of course, with all the cuts that was disbanded.

"However, they were attended by the same regular people and often there were more councillors than residents at these meetings.

"Getting these things organised takes time and money."

But he agreed that there were matters in which the estate could do with more independence.

He said: "We are hugely concerned about the drop in footfall and numbers of people coming to the parade.

"I sincerely believe if they changed the parking [policies] it would encourage people to come up here."

Shoppers in Central Parade welcomed the idea of having more independence from Croydon Council – and gave the Advertiser a few suggestions of laws they would like to see introduced.

Michael Anderson, 51, of Chertsey Crescent, said he would like a ban on loud music.

He said: "There is a lot of loud music at night in my block and teenagers climbing through the window.

"No music after midnight in residential areas."

Josh Goksal, 16, of Fieldway, said he was fed up with the lack of things to do.

He said: "There needs to be more stuff for young people to do – sports or anything, more like the Timebridge Centre."

Winston Derc, 76, of Fieldway, called for the removal of the Central Parade boulders.

"I cannot see what they achieve anyway," he said.

CRYSTAL Palace co-chairman Stephen Browett says the proceeds from Wilfried Zaha's move to Manchester United could be used to fund a new stadium.

Browett this week told the Advertiser that some money from the £15 million transfer will be kept aside for a potential move to Crystal Palace Park or the redevelopment of the Eagles' current Selhurst Park home.

The chairman also hailed the move – which will see England international Zaha loaned back to Palace until the end of the season – as "the best possible deal for Crystal Palace Football Club".

On the stadium issue, the co-chairman said: "Some [of the money] will be spent on working towards a new ground – we need to put something aside for work on that.

"And once we get planning and architects on that to fund it, some will be held back for that, and some of it will help fund our losses.

"The Crystal Palace Park is still an outside chance.

"It would be great to be in the park, but I'd say that redeveloping Selhurst is the most likely option, simply because we already own it, it's already in Croydon and it's already a football stadium.

"That makes it a lot easier to get the planning permission."

With an initial £10m in the kitty with a further £5m to come, Browett says the money will be spread evenly across many areas, including transfers and the club's wage bill.

"Some of the money from the sale will be used on transfers and player wages," he said.

"It's well known that we run a club at about a £3-5 million loss. Our wage bill [which is well documented to be at £10 million] is about £3 million more than it should be for us to break even.

"But it is ultimately funded by player sales or by the directors putting in their money."

Zaha will remain at the club until the summer and Browett believes Palace have got a better deal than previous transfers involving their younger starlets.

He said: "We think we've come from a position of strength, whereas in the past Palace have been preyed upon perhaps, and certainly Victor Moses was undersold because Palace were in a fairly desperate state.

"Historically, with the exception of Andrew Johnson, Palace have never really maximised the transfer fee on a player, but with Wilfried, we didn't need to sell him or we didn't want to sell him.

"So, Manchester United had to first agree that they couldn't take him until the end of the season because our focus is on getting promoted more than anything else.

"They then had to agree what was a record price for an English player for outside the Premier League. It's always sad to see one of our own go, but I think we did the best possible deal for Crystal Palace Football Club.

"We certainly did a good deal for Wilfried, as he and his family are secured for life pretty much with a five-and-a-half year deal with Manchester United.

"He's got a huge soft spot for Palace and wants us to get promoted, but ultimately he's a young professional footballer and all young professionals would like to be on the big stage, which he will be at Old Trafford."

• Transfer deadline day: As it happened for Stoke City, Port Vale and Crewe Alexandra

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Follow me on Twitter for the latest Palace news, exclusives and live match updates @AdvertiserSport

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Watch our exclusive away videos following Palace around the country on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/AdvertiserSport

Follow me on Twitter for the latest Palace news, exclusives and live match updates @AdvertiserSport

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Watch our exclusive away videos following Palace around the country on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/AdvertiserSport

CRYSTAL Palace welcome Charlton Athletic to SE25 for the first time in four years today (Saturday) and an electric atmosphere is expected with up to 3,000 away supporters expected in the Arthur Wait Stand.

Wednesday night's result at Huddersfield Town was a blow to Palace's automatic promotion hopes, but they'll be looking to bounce back immediately against the Addicks with just 24 hours to prepare.

The team stayed up in Huddersfield after the game and travelled back down on Thursday, and boss Ian Holloway will be desperate to know the extent of Mile Jedinak's eye injury.

The manager was livid after the game and there were a few scenes of discontent in the tunnel area, reportedly over the alleged elbow to the Australian's face.

Jedinak may have even gone straight to hospital to get a few tests done, but you wouldn't think he'd make it in time for tomorrow.

But if he does manage to make it, he'll want to make sure he can definitely give 100 per cent with an injury like that.

And Andre Moritz could be missing after sustaining a nasty-looking leg injury, but it could mean that Jonathan Williams is given a starting role with Stuart O'Keefe called into the equation.

Jazz Richards is also likely to keep his place at right-back after impressing, while Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha are expected to start on the wings.

Of course, we all know about the Addicks' days in the Premier League, but a rapid fall from grace inside two seasons saw them drop down two divisions into League One, where they stayed for three years.

But just as we have seen with the likes of Leeds United, Norwich City and Southampton, Charlton battled their way out and have been a steady customer back in the Championship this campaign.

Chris Powell's side had been on a good run of form, but that was stopped in its tracks last Saturday when Sheffield Wednesday stole two late goals to take all three points at the Valley.

And the Valley boss, who started his footballing career as a youngster at Palace in the 1980s, says he wants a response at Selhurst Park from his players after losing to the Owls.

"It's a big game in many ways and it's one we'll have to be ready for," he told Advertiser Sport.

"Palace are a good team and have done particularly well this season, especially at home.

"We lost in the game against them at the Valley and really it's for us to go there and look to get one back.

"I will be looking for a response from the players."

And Powell believes Wilfried Zaha will be looking to finish the season strongly before departing for Manchester United, but says there are other threats Palace will offer against his side.

"Zaha is a player who is much-admired by a lot of people and he's really grown in stature in regards to his play," he said.

"But Bolasie has made a difference to them and Murray has scored goals, so they're a strong team and have a good way of playing.

"Ian Holloway has come in and they've carried on, but it's a good financial deal for Palace and I'm sure he'll be looking to perform well for them before his send-off at the end of the season."

A COMMUNITY campaign to save Upper Norwood Library from closure has paid off – with a deal between Croydon and Lambeth councils now in place.

Under the arrangement Croydon will fund the library to the tune of £75,000 a year for the next two years, with Lambeth footing an annual £150,000 bill.

The deal has already been given a broad welcome from campaigners who have fought against the threat of closure after Croydon pulled out of its long-standing partnership with Lambeth.

They will now push ahead with finalising the details of an independent trust, which aims to run the library under a co-operative model being introduced across Lambeth's library service.

Robert Gibson, a member of the newly-formed trust, said: "Given that in March last year there was very serious concern the library would shut, it is welcome news that the library will clearly survive for at least two more years, and hopefully much longer."

He said there were a lot of details to be worked out and the trust would want to ensure that the library continued to run independently and be operated by professional staff.

But while the deal is supported in principle by Labour councillors in the area, they remain unhappy with the level of finance being provided by Croydon.

The agreement was announced at Monday's meeting of Croydon Council by Councillor Tim Pollard, the cabinet member for children, families and learning.

Cllr Pollard said the agreement, combined with potential income streams for the trust, would give the library an budget of around £285,000 a year, making it one of the borough's best-funded libraries.

The council will also hand over its 50 per cent share of the ownership of the building to Lambeth.

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Pollard added: "Running this library as a joint venture between two boroughs worked for many years, and Croydon was determined to keep it open.

"Our new proposal to Lambeth not only achieves that goal, but also gives the community more direct control over how it's managed in the future.

"We've already been impressed by the quality of the business plan submitted by members of the local community, and Lambeth's agreement to our proposals bodes well for the prospects of this new enterprise."

Under the new arrangement it is likely that, while the deal comes into operation in April this year, Lambeth will work with the trust to ensure it beds in properly before full control is handed over in about a year.

Upper Norwood councillor Pat Ryan said: "We are delighted that the library is not going to close.

"Without the efforts of the community and the Labour party we would not be where we are today."

But he complained that the £75,000 promised by the council was £114,000 less than it had been under the original joint agreement, and also claimed this cut could lead to the loss of five jobs and hit the children's and reference library services.

Cllr Ryan said: "This level of funding from Croydon does not really give the trust a fighting chance."

He added that Labour had pledged that if it gained control of the council next May, match funding the Lambeth contribution to the budget would be a priority.

STREATHAM-CROYDON ran out comfortable winners against Surrey Two's bottom side Worth Old Boys last Saturday.

Without any meaningful preparation due to the inclement weather, both teams punctuated the opening exchanges with mistakes and imprecision.

First blood was drawn by the away side with a well-struck penalty dissecting the posts. This and the game's first try following a highly effective rolling maul were the only true incursions made by Worth in the first half.

Streatham's second-half performance clinched victory and earned a vital bonus point.

From the opening tussles, it was clear that Streatham-Croydon had a renewed purpose, running with greater depth and support into the contact area. Well recycled ball and quick hands resulted in the opening score by Conor Kelly, whose tackling and running were significant bright points during the first period.

This was followed by the try of the game as winger Vinny Auguiste crashed over in the right corner after numerous carries from the Streatham pack. Promptly recycled possession led to an overlap and the tide had turned.

At the end, Maika Baleilovu touched down by the post after a race following a host of calamitous events in the Old Boys' half.

And he grabbed Streatham's final try, pouncing after the ball had shot out of the scrum to ensure the bonus point.