• The original invoice price of the car
• The cost of replacing the car with one of the same type and age of your original car
• The amount of outstanding finance at the time of the write off; or
• Up to 100% of the outstanding monthly rentals if the car was on a contract hire or lease

• Tyre insurance– This repairs or replaces accidentally or maliciously damaged tyres up to a value of £300
• Alloy Wheel insurance– This repairs minor cosmetic damage of alloy wheels using a SMART repair service
• Scratch and Dent insurance– This repairs minor body and paintwork damage using a SMART repair service
• Excess protection– this covers the amount of excess payable to your comprehensive insurer in the event of any claim you need to make with them.

A VOLUNTEER who uses football to bring young people together has won an award for his efforts.

George Henry, born and bred in new Addington, has been volunteering in and running the Croydon Kickz scheme on behalf of the Crystal Palace FC Foundation for the last five years.

The 23-year-old took a leading role in organising the Heal the Streets football tournament, held a year on from the riots and also heads up the foundation's youth leadership programme.

This week, he was named London's most outstanding volunteer at the London Proactive Sport and Physical Activity awards.

Commenting on his award, George said: "Winning the volunteer of the year award has shown what you can achieve through hard work."

SAINSBURY'S Crystal Palace opened at 9.30am on Monday, April 25, 1983, at 120-122 Whitehorse Lane.

The supermarket was part of a development at Selhurst Park, the Crystal Palace FC ground. The store was the third Sainsbury's supermarket to open in 1983 and opened six days a week, with late-night shopping available five days a week. The store closed three hours before kick-off on the day of first-team home matches.

At the opening, the sales area was 37,707 square feet – double the size of the nearby store at the Whitgift Centre – and stocked more than 8,000 different product lines.

The Crystal Palace store also offered an array of breads, including baguettes made from French wheat flour in the store's bakery. A counter service delicatessen department stocked more than 140, lines including a wide variety of fresh fish, fruit and vegetables.

The wine department carried a larger number of lines than stores in the locality, including the highly acclaimed Sainsbury-label wine. Fresh orange juice, squeezed and bottled at point of sale, was also on offer.

Other departments included greeting cards, stationery, baby requisites, electrical accessories, toiletries, hosiery, ceramic tableware and textiles.

The store's opening created 485 jobs and total employees numbered 553; 199 were full-time and 354 were part-time members of staff, with 68 staff members transferring from other stores. All staff were trained in areas of key importance, including courtesy to customers, hygienic handling of food and prompt service.

The store had 37 twin-bay checkouts and special wide-aisle checkouts for customers with mobility difficulties. Specified express checkouts were designated to cut down on queueing and payment times. These were for customers paying by cash only. The store had a special feature, an automatic telling machine (cash point), which was installed at a later date.

This gave it the ability to dispense cash to customers, a service that was at the time not widely available outside banking facilities.

DEVELOPERS have been urged to consider building a primary school within Cane Hill to cater for the hundreds of families expected to live there.

Barratt is due to build more than 650 mostly family homes on the site of the former mental asylum, on the southern edge of Coulsdon, during the next five to ten years.

Developers told last week's strategic planning meeting they had no plans to build a school on the site, saying the council's school places strategy for the whole borough would meet the demand.

But with school places already squeezed, there are fears children in the area would have to travel miles to attend school, or end up in overburdened classes or "factory" schools.

Richard Thurbon, chairman of the Coulsdon West Residents' Association, whose children attend local primary schools, said more secondary places were also needed.

He said: "The demographic that is going to be attracted to that sort of development is families and children, and there are no school places to absorb the extra population.

"There needs to be a new primary school, but there also needs to be a new secondary school considered – this is not just a primary school-level issue.

"The quality of the education that has been provided in the south of the borough comes from the fact that there is a more dedicated focus on teaching because of the size of the classes."

Developers expect to pay about £9 million to the council through the new Community Infrastructure Levy, a tax on residential developments.

The money is their contribution for community services and infrastructure, but can be spent anywhere in the borough.

Coulsdon councillor David Osland, chairman of the planning committee, said the council's education department and developers should be working together to "make sure" school capacity was available.

"Local people will not want the children from the Cane Hill site to travel to South Norwood to go to school," he said.

Woodside councillor Paul Scott said: "People like small primary schools, so I would think carefully about actually providing a primary school on this site."

Coulsdon mother Wendy Ager said: "If the Cane Hill development is likely to attract numbers that would fill a small school near the site, it seems reasonable that this should be considered, for reducing travel to school."

Charles King, chairman of the East Coulsdon Residents' Association, would support returning the former Smitham school building, off Malcolm Road, to a primary school.

All a council spokesman would say this week was: "Greater detail will emerge as the Coulsdon Masterplan and Cane Hill planning application move forward."

HE WAS once called an "insignificant nobody" by Kevin Pietersen but Graeme Smith insists there is now a "mutual respect" between the new team-mates.

The two cricketing heavyweights, both born in South Africa, were once at loggerheads after Pietersen's decision to play for England and his subsequent claim of over-the-top sledging by Smith on his return to the home of the Proteas in the international game.

South African captain Smith replied at the time: "I'm patriotic about my country and that's why I don't like Kevin Pietersen".

However, with Smith taking over as Surrey skipper for the 2013 season, the 32-year-old is keen to play down their feud.

"I think every time he went to a press conference he would say something about South Africa and then I would come into the press conference and answer. So it brought out that tension but I think that is all gone now," Smith said. "We have played against each other enough times to know each other pretty well and this opportunity [captaining Surrey] allows me a chance to know him better."

And following a controversial 2012 season which saw Pietersen retire from One-Day Internationals in May before reversing his decision in August, Smith is glad to see the batsman back to his best.

"There is no doubt about that he is a world-class player and people want to see him play," Smith said of Pietersen. "It is good to see Kevin has mended a few relationships and is playing well. I'm sure England cricket is happy to have him back."

However, Smith admits Pietersen will be spending more time with England than at the Oval.

FOR more than a decade, it was the most pointless sign in Croydon.

Sitting above the exit of Reedham Station, it was riddled with spelling mistakes, punctuation errors and even pointed to places that didn't exist.

The sign, which is the responsibility of Southern Railway, drew arrows to Purley Council Offices – a building which ceased activity in 1956 – as well as a place called 'Pampisford' which, for anyone knows, might be in a parallel universe.

It also spells 'Coulsdon' as 'Couldson' twice, and then 'Canon's Hill' as 'Cannons Hill'.

Paul Ford, who lives opposite the station, said that as a copywriter, nothing irritated him more than poor spelling, grammar and inaccuracies in public facing signage and advertising.

He had contacted Southern back in September last year but to no avail.

"They tried ignoring my e-mails and then said that the station wasn't owned by them," he said.

"Then they admitted it was – they had got confused and thought that the complaint was about Reedham in Norfolk – and said they would send the sign to a team of managers who would see whether it was 'deemed neccessary' to make the changes."

The e-mail from Southern to Mr Ford said: "I am sorry for the confusion on our part, we certainly do manage Reedham station in Surrey.

"I have looked in to this and can see we have escalated this to our station managers already. They will assess the situation and investigate the signage.

"It will then be with them to make a decision in regards to updating the signs if they deem it necessary."

Mr Ford argued: "Clearly, if this kind of mistake was on show at London Bridge or even East Croydon, it'd almost certainly be fixed fairly rapidly.

"But as Reedham is a tiny little out of the way place, it's seemingly not worth their time and effort."

However, despite Southern saying it would investigate the sign, nothing happened.

But within 24 hours of the Advertiser alerting the rail operator to its sign faux pas on Tuesday, it had been removed from public view.

Simon Gregory, who has worked at the station for more than ten years, explained on Wednesday morning: "I reckon it's been there for about 12 years and not once has anyone come down here to have a look at it, never mind take it down.

"Anyway, some men came down this morning (Wednesday) and took it down at around 7.45am without saying a word to anyone."

When Mr Ford discovered the sign had been removed, he exclaimed: "Magnificent. All it took was one whiff of bad publicity and they were down there.

"I have to say, it would be nice if they replaced it with a sign displaying the correct information with no spelling mistakes."

A Southern spokesman said: "We'd like to thank the reader for pointing this out to us. We agree that the sign isn't particularly helpful – nor accurate.

"The sign has been taken down and we will be looking at whether it will be necessary to replace the sign."

"JUST had a knife pulled on me in Croydon and managed to make a run for it," read the message Thornton Heath pop star Vincent Frank sent out to his 31,000 followers on Twitter. "Lucky to be alive. Didn't want to die before this album came out."

As any journalist would, I contacted Vincent – who performs under the name Frankmusik – and asked whether he wanted to speak about what had happened.

"I know this may sound slightly bizarre," replied the singer-songwriter, "but however much Croydon can drive me up the wall sometimes, it is still my home and the place I was born.

"I think Croydon gets a bad enough reputation without my confrontation attracting more negative attention.

"I would love to help it become a safer and better place to live, but the restructuring that would need to take place seems utterly impossible with such a lax approach to town planning, integration and civic immersion."

So, I suggested, instead of an article about how a music star was threatened with a knife in Thornton Heath, why not a young role model talking about what he thinks should be done to make things better?

A few days later we were sitting in the Clocktower Cafe, talking over a cup of tea about the incident outside a bookmakers on Thornton Heath Pond on April 18.

Vincent, 27, who returned to Croydon in January following three years in the States, said: "I went to buy a packet of cigarettes and a big guy came out of the bookies and was trying to get my attention.

"I was ignoring him, hoping he would realise I was on the phone. But when he continued to address me, rather loudly, I realised he didn't care and was very much interested in getting my attention.

"When I carried on ignoring him he pulled out a rather large knife. He nearly cornered me but what I attempted to do – and successfully, thank goodness – was run for my life.

"With all of these situations it was over as quickly as it started. I didn't stick around to see what he wanted. I was mainly shocked and upset because I had to run and I'm a heavy smoker and I don't enjoy that.

"What did cross my mind was, why did this happen? It was by two bookmakers and right next to a bank. I just thought, on a logistical term, that doesn't make sense. I've not got anything against gamblers, but there's only so much I feel is necessary in one place. In a low income area, that kind of thing has to be spread out. You have to make it not as highly saturated."

Vincent isn't the only one who's concerned. In March, shopkeepers and residents in London Road united in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stop a new bookmakers from opening in Broad Green, where one in four shops sells alcohol or fast food.

They complained about the cumulative impact of the area's pawnshops, off licences and betting offices but, as Paddy Power's experienced QC argued, they were powerless to stop the application.

"That's exactly what I mean," said Vincent. "When I came back to West Croydon for the first time I was really shocked

"All I could see was 'cash for gold' and quick loan places. Evans Cycles had been replaced with a pawnbrokers. They are everywhere.

"People don't have any money and they are getting rid of the last assets they have or taking a quick loan when they need cash. It doesn't make any sense to me and it feel like there's something bigger going on."

As a musician, Vincent may seem an unlikely champion for better town planning.

But having split from his label Island Records, and back in Thornton Heath after breaking up with his American fiancée, Frankmusik has something to say.

"When you wake up and walk through Croydon and all you see is the frayed edges of society taking hold – derelict buildings and empty shopping precincts like Allders, all they are is psychological billboards for failure," said Vincent.

"They are massive signs which say 'You are failing as a town, you are failing as people' and we don't need to see that.

"As adults, our fondest childhood memories are to do with outdoors – parks, swings or things like that. I might sound idealistic when I say this but Croydon needs to be more green. I don't mean in a carbon footprint kind of way. I mean literally.

"We need to flatten these empty buildings and create more civic areas. At the moment Croydon is all about consuming. The high street, Purley Way, all these things send out the same message – if you've got money, come in, if you don't, get lost."

Vincent's first album in two years, Between, is due out in July. Beyond music, however, the now indie-musician wants to get involved in politics.

He said: "I think there's no point trying to educate the youth – they are already too poisoned.

"I can take on the adults who are poisoning the youth though, and that's what I intend to do."

SUPERMARKET giant Morrisons is stepping up moves to open two new convenience stores – including one branch at the historic Red Deer pub.

The company has plans to open a store on the pub site in Brighton Road, South Croydon, and the other at the former Jessops photographic store in North End in the town centre.

Councillors will hear Morrisons' application for an alcohol licence at each location next week – the clearest signal yet that the chain's plans for both sites are advancing.

The Bradford-based business will not require planning permission for either site, so could effectively set up shop – licensing committee's decision permitting – once negotiations between Morrisons and the Red Deer's owners, Town Centre Inns, have concluded.

Both parties were this week remaining tight-lipped as to when that might be.

A Morrisons spokesman said the company would not be commenting until after the meeting of the licensing sub-committee being held on Thursday (May 9).

Sub-committee members will have a number of objections to the licence before them, including one from Croham ward councillor Michael Neal.

Morrisons is applying for permission to sell alcohol at the South Croydon store from 7am to 11pm every day of the week.

In his objection letter, Cllr Neal highlights local concerns that there a number homes in the area housing vulnerable adults.

He says: "The South Croydon Community Association has raised concerns that these vulnerable adults are able to obtain alcohol early in the morning which may increase the level of nuisance, crime and disorder."

Cllr Neal added that following the opening of Tesco's convenience shop at the nearby former Swan and Sugar-Loaf pub "residents are concerned that further licensed premises allowed to serve alcohol early in the morning will fuel further binge drinking in the area."

Other residents have objected, pointing out there are four shops within 50 to 100 yards of the pub which already sell alcohol.

One adds: "The shops in the area will suffer reduced demand and income as a result and may well be forced to close down, leaving boarded-up shops and making the area further run down."

The application for a licence to sell alcohol in the proposed North End store from 6am to midnight every day will be considered by the licensing sub-committee on Tuesday (May 7).

There is one objection, saying there are already enough shops selling drink in West Croydon and granting the licence would increase drinking in the town centre.

On Friday 3 May Carshalton College hosted its first ever Creative Industries Day.

The day involved two trial World Skills Competitions for College students in photography and graphic design as well as a number of workshops and presentations focusing on careers in the creative industries centered on access to the games industry, television editing, advertising and photography. 

Industry professionals from Sky TV and The Disney Channel attended and spoke to students and visitors about the realities of working in the industry. Charlie Birchmore, Editorial Photographer and Tim Allen, Stop Motion Animator also presented at the event and offered sound advice to those interested in pathing a career in the industry.

Various exhibitors attended from Universities and industry organisations to speak to students and visitors on options available to them and offer advice on the industry.