EXCLUSIVE by JOSHUA STEIN
Croydon Council has admitted that it does not know how it spent £1.082million of public money on legal fees over the past two years.
Croydon’s cash-strapped council has debts totalling £1.7billion.
Out of control: Croydon’s Tory Mayor Jason Perry has failed to ‘fix the finances’
In July 2025, following the latest bail-out request from Croydon for more than £100million in emergency funding, the government sent in a team of Commissioners to oversee the financial management of the council, where spending seemed to be out of control.
Now a council response to a Freedom of Information request made on behalf of Inside Croydon appears to confirm the government’s worst fears.
This website has previously reported how the council’s spending on agency staff had quadrupled between 2022 to 2025, the first years under Conservative Mayor Jason Perry. And as Inside Croydon revealed last year, one “transformation” consultant, brought in to cut costs by cutting other people’s jobs, was being paid £726 PER HOUR.
But it is not only spending on temporary staff which is being made without the most basic of records or checks. Continue reading
CROYDON CHRONICLES: A search to find the history of an altar frontal used at Croydon Minster reveals a tale from Shanghai, an ARP warden in World War II, freemasonry, a men’s outfitters shop on Croydon High Street and a nurseryman tending his greenhouse plants. All will be made clear by DAVID MORGAN
Transport correspondent JEREMY CLACKSON on the clear and present danger of a car-obsessed Mayor who has no consideration for road safety for Croydon’s children
Crystal Palace Hub Sustainable Fashion Week – which in fact runs for a fortnight – is entering its second week, with its fashionably creative approach to community and one of the highlights of the festival tonight, with a big fashion show at St John the Evangelist on Sylvan Road.
CROYDON IN CRISIS: Mayor Perry spent £53.4m on temporary staff at the council in 2024-2025.
Looking for a new ‘challenge’? Or simply need a job? CHERYL FERGUS-FERRELL, right, Inside Croydon’s roving reporter, checked out a jobs fair at the Fairfield Halls to see what can be on offer at these events
The company stages more than 100 career fairs a year across more than 50 locations. So just what might this event, free for visitors and jobseekers, have to offer?
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, on the grim budget report from the borough’s failed Mayor
The Purley Literary Society was set up in 1901 by the Congregational Church as a mechanism to “improve” agricultural workers #, and give them an alternative to visiting the pubs and fleshpots of Purley during the winter months. The Purley Lit has continued ever autumn and winter ever since, just losing a few years due to world wars, and more recently, covid. 
