CROYDON IN CRISIS: When in a hole, stop digging? Not Croydon’s bankrupt council, which is ‘damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t’ according to a senior Tory councillor over plans to throw more cash at its loss-making house-builder. KEN LEE reports
Good money after bad… The “London Borough of Croydon is likely to lend more money to its cash-strapped housing company Brick by Brick,” according to a report on the website of CIPFA, the association of civic accountancy professionals.
The council’s loss-making house-builder is nearly six months late in publishing its annual accounts for 2019-2020, and senior sources working at Fisher’s Folly suggest that this continued delay may be because auditors cannot sign off on the accounts to say that Brick by Brick is a “going concern”, unless there is some kind of financial guarantee in writing from the council.
Such letters of assurance have been made repeatedly for Brick by Brick since it was formed in 2015, before the council was forced to declare itself broke, issuing a Section 114 notice in November. Continue reading