It must have been pretty gloomy at the Croydon table at the Grosvenor House Hotel last night. Well, as gloomy as it can ever get when you are a public servant out on the piss at the expense of the Council Tax-payers.

Nathan Elvery: e-e-e-efficiency

The big wigs on Croydon Council suffered a double whammy yesterday, because within a few hours of hearing that their ill-conceived pipe dream of city status had been turned down, they had to sit through the 2012 Local Government Chronicle awards dinner only to discover by the end of the night that they were left empty-handed.

The LGC Awards was the event where, in 2011, Croydon deputy CEO Nathan Elvery acted as a judge and handed out a gong to… Croydon Council. It was Max Headroom-lookalike Elvery who apparently coined that memorable piece of councilspeak bullshit about his own council that “efficiency is in our DNA”. A phrase that is almost as memorable as “self-praise is no recommendation”.

Today, it’s impossible to find out what happened on Wednesday night from our council. Croydon’s inexplicable lack of success at the LGC Awards has not been addressed by the usual gushing press releases from the council’s press office (which operates under the control of… Elvery). No Tweets on the rates about the missing trophies either. Can’t think why.

This year, Croydon received only a single “commended” consolation prize from the 17 categories, all sponsored by various local authority suppliers (no conflicts of interest there at all, of course).

Croydon got a mention in the Workforce category (sponsors: commercial lawyers Nabarro), presumably because of the fabulous manner in which our council has managed to make so many members of its workforce redundant, while spending £20 milllion a year on outside contractors.

Insiders suggest that this is the first time in several years that the Croydon delegation has staggered home not weighed down with a meaningless piece of perspex. Croydon had been shortlisted in three categories.

So that’s yet more Council Tax-payers’ money down the drain on a pointless exercise in ego-massaging for our six-figure salaried council executives: council employees will have had to spend several hours putting together their submissions for the judges, not to mention the handsome bill for booking a table and paying for the booze in expectation of winning more in-house awards.

Ah, well, maybe better luck next year. Unless Private Eye gets on to Elvery’s case beforehand.

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