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Mayor Perry has ‘second thoughts’ about investing in Croydon

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‘Things are going to get worse before they get better,’ said the borough’s £81,000 per year part-time Mayor last week, as he begins to find his Town Hall task a bit of a struggle, reports WALTER CRONXITE, political editor

Second thoughts: Mayor Jason Perry speaking to potential investors at last week’s conference

Jason Perry, Croydon’s £81,000 per year Mayor, says he would “probably have second thoughts” about investing in the borough.

In a major gaffe from the person who is supposed to be encouraging businesses to set-up and trade in the borough, Perry made the remarks in an interview with real estate website React News.

Their reporter spoke to the executive Mayor after he gave what was supposed to be a keynote speech to potential investors at last week’s £300-per-ticket Develop Croydon conference.

Part-time Perry – the Mayor’s office only answers the phone four hours per weekday, while the Tory has retained his directorship of his family firm – didn’t share his reservations about Croydon with the 40-or-so developers, property speculators and other business people in his audience at Boozepark.

Six months into his term as Mayor, and Perry is having to cope with a series of set-backs, such as last week’s scrapping of the Tory government’s “investment zones”, and more delays encountered for Perry’s “big idea” for using the former Allders building.

No-go zone: Perry had pinned his hopes on Croydon becoming one of Thick Lizzy Truss’s ‘investment zones’

In the interview last week, Perry revealed that he had submitted an application to government for Croydon, after a decade of development blight caused by the Tory-backed deal to bring Westfield into the town centre, to be considered for investment zone status.

Investment zones were one of the proposals announced in the brief tenure of No10 by Liz Truss.

According to the government, “Investment Zones are designated sites where businesses will benefit from time-limited tax incentives and streamlined planning rules to deliver investment, create jobs and build the homes that communities need.”

By “streamlined planning rules“, the Tories actually mean virtually no planning rules at all…

Announced by KamiKwasi Kwarteng, last week his successor as Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in his Budget statement announced that he was abandoning investment zones.

Perry gave a clear impression of being increasingly desperate when he told React News that Croydon had applied for investment zone status. “With the position we’re in financially, we need to go for every opportunity that’s available,” Perry said.

Perry was elected as Mayor in May, inheriting a council that had gone bust in November 2020 with a budget overspend of £63million and debts of £1.5billion – £1billion of which had been left behind by the previous Conservative administration at the Town Hall, of which Perry had been a senior member of the cabinet.

In return for a government bail-out of £120million agreed in 2021, the council is having to implement massive cuts to its spending on public services, although preliminary figures show that Perry’s council had overspent its government-approved budget by around £20million in just his first six months in office.

Perry told React News, “We’ve got £1.5billion of debt, it’s costing us the best part of £50million a year to pay for that before we’ve delivered any services…

“The council needs to get smaller, it needs to do less,” Perry said.

Gaffe No1: Perry’s admission in an interview with a real estate website was not what he shared with investors

“There are likely to be more cuts because the council does need to get smaller.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Perry, which was not anything he had emphasised when campaigning to get elected, and was not mentioned in the council-funded “manifesto” produced recently in an effort to relaunch his already struggling mayoralty.

The cuts, Perry said, are “Not something that any of us enjoy, but it’s the reality.”

He said nothing about any cuts being made to his own generous council pay packet.

Inside Croydon has already identified how Perry, and his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, intend to reduce the amount spent on Council Tax Support for the most vulnerable families in the borough, while also axing millions spent with the “third sector” – charities and voluntary groups operating in the borough.

When addressing the conference audience, Perry made a different, more up-beat pitch. Perry said he wanted to see “a thriving shopping centre” in Croydon in five years’ time and “a town that’s once again proud of itself”.

But in his one-to-one interview, Perry said, “The council role is about creating an environment where investors come to Croydon and think, ‘Yeah, I want to invest in this borough’. At the moment, if I were an investor walking out of East Croydon Station or Thornton Heath or Norbury… I’d probably have second thoughts.

“In recent years in Croydon [there] has been a decline. The place has been dirty… graffiti has absolutely exploded across the borough. There’s just an environment where it looks like nobody cares and you can do as you like, and we’ve got to stop that.”

Perry didn’t appear to make any connection with the borough’s decline and 12 years of Tory government-imposed “austerity” on its budgets for services, such as street-cleaning and graffiti-removal.

The Develop Croydon conference at council-subsidised Boozepark was being staged as more closures were being announced to long-standing private businesses in Croydon all on Mayor Perry’s watch.

Gaffe No2: Perry’s ‘big idea’ was supposed to launch ‘this autumn’. Now he says there have been ‘delays’

Just up the road, Waitrose on George Street had closed its doors for a final time the Saturday before the conference; two nearby Wetherspoons pubs had closed over the summer; and last week one of the borough’s longest-established and largest restaurants, The Chateau, ceased trading abruptly, cancelling all its Christmas bookings.

Even Perry’s “big idea” to try to revive the town centre now seems unlikely to be operating before Christmas, as the Mayor had originally promised.

In July, Inside Croydon revealed the Mayor’s plan to bring Fabien Riggall, the founder of the hugely successful Secret Cinema, to the town centre with a new immersive experience called Lost, on the ground floor of the old Allders building.

“The initiative will repurpose vacant town centre spaces into cultural hubs, showcasing a diverse programme of arts in partnership with the community,” was the corporate bullshit spouted five months ago by Develop Croydon, as they promised then that it would open “this autumn”.

Riggall said something about being “excited to be working with the local community”, though little or nothing has been heard from him since.

For his part, Mayor Perry heralded “… the arrival of Lost in Croydon later this year”.

Lost, Perry said then, “will be the start of the change we want to make and an important boost for the local area”.

Since when, the momentum around Lost has been… well… lost.

The council owns the building, following the Compulsory Purchase Order conducted on behalf of Westfield and Hammerson. Three years ago they evicted all the traders and small businesses in what was called the Croydon Outlet, at the behest of “Hammersfield”, the Croydon Partners – the joint venture formed by the shopping centre developers and operators in 2012 when they were promising Croydon a glitzy new, £1.4billion supermall.

Perry’s now been forced to admit, “I think there has been a delay [from] the Partners”, over Lost.

“So we are looking at early next year now.”

Read more: Cynical, hypocritical and devious: benefit cut to hit thousands
Read more: This is the stark human cost of the borough going bankrupt

 


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