CROYDON IN CRISIS: Reaction to yesterday’s Government announcement that the Whitehall-appointed improvement panel will effectively take over the running of the cash-strapped council has met with near-universal criticism
Can’t be trusted: Tory Mayor Jason Perry
There have been calls for Jason Perry to resign as Mayor after yesterday’s announcement that the council is to be effectively run by unaccountable Whitehall bureaucrats.
Perry, the borough’s first elected Mayor, has been in office since May last year. Yesterday’s move by the Department for Levelling Up renders him pretty impotent for the next two years. Perry is paid £82,000 per year as Croydon Mayor.
Staff working at Fisher’s Folly, residents who have just received their Council Tax bills for 2023-2024 with Mayor Jason Perry’s 15per cent hike, and Town Hall politicians have almost all condemned yesterday’s announcement of a Government-backed takeover in Croydon.
One Katharine Street source, seething that the Tory Mayor had stitched up a deal with his party colleagues in Westminster to deliver the biggest Council Tax rise in the country and then effectively hand over control to unaccountable Whitehall mandarins, told Inside Croydon, “Perry has certainly put the ‘Con’ into Conservative.”
Ria Patel, the Green Party councillor for Fairfield ward, last night issued a statement saying, “This is another slap in the face of Croydon residents.
Fund Croydon fairly: Green councillor Ria Patel
“We demand that the Government funds Croydon fairly and if they don’t trust local Conservatives to run the council, then they should ask their Mayor and councillors to resign and let Croydon residents choose who should be in charge.”
Patel, her party colleague Esther Sutton and the council’s only LibDem councillor, Claire Bonham, were the only three councillors consistently to vote against the Mayor’s Council Tax increase last week.
Labour’s councillors, after talking the talk over the first couple of votes, quickly caved in when council legal officials threatened the possibility that a failure to pass a budget would see Government commissioners appointed – which, one week later, is exactly what has happened.
“The Government has now decided that they are going to bypass our elected council and force through further and faster punishment on Croydon residents,” Patel said.
“While we agree that Mayor Perry isn’t capable of sorting out Croydon’s finances, imposing more Conservative cuts from above is not the solution.”
The trades unions are understood to be planning for more rallies and protests against the cuts which the Government will be over-seeing – £36million more cuts were included in Mayor Perry’s controversial budget last week.
Meanwhile, Perry’s Tory colleagues on the council are affecting a collective shrug of the shoulders, after having been rendered even more irrelevant than they already were.
“Indifference,” was the one-word response from a senior Conservative councillor when asked what the group’s response was to yesterday’s series of announcements from Westminster and Whitehall – although that may well be explained because the moves have all been well-known for several months, as Perry and his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, plot a route that might secure a write-off of £540million of council debt.
Since last May’s local elections returned 34 Labour councillors, two Greens and one LibDem, and only 33 Tory councillors, Croydon has been unusual in local authorities with elected Mayors, in that usually the borough Mayors have the support of a majority in their Town Hall Chamber.
According to the Conservative source, “The alternative view to the news is that, given the no overall control position, central Government has lost patience with a council chamber that opposes every measure tabled that would cut costs and help restore Croydon’s finances – with zero recognition by other parties that our dire finances require difficult cuts.”
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