CROYDON IN CRISIS: The best-paid employee at the cash-strapped council is lobbying for a bumper pay rise – and is being supported in her claim by the part-time elected Mayor. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Ivory tower: council CEO Katherine Kerswell reckons she deserves to be paid more
Barely a month after she helped to push through an inflation-busting 15per cent Council Tax hike for the borough’s residents, Katherine Kerswell, the council’s chief executive, wants her own pay rise.
Kerswell, who has overseen around 400 lower-paid job cuts since she was parachuted in to Fisher’s Folly in October 2020, already receives a more-than-generous annual salary of £192,474.
Council Tax bills dropped onto residents’ door mats at the end of last month demanding an extra £240 per year for the average household – “to avoid having to make another £22million of cuts” was the reason given by part-time Mayor Jason Perry for the 15per cent tax hike in the bankrupt borough.
Now, Katharine Street sources suggest that Tory Mayor Perry (£82,000 per year in allowances from the cash-strapped council) is supporting Kerswell’s pay claim.
It is suggested that Kerswell has put out feelers to outside bodies, possibly including the Local Government Association and SOLACE – the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives – to seek justification for her pay request.
There has been nothing tabled as an agenda item to the council’s appointments and disciplinary committee, the body which would usually determine matters relating to the salary of the council’s “head of service”.
But then, at Kerrr-ching Kerswell’s two-steps-forward-one-step back council, there’s no meeting of the appointments committee scheduled for at least the next three months.
When she stepped in to the crisis-hit council two and a half years ago, with the backing of Whitehall and the LGA, Kerrr-ching replaced the notorious Jo “Negreedy” Negrini. Negrini quit in a bit of a hurry, with the council facing the first Report In The Public Interest from its auditors and with a bankruptcy Section 114 notice soon to follow.
Negrini’s exit was cushioned by the payment of a controversial £437,000 settlement.
Croydon has issued three S114 notices while Kerswell has been in charge, the most recent in November 2022, an admission that the authority has failed to get its finances under control, despite the supervision of a Whitehall-appointed improvement panel.
Last month, Kerswell’s council was advertising for a “director of transformation”, on a salary of £123,000.
“‘Transformation’ is just typical councilspeak for redundancies and cut-backs,” a Katharine Street source confided.
“In the past, the council’s finance director or CEO, like Nathan Elvery, would deal with all this. Kerswell appears to think she needs someone else to do her dirty work for her.”
Live long and prosper: Kerswell’s a bit of a Trekkie
On her arrival at Fisher’s Folly, Kerswell quickly earned a reputation for being patronising and using management jargon when communicating with staff. That said, nothing she has uttered in Croydon so far matches her most bananas offering, from the time she held the top job at Kent County Council.
“Everything you can learn about life, you can learn from Star Trek,” Kerswell said then, chanelling her inner Vulcan.
In Kent, Kerswell instigated a purge of senior staff, aimed at saving £750,000 per year, called “Change to Keep Succeeding”.
But the cost of bringing in consultants and “interims” to do the work of the departed, sometimes on £1,000-a-day plus, soon outstripped any savings to the tune of an estimated £4million. She swiftly found herself on non-speaking terms with the Tory council’s then leader, Paul Carter, who decided to cut his tax-payers’ losses and bean Kerswell down, helped with a payoff of £420,000. Kerswell had been in that job for just 16 months.
The speculation around Fisher’s Folly is that Kerswell’s household kitty at the £1.2million-plus home in Lewisham that she shares with her husband might be getting a little empty. That, though, seems most unlikely: the husband is Barry Quirk, 69, who until last November had been earning the big bucks as chief executive at Kensington and Chelsea. So he’s bound to be on a gold-plated public pension.
LGA advisor: Barry Quirk, Kerswell’s husband
And besides, last month Quirk started a new role, as an “advisor”, to… the Local Government Association.
Inside Croydon asked the LGA for its advice.
We asked whether the LGA would provide assistance to a local authority chief executive if they wanted supporting evidence to justify claiming an improved salary package.
An LGA spokesperson (not Barry Quirk) told us: “All senior officer salaries are determined locally by each individual council.” Yet in Croydon, Katherine Kerswell has not arranged any meeting at which her pay rise might be discussed, or approved.
According to council reports from 2021, Kerswell is probably due a pay rise, though maybe not of the size she has in mind.
The document, Pay Policy 2022-2023, states, “The pay structures, including basic pay, for the chief executive and head of paid service, corporate directors, directors and posts at Croydon Special Range (CSR) level are determined locally.
“The chief executive and head of paid service is to be paid a spot salary of £192,474. The salary is subject to review every two years and is next due to be reviewed in April 2023.” Our italics.
“The pay of the chief executive and Head of Paid Service is determined on appointment with reference to market rates. In establishing market rates, the council will compare remuneration data from other comparable local authorities. This allows closer benchmarking, where possible, to take account of factors such as population size, social demographics, budgetary responsibilities, economic and regeneration activity.”
There’s other documentation which suggests that if a pay increase is agreed for Kerswell, despite her already being on £3,700 per week at a council with debts of £1.6billion, she might find herself receiving only a modest (in comparison with recent inflation rates) 3.5per cent.
No negotiation: the 3.5% pay deal for council CEOs, like Katherine Kerswell
In February this year, while Kerswell was busy-ish preparing to lump a 15per cent Council Tax hike on the people she works for, the Government was laying out what it described as a “full and final” pay offer to the JNC – Joint Negotiating Committee – for chief officers of local authorities.
In a letter making the pay offer, the Government side said, “Employers must be able to demonstrate that pay offers they make to senior officers can be defended to Council Tax-paying local residents and other employees.” Good luck with that, Mayor Perry.
For Kerswell, any such pay rise would be worth £5,500 extra per year, gross.
We wanted to ask Kerswell about her pay demands.
But she is away on annual leave until April 19.
Which just happens to be when all the staff working in the council’s payroll department are planning on going on strike in a dispute over low pay and complaints, left unresolved by Kerswell, of discrimination.
Read more: Auditors and Government both losing patience with Kerswell
Read more: Croydon put in special measures: ‘Worst of all possible worlds’
Read more: Judge orders CEO Kerswell to face tribunal over racism claims
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