CROYDON IN CRISIS: Valo Smart City has racked up £1m debts, attracted at least four County Court Judgements and is now cancelling contracts with its suppliers. But after waiting nearly three years for the company to deliver their ‘smart’ bus shelters, Croydon Council has failed to take any action for breach of contract. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Long promised, never delivered: it is nearly three years since the ‘smart’ bus shelters were announced as coming to Croydon
Better make sure you have a decent umbrella or raincoat if you are thinking of travelling by bus around Croydon any time over the next year.
Because there’s no prospect of any of the council’s long-promised “smart” bus shelters being installed around our borough any time soon.
In 2021, Croydon Council entered into a deal with a company that promised to provide 185 bus shelters which would be fitted with all the latest bells and whistles, and wifi, that modern technology has to offer, while paying the cash-strapped local authority more than £600,000 per year over a 10-year contract from advertising revenues generated from the shelter sites.
It all sounded too good to be true.
The deal between Croydon and Valo Smart City UK Ltd was one of the first commercial agreements for the council under its then-new chief executive, Katherine Kerswell.
Contract signed, all the existing (low-tech but windproof and rainproof) bus shelters under Croydon Council’s control were promptly removed. And since when… nuffink.
Inside Croydon can reveal that the company making the big promises now faces even bigger problems than a year ago, with two more County Court Judgements for unpaid debts, plus a Companies House warning for being late filing their annual accounts and an accumulated £1million-worth of debts and liabilities.
The company’s only employee left Valo Smart City in June, alleging that they had gone months without being paid their wages.
‘Con artist’: Valo Smart City’s Isaac Sutton
The company’s founder, Isaac Sutton, has meanwhile got himself in hot water in his native United States with the powerful Securities and Exchange Commission over a dodgy shares deal for a company peddling even dodgier anti-covid equipment.
Back in Croydon in March this year, Jason Perry, the Tory Mayor, told a Town Hall meeting that the council would be taking “legal recourse” against Valo Smart City over the company’s failure to supply the promised bus shelters.
Then, last month, at a public meeting held in Norbury, Perry answered a question about the long-missing bus shelters by saying that no legal action would be taken against the suppliers, giving as a reason, “it would take at least 18 months for us to go through the whole procurement process again”.
Perry suggested that he actually believed that Valo Smart City, a company with no track record in the building of bus shelters or the sale of roadside advertising and which Companies House records show has liabilities of £1million, would actually deliver the long-awaited equipment.
Gullible: Jason Perry accepted Valo Smart City’s spiel
There is a reason for this latest U-turn by Croydon’s piss-poor Mayor.
Investigations by this website have discovered that in August this year, Perry’s council entered into a settlement with Valo Smart Cities that undertook not to sue the company for breach of contract, in return for an immediate payment from Valo of £500,000.
Sources familiar with the arrangement have told Inside Croydon, “It’s ridiculous. Not a penny of that money has been paid to Croydon.
“Valo can’t… Valo doesn’t have any money. They only have debts – money owed to their suppliers, to their staff and contractors.”
One of those suppliers has told Inside Croydon that Valo terminated its contract with them last week. “It looks like the debacle of the Croydon bus shelters is at an end,” the supplier said.
“They currently owe us around £32,000, which I doubt we’ll ever see a penny of. They also haven’t paid their UK staff for months. Isaac Sutton is a con artist.”
The out-of-pocket supplier is London-based Digital Signs For Transport, a well-established firm that has been providing real-time passenger information boards around the capital’s rail stations and bus stops for a decade (Valo’s “smart” schtick was never original or unique, despite the sales pitch given by council director Opama Khan, who has been the leading advocate for the deal in Fisher’s Folly).
It was Digital Signs which took court action against Valo Smart City last year, with two separate County Court Judgements amounting to £31,800, as exclusively reported by Inside Croydon.
The judgements were issued against Valo Smart City in January and July 2022 for unpaid invoices.
In trouble again: the latest SEC judgement over Isaac Sutton’s somewhat cavalier approach to business, and honesty
A winding-up petition against Valo was dropped at the start of 2023, after Sutton intervened with promises to pay all the outstanding bills. He never did.
This year, there have been another two CCJs taken out against Valo Smart City (by an as-yet unidentified supplier), for a total of £27,726. These are publicly listed as having not been satisfied.
Insiders relate that Sutton has companies with smart technology interests in other countries, and with similar failures to deliver. In Dubai, where the authorities take an exceedingly dim view of such practice, it is estimated that his company’s liabilities could be 10 times greater than what he owes in Britain.
Sources claim that in the last week of September, Sutton held a meeting of Valo Smart Cities UK at which it was decided to abandon their Croydon interests.
“What I don’t understand,” said a source, “is how Croydon Council managed to go into business with someone like Sutton without doing any proper due diligence on his conduct in the United States.”
Sutton’s questionable management of various companies, going back to 1995, have seen him attract the attention of the SEC more than once.
The real thing: this is what a digital bus information sign looks like
In his latest brush with the SEC, in May this year, he reached an out-of-court settlement with the US authorities after he was found to have been illegally “boostering” company stock values by issuing press releases for another company, Corporate Universe Inc, in which he claimed they were selling graphene face masks that were “scientifically proven to kill COVID-19”.
The SEC judgement (which can be seen in full here) goes a long way to justify any description of Sutton as a con man.
Chris Johns, a director at Digital Signs For Transport’, told Inside Croydon, “What galls me the most, more than the tens of thousands in unpaid invoices, is that after the huge amounts of innovation and effort our team applied to the project, Valo never got a single bus shelter live, not even in a test environment.
“This failure shows Valo never held a serious intent to deliver the project.
“While Isaac Sutton should be held personally accountable for the financial losses, it is the people of Croydon who will continue to suffer a poor experience when considering public transport due to the negligence of Valo Smart City.”
And, it would be fair to say, the negligence by Croydon Council’s directors and CEO in falling for a deal that always looked too good to be true.
Gimme shelter: council ‘head of digital’ Opama Khan said her new ‘smart’ shelters would be installed in autumn 2021
Inside Croydon understands that there is an amount of money from Valo Smart City which has been placed in a special escrow account, to which the council may ultimately have access. But it is unlikely to compensate the bus passengers of the borough for being dicked about once again by their witless and gormless council through three long, cold and wet winters.
Inside Croydon invited Isaac Sutton’s English-based solicitor to comment on his client’s behalf, but had received no response by time of publication.
We also sent a set of questions to Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, Croydon’s Borough Solicitor, who no doubt will have played a key role in the decision not to sue Valo Smart City UK. We asked whether he was now instigating legal action to recover the unpaid £500,000 – a “Full Negrini” as we like to call it – from Valo Smart City.
We also asked what action Mayor Perry is taking over the borderline incompetent conduct of the council directors responsible for procuring the “services” of Valo Smart City UK. Or, indeed, over the council CEO who gave final approval to this deal.
Guess what? We never got an answer. Just like Croydon never got its bus shelters, the promised £6.7million advertising revenues or share of the promised profits.
- Inside Croydon – as seen on TV! – has been delivering local community news since 2010. 3million page views per year in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
- If you want real journalism, actually based in the borough, you should consider paying for it. Please sign up today. Click here for more details
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
There is a myth about a chap called King Midas. Apparently everything he touched turned to gold. In Croydon there is a Council “led” by Kerswell and Perry where everything they touch turns to “s**t”. Unfortunately this is not a myth.
Back in May 2021, IC reported on the removal of the JCDecaux bus stops (the stops that are not manged by TFL/London Gov.)
Its now nearly 2 and a half years later and the ghastly reality has concluded that yet more people in Croydon’s gone-wrong management team have lead us down a merry path of promises they couldn’t keep, a lack of sensible governance and a lack of good review before giving more of our hard earned money away on a frivolous adventure.
No doubt someone somewhere is looking at their enriched band statement that has been topped up by our council taxes.
Meanwhile we can now only hope that JCDecaux will be kind enough to offer Croydon a reasonable contract to reinstate our bus shelters so that those of us with mobility or standing problems can at least hide from the wind and rain.
The shelter at my closest bus stop (Broad Green, southbound) was demolished a couple of years ago. We were told that this was to make way for a smart shelter. We are still waiting.
does anyone know what is going on?
If you look up there ^^^ , there’s a 1,500-word report explaining exactly what’s going on
Past experience in local government does not mean or equate to being knowledgeable or qualified.
Another great example of unqualified people who know very little running projects, tenders and the Council.
Another debacle! And yet there are bus shelters around serving no purpose at all – four or five of them directly outside the Town Hall in Katherine Street following the recent redirection of buses in the town centre. Although they are almost certainly owned/controlled by TfL, could not arrangements be made to reposition them to a more useful position; outside St Michael’s Church in Poplar Walk for example?
The benches that were in Queen’s Gardens are stored at Factory Lane. Perhaps these could be used to provide (uncovered) seating where there is appropriate space at or near bus stops.
So what was wrong with the JC Decaux bus shelters? They gave cover, seating and a mostly accurate sign of the next 3 buses coming. Based on your report in November 2021, the deal with Valo Smart City was struck that year from offices “registered” in a Regus in Lansdowne Road?!! Our council went from a contract with an established 60 year old company operating in 80 countries that specialises in bus shelters and outdoor advertising to essentially an one or two man limited company quickly registered. Scandalous.
And the Council has been trying to negotiate a new contract since 2013. Apparently, ten years and multiple senior officers, (at least 5+), have delivered – nothing !
You do have to ask what has Mr Perry actually achieved? why have the role if it serves no purpose or actual positive outcomes for people it serves ? Allders / Bus Shelters / R&F building / knife crime / shop theft / youth amenities/ dirty streets throughout / mounding flats / transient drunks / homelessness / increased council rates / Ulez lack of fight – plenty to be busy on but what is actually being achieved other than photo opportunities for giraffes or someone being stabbed
Self publicity, over selflessness and community commitment / spirit from our leaders !