CROYDON IN CRISIS: The government has just found £2.5bn in ‘exceptional financial support’ for 19 councils. But Mayor Jason Perry and his finance chief have an anxious week after having had their unbalanced budget rejected in a Town Hall meeting. By STEVEN DOWNES

Chamber of horrors: last night’s council budget meeting gets underway

It was just past 11 o’clock last night and there, propped on an uncomfortable-looking sofa in the BBC Newsnight studio, was Croydon’s own Jason Cummings, looking ashen-faced and very, very weary.

It had already been a long day. Croydon Council’s cabinet member for finance had just been rushed to Portland Place from a Town Hall meeting at which he had seen his carefully crafted budget for 2024-2025, the product of months of detailed work, rejected in a democratic vote of his fellow councillors.

Cummings hadn’t even had a moment for a swift half in the Spread Eagle afterwards with his mates Alasdair and Robert.

With the BBC spotlights shining down on him, Cummings was being expected to put forward the case that the reason a dozen or more local councils across England have gone bust or are on the brink of bankruptcy is all because they are badly run, like Croydon was, and that it is nothing to do with the Conservative-led governments of the past 14 years slowly choking off their funding.

The things you have to do when you want to be a parliamentary candidate. Victoria Derbyshire had thrown in a mention of “prospective candidate for Croydon East” when introducing Cummings. Which was nice of her.

While nowhere near as bad as the depths plumbed by his chum, Croydon South MP Chris Philp, this was Cummings on behalf of his party being served up with a (metaphorical) shit sandwich, which he duly devoured. The appearance probably won’t have won him many new voters. He might even have lost a few.

‘It’s all Labour’s fault’: last night’s coverage of council finance crisis in the Standard

There was a sense that Cummings’ heart wasn’t really in it.

The Croydon councillor who last year inflicted a 15% Council Tax hike on his fellow residents had already heard the mantra “Pay More, Get Less” often enough on Wednesday without having to go through it all again, and do so live on national telly.

But there was Shaun Davies, the chair of the Local Government Association, on the big screen, saying it all over once more.

“Pay More.”

“Get Less.”

Did Cummings wince as he heard it?

The Newsnight item was in response to a survey of council chiefs conducted by the LGA which summoned up some pretty doom-laden statistics. The LGA said the funding gap over the next two years – between what local authorities need and what they expect to receive – is £4billion.

There is no local service that isn’t at risk of savage cuts, again. Even services for the most vulnerable. Three-quarters of councils have told the LGA that they will have to reduce costs in adult care budgets, while 60% are planning cuts to children’s care.

After 14 years of Tory rule, once proud local councils are on their knees, leaving residents to Pay More and Get Less.

According to Davies, for most people, Council Tax had doubled in the last 10 years.

Cummings was getting even more uncomfortable on that sofa now: the 4.99% Council Tax increase he wants to bring in for Croydon from April will mean that local taxes have risen by 21% in less than two years since he took on the finance job for his Tory mate, the borough’s elected Mayor, Jason Perry.

The trouble for Cummings and Perry is that their trusty line, “It’s all Labour’s fault”, used on every tricky moment for the past three years, is ringing more than a bit hollow now.

Even the revelation from Cummings that “There’s. A. Live. Police. Investigation” (he seemed to speak in one-word sentences, for emphasis perhaps, hinting at dire consequences) failed to have the impact he must have hoped. Presenter Derbyshire just moved swiftly on.

And then today, the Department for Levelling Up delivered 2.48billion examples of why it can’t possibly be “all Labour’s fault”.

In a Whitehall data dump this afternoon, the ministry issued a succession of notices about providing “exceptional financial support” for 19 different councils, including Croydon, with bail-outs totalling £2.48billion. Some payments cover short-falls going back four or five years. There was £1.5billion in emergency payments for the 2024-2025 financial year alone.

Several of the councils receiving the emergency cash are Labour-run. Some have been under Conservative control. One or two have LibDem councils. Havering is run by a residents’ alliance… The only real, common denominator across all 19 is that they have all had to deal with Tory governments since 2010.

Councils in chaos: 19 local authorities across England have today been handed £2.48bn in emergency funding to try to balance their books

After a hard night, today Cummings will at least have been glad to see Croydon is to get the £38million he had asked for, to help pay the interest due on the borough’s loans, plus another £9.4million for some accounting adjustment that needs to be made for 2019-2020 (the official accounts for which have still yet to be signed off by the council’s auditors).

How much real help that is to the people of Croydon, though, is moot.

Through the three-hour council budget meeting before his television appearance, Cummings had to listen to speeches from the borough’s Green councillors, its solitary LibDem and Labour opposition which all seemed to agree on one point: his was profoundly not a balanced budget, as it all depended on that £38million government bail-out.

Indeed, Cummings’ “medium term” financial plan for the borough depends on £38million bail-outs for Croydon in 2025-2026, 2026-2027 and 2027-2028, too…

Without that annual injection of £38million, Cummings’ budgets will never balance.

“Once again,” said Stuart King, the leader of the council’s Labour group, in a reference to Mayor Perry, “he is presenting a budget without a long-term deal.”

Perry, and Cummings, have been trying to get £540million of government loans written off, at least since November 2022, with no success, just to reduce the borough’s borrowing, which has been built up since 2010 – Perry and Cummings, when they last ran the council, between 2006 and 2014, left debts of around £800million.

It all comes back to a point made by Ria Patel, one of the Green councillors: “Croydon must be funded fairly.”

Unbalanced budget: Croydon Mayor Jason Perry. Pic: Paul Harper

When it came to a vote on Perry and Cummings’ unbalanced budget, Labour together with the Greens and LibDems rejected it by 36 votes to 33.

No votes were taken on the Green or Labour amendments, which sought to reduce allowances paid to Cummings and his fellow members of the Mayor’s council cabinet.

We have, of course, been here before. Twelve months ago, Croydon’s Labour councillors voted against a Perry and Cummings unbalanced budget once, then came back the following week and voted against it once more, before crumbling under warnings of dire consequences from not only the government-appointed commissioners, but also, apparently, from their own party’s officials.

Most expect the same outcome when the council meets again next Wednesday. “The Tories know that Labour will collapse again,” said one source. “Labour are just paper tigers.”

According to another: “Labour will sell out, whatever happens. Either they’ll agree a minor change around special responsibility payments, or Cummings won’t play ball and Labour will abstain again.”

In 2023, the argument against blocking Perry and Cummings’ unbalanced budget was that the council would somehow lose its independence. That happened anyway, with Perry being rendered utterly impotent a couple of months later when Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, handed statutory powers to the improvement panel, which has been overseeing all the council’s business since early 2021.

So this time, what would Croydon Labour really have to lose?

They might spend the next six days horse-trading with the Tories in the Town Hall. They might insist that Perry goes to his Tory party colleagues at Westminster and actually get that debt write-off after all.

“Labour should not give any semblance of support for a budget that involves Council Tax rises, job cuts and service cuts,” said one trade unionist still angry at Labour’s craven betrayal 12 months ago.

Most observers reckon that, after next week’s council meeting, we will still all be Paying More and Getting Less.

But if the Greens, LibDems and Labour block Mayor Perry’s unbalanced budget, we might just be seeing a bit more of Jason Cummings on national telly, too.

Read more: It’s time for our elected councillors to stand up for Croydon
Read more:You can depend on Croydon Labour: they always let you down
Read more:Here’s the Mayor and 33 Croydon Tory councillors who THREE times voted in favour of hitting you with a 15% Council Tax hike
Read more: Perry pleads poverty when he has more Council Tax than ever

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. 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

• As featured on Google News Showcase

• We offer FREE ads to community groups when they have members who are paid subscribers to Inside Croydon

• Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here

• 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: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine