CROYDON IN CRISIS: From a couple of hundred attendees soon after he was first elected, Croydon’s part-time Mayor is now drawing crowds of only a couple of dozen for his council-funded promotional tour. KEN TOWL went along to South Norwood last night, to save you the bother
Is it safe to come out now?: out of his depth, Jason Perry was at his bumbling worst last night
“Dog poo is a difficult one,” said the Mayor as he chewed over his answer.
There is a lot of it about in South Norwood, apparently. In the end, it came down to individual responsibility.
There was to be no mass clean-up.
Jason Perry’s answer to the dog poo question was much like his answer to every question. No commitment for action was made. No opportunity to blame everyone else for Croydon’s woes was missed.
Veteran Croydon politician Andrew Pelling was in the audience. “I should get a discount on my Council Tax for all the Mayor’s Question Times I’ve attended,” he said.
His question, “What can be done to improve the state of Portland Road?” was approached by Perry in his usual rambling fashion, but not actually answered.
I took down as much of it verbatim as I could: “A lot has gone into South Norwood generally… there are a number of initiatives around the history… strands of regeneration work, some of it GLA funded… about trying to revitalise that area. Portland Road is a very long road with houses and shops all the way down it… It’s going to take years.” So now we know.
Liar, liar!: audience members appeared to have a clear idea of what they thought of piss-poor Perry’s presentation
The Mayor’s grasp of figures, or lack of a grasp, came to the fore when he was asked a question about keeping nurseries open in the borough. “They are running at a £500million deficit,” Mayor Perry said, straight-faced.
“No they aren’t!” said his better-informed questioner.
“Sorry,” said Jason, “that should be five hundred thousand.”
Mayor Perry has just passed what he calls a “balanced” budget. It balances only because of a government capitalisation direction of £38million. Perry’s proposing “balanced” budgets balanced with further £38million chunks of cash for the two years following, too. He clearly has a “balanced” grasp of figures generally.
Perry began the session with a little opening speech in which he informed us that he had had his first job, at 16, just around the corner from the Harris Academy venue. He was born and bred in Croydon in case you didn’t know.
He had come with quite the Mayoral entourage: a couple of caseworkers, no less than five uniformed police officers (more than double the security I encountered when meeting the Home Secretary in Croydon a couple of weeks ago) and his Deputy Mayor and Sanderstead councillor Lynn Hale, who chaired the meeting.
Pretty vacant: Mayor Perry’s borough-wide tour is losing its pulling power
“We are still very much in charge of what we do in Croydon,” the impotent Mayor claimed, unconvincingly.
He did concede that there is something called a “Panel”, appointed by the Government, that appears to also be involved in what we do in Croydon.
Perry rattled on for a while about the “Broken Windows theory”, apparently unaware that Wilson and Kellings’ findings are, and have been for a while now, to a great extent discredited.
The Mayor then claimed that the key question, as far as Croydon’s finances are concerned, is “Who is going to pay?”
Given that this year Perry is putting up our Council Tax by 5%, after having hiked it by a record-breaking 15% last April, the answer would seem to be that we are going to pay.
When he was asked about when he had decided to fulfil his election promise to “fix the finances” by increasing Council Tax by so much, Mayor Perry claimed that at the time of his election in 2022, he had not known quite how bad the finances were.
Perry began to sweat, just a little.
Another questioner asked him about the chances of getting a write-off of the debt from central government and he said that he was having “ongoing conversations with central government” about this, and that meanwhile, he was selling assets “to pay down the debt”, but that there were not enough assets to sell.
When the meeting came to an end we all left feeling, I think, none the wiser.
The next Mayor’s Question Time is due to be held in late May (after the London Elections purdah period), the venue TBC. I can’t bring myself to recommend it.
Read more: Perry pleads poverty when he has more Council Tax than ever
Read more: Croydon put in special measures: ‘Worst of all possible worlds’
Read more: Council forced to issue 3rd bankruptcy notice in just two years
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: The solution to Perry’s finance problem: Fund Croydon Fairly
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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
I cannot be the only resident who had no idea this event was being held. I would have attended if I knew. Why has it been so poorly advertised ?
Ask the council’s press team…
Last night three traffic lights were vandalised in Fieldway. No doubt they were holding up ULEZ cameras. Does anyone ever bother to ask him or his press team if he bothers to support the rule of law every now and then?
Perry is effectively a cheerleader for the criminal damage and the undisguised Islamophobic hatred being poured out on the Facebook page he runs.
Five months ago he Tweeted his attendance at the Croydon Neighbourhood Watch ” Crime Prevention Day”, where he signed their Safety Charter:
– Promote a culture that does not tolerate antisocial behaviour, harassment, intimidation and hostility towards others
– Enable others to identify and take an active stance against these crimes and incidents
– Actively encourage and support those who experience or witness these crimes and incidents to report them to the relevant authorities
– Support those affected and signpost those who need further support to agencies who can help them
He said he would wholeheartedly support the Charter’s aims to tackle harassment, antisocial behaviour & intimidation in public spaces.
We know he doesn’t do that at all, don’t we boys and girls
I don’t think that our mayor wants us there.
After all Tony Newman, even though he was my ward councillor, blocked me on Social Media platforms. Apparently I asked too many awkward questions.
The only way to obtain information about what goes on is via Inside Croydon ( thank you!), or by trawling the awful Croydon Council website on a regular basis, but life is too short for that😆
Borrowing money (in this case a so called capitalisation direction) to fund a shortfall in revenue funding is the road to further ruin. Any competent accountant or financial advisor will tell you that borrowing should be for capital expenditure and not to meet your day to day expenses. The end result of such actions in your private life is bankruptcy. A situation well known to Croydon Council.
Continued borrowing of this kind will just lead to further excessive Council Tax rises in future years. It will not fix the finances, just kick the problem further down the road. Labour/Starmer who are likely to be the next Government have already indicated that there will be no bail outs for Councils so Perry etc are just digging a deeper hole.
absolutely correct
The Riesco collection was sold years ago, the Fairfield Halls was partially “improved” minus concert pianos and lacking a heavy-duty lift, Westfield successors are letting the town centre rot, who the hell is in charge here? Not Perry, that’s for sure.
I’m not a rabid Perry-hater like most of IC’s readers, but I still reckon that your picture of our illustrious mayor appearing to take shelter behind a display screen is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on my favouite, scoop-busting local news website. His expression says it all!
Does anyone know how much could have been saved by not holding this totally pointless event?
Perry has been saying for the last two years that there are “ongoing conversations with central government” about debt write-off. But his finance cabinet member, Cllr Jason Cummings, refused to say at the last Council meeting who these conversations were with, where they were held or how often they’ve taken place. One thing we do know is that nothing has come of these “conversations”.
Either Perry is a very poor negotiator or in reality he believes, as his party colleagues in government do, that local government services should be allowed to go to the wall.
or both.
I don’t doubt that he’s both!
“‘Dog poo is a difficult one,’ said the Mayor as he chewed over his answer. There is a lot of it about in South Norwood, apparently. In the end, it came down to individual responsibility. There was to be no mass clean-up. Jason Perry’s answer to the dog poo question was much like his answer to every question. No commitment for action was made”.
Proving that Perry and his advisors don’t know their shit. Or don’t know they’re shit. Or both.
A quick search on the net finds that “litter authorities have a statutory duty under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as amended) to ensure that, so far as reasonably practicable, their land is kept clear of litter (including dog waste), and refuse.”
In our case litter authority means Croydon Council. It has required to have regard
to the Statutory Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse for England, 2006.
In addition, DEFRA has produced guidance for how councils on how they
should deal with litter (including dog waste) and the penalties they can
give.
If a member of the public feels that a litter authority is not fulfilling its
duties to keep public land clear of litter, they may apply to a
Magistrates’ Court for a litter abatement order (section 91 of the
Environmental Protection Act 1990).
If the court is satisfied that the litter authority is in dereliction of its duty under section 89 of the Act, it may issue a litter abatement order requiring the body to clear the area of litter.
So if the streets of South Norwood are paved with poo, residents should complain to the Council and get Perry to get the Veolia contractors (global profits up 14.9% to €1,335 million) to clean it all up. And if that fails, dob him in to the courts.
As for tackling the perpetrators (or rather their owners), a government note on the modification to the Code of Practice notes means that Public Space Protection Orders can be applied to dogs’ eggs. Somebody quietly having a can of beer in public is not in the same league of anti-social behaviour as somebody quietly letting their mutt foul the pavement then walking away without cleaning up the mess.
Dog poo is disgusting, a threat to human health and something that Jason Perry is just ignoring. That’s not acceptable