IT’S TOSS-CAR TIME
Based on official statistics, we have unearthed some startling figures which suggest that some of our elected representatives are getting tens of thousands of pounds of your cash for doing… well, not a great deal
Mayor Jason Perry and Croydon Conservatives are about to give a hearty slap on the back, and an extra eight grand of tax-payers’ money, to one of the Town Hall’s least busy, possibly laziest councillors.
Richard Chatterjee has been a Croydon councillor for 22 years, yet he is one of the least well-known of the borough’s 70 councillors.
That’s possibly because he is one of the councillors that does the least work, according to official figures obtained from Croydon Council through a Freedom of Information request.
They show that the councillor for Shirley North managed the grand total of just 12 members’ enquiries in the whole of the past year – just about one a month!
That, at least, is an improvement over the previous FoI’d period, when Chatterjee managed to submit just two enquiries on behalf of residents in Shirley.
Nonetheless, the retired civil servant still trousered £20,277.60 in councillor special responsibility allowances last year – he has one of the Town Hall’s many “non-jobs”, as vice-chair of the scrutiny committee.
Having a mayor: Richard Chatterjee
And next Wednesday, at the pointless mutual back-slapping event of the annual “mayor-making”, Chatterjee will step up to wear the chain and robes of office as the borough’s deputy civic mayor. Yep, we’re not just paying powerless Perry £82,000 for not doing very much, but we have a ceremonial mayor (for 2024 to 2025, that is to be Labour’s Kola Agboola, following his magnificent service to the borough in his… [checks notes]… three years as a councillor) and a deputy, who both get extra dosh for doing very little.
In Chatterjee’s case, this version of Buggin’s turn might see him get a little bit less council cash than he was paid last year. But if things go to plan, and Chatterjee steps up to be civic mayor in 12 months’ time, he can look forward to a very generous £27,592 for doing next-to-nothing while wearing fancy dress.
All of this, however, does not win Chatterjee our 2024 Toss-car, for the councillor who did the least casework during the past year.
The Shirley councillor’s new-found productiveness saw him rise from bottom of the work-shy league table to be just the 10th worst in the year just gone.
But Inside Croydon can now confirm that the Croydon councillor who submitted the fewest members’ enquiries between May 2023 to this year was…
Drum roll…
Labour’s Alisa Flemming with a grand total of:
1
Numptiest of Numpties: Alisa Flemming, who submitted just a single member’s enquiry all year
Yep. That’s right, one of the numptiest of Newman’s Numpties, a former council cabinet member who did more than her fair share to bankrupt the borough, submitted just a solitary member’s enquiry throughout 2023-2024.
In so doing, Norbury Park councillor Flemming, who has been on the council since 2010, has set a new Croydon all-comers’ record, beating the two members’ requests submitted in a year by Chatterjee in 2023.
Based on the basic councillor’s allowance paid to Flemming (no special responsibilities for her these days), that single members’ request cost the borough’s residents almost £12,000.
But that does not make Flemming the borough’s most expensive councillor…
For the second consecutive year, that unwanted honour goes to Conservative cabinet member Scott Roche.
Roche (Shirley South) is one of three councillors who submitted just two members’ enquiries in the year – and that’s one fewer than he bothered doing in the previous civic year.
Roche is a full-time politico, his combined income of around £80,000 per year all paid for by the tax-payer. Cushty!
Based on that, Tory Roche is Croydon’s most expensive councillor, each of his member enquiries costing the Council Tax-payers of this borough £19,597.56.
Nice work if you can get it…
In the bottom four with Roche is another Conservative councillor for Shirley, Sue Bennett. The people of Shirley seem especially ill-served by their seemingly lackadaisical councillors.
Croydon’s councillor relegation zone
61, Richard Chatterjee (CON) 12
62, Patsy Cummings (LAB) 10
63=, Eunice O’Dame (LAB) 9
63=, Mohammed Islam (LAB) 9
65, Jason Cummings (CON) 6
66, Adele Benson (CON) 5
67=, Sherwan Chowhury (LAB) 2
67=, Scott Roche (CON) 2
67=, Sue Bennett (CON) 2
70, Alisa Flemming (LAB) 1
That bottom 10 includes five of Labour’s 34 councillors and five of the 33 Conservative councillors.
The LibDem and Green councillors appear to have worked hard enough to avoid such embarrassment.
Expensive: Tory cabinet member Scott Roche
For the civic year 2023- 2024, collectively, Croydon’s 70 councillors handled 3,928 pieces of casework – enquiries, requests, planning application queries and pleas for help from the residents in their wards.
That’s an average of 56 pieces of casework for each councillor over the course of the year – little more than one a week. Some, clearly, take this task a good deal more seriously than others.
Jason Cummings, the cabinet member for finance (and the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Croydon East when the General Election comes round), is a ward colleague of Roche, and another in the bottom 10 for recorded members’ enquiries (six all year…).
He told Inside Croydon that the members’ enquiries numbers is “just one metric on it’s own”.
Cummings said: “Most of what we do can’t be ‘searched’ very easily. Time spent with residents’ associations, for example, meeting prep, officer meetings, estate walkabout, casework not in the app, email responses, street-based defect reporting, graffiti, there are loads of things that we do that take lots of time but no system logs them.
“I work full time as a councillor, so I don’t feel like I’m poor value, but if people want to present me that way then they can. It goes with job these days.”
None of which explains why Croydon Council still fails to publish this data, as is common practice with many other local authorities.
Last year’s league tables: Revealed: Croydon’s laziest and costliest local councillors
This year’s league tables: Toss-cars 2024: How much work has your councillor done?
Read more: Measure the effectiveness of councillors, not just the casework
Read more: Making the case for councillors’ casework to be made public
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