Our south of the borough reporter PEARL LEE has obtained official figures which suggest that Croydon’s Mayor has been abusing his public position for his own advantage
No hiding place: Jason Perry has got Council Tax payers to foot the bill for his campaign events
Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor and full-time political activist, is staging another “Question Time” event on his old home turf of South Croydon tonight – the latest in a series of events to promote piss-poor Perry and the Croydon Conservatives, which together cost thousands of pounds, all paid for by the long-suffering residents of the cash-strapped borough.
Figures released to Inside Croydon under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act show that the Tory Mayor has been using council officials, facilities and funds for his own political interests – sometimes with as many as seven members of council staff attending the two-hour public meeting for unspecified duties, looking after Mayor Perry.
At one recent two-hour “Mayor’s Question Time” there were also no fewer than four police officers in attendance, meaning that there were eight fewer officer hours – the equivalent of one whole day – spent patrolling the borough’s streets, keeping the public safe.
The “Question Time” title is, in any case, misleading, since few if any questions are ever taken on the night from the floor. Only closely vetted submissions are chosen at these carefully stage-managed events, with Perry’s deputy Mayor, Lynne Hale, runs the rule from her clipboard of topics that her boss wants to talk about, to emphasise his own achievements (such as they are), while avoiding any pesky questions about the mounting number of short-comings and failures.
Hale’s role in all this surely makes her the most costly minutes secretary in the borough, where she receives £42,000 per year for… well… basically being Perry’s prompter.
Tonight’s gathering, being staged at St Augustine’s Church Hall, is the eighth such promotional rally for Mayor Perry.
The council has admitted that these are party political events, paid for out of your Council Tax, after they postponed the South Croydon Question Time originally planned for the end of May because of the pre-election purdah period.
And in the council’s official FoI response, they underline the deeply political nature of the events by stating: “Mayor’s Question Time is delivering a commitment which the Mayor made to residents during his campaign to listen to residents of Croydon.” That would be Perry’s 2022 election campaign, when he was seeking people’s votes.
Our FoI asked for the costs of staging the events, though the council provided only limited figures in respect of some of the most important aspects of organising Perry’s grand tour of the borough – namely staffing costs, both on the night and in promoting and organising the events.
No expense spared: council resources have been used to promote Perry’s political events
Hall hire for the evening events has varied from £256.48 (South Norwood) to free of charge (Purley), but for the seven Question Time events staged so far, it all adds up to £791.48.
The council clearly does not see these as mass participation events – for each event they incur a modest cost for printing off 50 (yes, just 50) flyers to publicise the date. Then there’s the costs of running a ticketing system through EventBrite.
There are also other, online promotions through the council’s social media outlets. The council has not been monitoring how much time and resource has been devoted to this: “Staging the event is part of officers’ existing job roles and cannot be itemised,” the council says, somewhat disingenuously. At a cash-strapped council where every cost is itemised and monitored closely, the time spent by council staff promoting Mayor Perry’s little ego trip around the borough really out to be known.
But we do have some figures available which make it possible to estimate some of the on-costs of Perry’s promotional tour.
Each event is supposed to last for an hour and a half. Some over-run a little. Most require some set-up time beforehand and tidying up afterwards.
So let’s say that attendance at a Mayor’s Question Time takes a council official three hours. The council staff might get time off in lieu. It’s unlikely, though not impossible, that they get paid overtime for working out of office, unsociable hours, all to help promote piss-poor Perry.
According to the council’s FoI response, the QTs have been staffed by a total of 38 council officials – with no less than seven attending Norbury last September and New Addington in January. That’s a total of 114 officer hours – more than three weeks’ worth of council work, all of it dedicated to getting Perry re-elected.
Now, if the council staff attending are from across a variety of pay grades, we reckon that based on an average pay scale, overall the staffing costs for these events is around £1,800.
Council Tax-payers will be relieved to discover that, “There is no transportation cost for the Mayor or Deputy Mayor”, although the council failed to elaborate on how Perry and Hale get to the venues. Inside Croydon has it on good authority that it is not by using a tandem bicycle.
“Social media postings [are] free,” the council says, overlooking the cost of council staff’s time in organising, drafting, clearing for publication, posting and re-posting each little tweet.
As one Katharine Street source explained: “These Question Time events are presented as official council events, but they are nothing of the sort. The Mayor never has councillors from the other parties on stage with him to put an alternative view – this is all about him and his campaign to be re-elected in 2026.
“Perry has his own political website and social media accounts, he has councillors and activists to organise events and raise the funds for him. Hed should not be using official council resources for a blatant political event – it is an abuse of his position.”
What ought to be of concern, though, to Perry and his Tory supporters is how the attendances at these events appear to be diminishing. There’s a hard core of attendees who turn up to all of these kind of events, and they figure regularly among those allowed to ask questions of the Mayor.
But from a high of 164 members of the public registering to attend the Purley QT in May 2023, turn-out of the public eager to hear what Perry has to say for himself has been steadily diminishing, to just 57 wasting their evening when the Mayor rolled up in South Norwood in March.
As such, the couple of grand frittered away servicing Mayor Perry’s ego over the past couple of years is hardly a major expense for a council with debts of £1.6billion – half of which Perry left behind after he had been a cabinet member of a Conservative administration until 2014.
But whether it is appropriate for the council to be spending any money at all on one individual’s personal political campaigning is one question which will never be allowed to be asked at tonight’s, or any future, Mayor’s Question Times.
Read more: In begging letter to Labour’s Rayner, Perry admits he has failed
Read more: Cummings’ budget rejected before his big Newsnight moment
Read more: Perry pleads poverty when he has more Council Tax than ever
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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
Perry can roll out of his mansion down the hill for this event. The problem must be who is going to push him back up to get home.
Falling attendances, rigged agenda, preaching to the converted (a load of old racists), taking public money for dubious purposes. It’s all very similar to Hyacinth Bucket’s talking shop
She was there tonight. With Peter Morgan, natch.
Looking at Perry’s pics, fewer than 40 in total
“She was there tonight. With Peter Morgan, natch.”
and they say romance is dead
How was this event promoted? I did not see any information about how to apply to attend, or submit a question.
We saw a mention on YOUR CROYDON “X” That stated a 6pm start, however when we got there the staff told us it was a 6.30pm start.
One point that was interesting though – there are no schedules for street cleaning – this only happens when a complaint is lodged!
In the 30min waiting time we were able to wander up to Haling Grove, which looked a little better than earlier in the year. The grass had been cut in parts but it was mainly untidy and there were far too many unkempt flower beds.