CROYDON IN CRISIS: Council spend by its communications department has increased by 50% since Jason Perry became Mayor of Croydon, official figures confirm. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Recruitment drive: Fisher’s Folly, across the road from the Town Hall, is seeking a new head of comms
Croydon Mayor Jason Perry knows where his priorities are: despite presiding over a local authority with a £1.5billion pile of debt and a budget overspend this year of at least £20million, he’s offering £80,000 per year for a new head of the council’s propaganda unit.
Whoever gets the job had better be good – Perry’s 2026 re-election campaign may depend upon it.
Inside Croydon has discovered that spending on the council’s press office has also been creeping up under Mayor Perry, despite tens of millions of pounds of cuts being made to other, public services at the cash-strapped council.
Meanwhile, Susie Rundle, who had less than three years’ experience as a real journalist on small circulation weekly paper more than 20 years ago, has been working in the propaganda bunker at Fisher’s Folly since 2016. That included liaising closely with the then CEO, Jo Negrini, and council leader, Tony Newman, on Croydon’s successful bid (we use the term loosely) to be London’s Borough of Culture. Remember that?
In June last year, Rundle was promoted to interim head of communications and engagement, succeeding her old boss, Helen Parrott.
Trebles all round: the council’s pay offer for a head of comms
But earlier this month, the council placed an ad for “head of communications and engagement”. The salary, sumptuous by the modest standards of local newspaper hacks, was stated as being between £73,434 and £80,437. “Trebles all-round!” as some might say.
“Croydon Council is undergoing exciting transformation,” the job ad gushed, “ensuring that our services and people put Croydon residents and businesses at the heart of our improvement journey – working towards being the most efficient, cost-effective council in the UK.” Yes, someone working at Fisher’s Folly approved putting this tosh into the public domain.
“At Croydon Council we are committed to serving our vibrant and diverse community, enhancing the quality of life for all residents. We believe in transparency, collaboration and active community participation. We are seeking an innovative and strategic leader to join us as the head of communications and engagement.
“As the head of communications and engagement, you will be at the forefront of shaping our communication strategies and driving community engagement initiatives. You will lead a dynamic team…”, ha-bloody-ha! “… responsible for delivering impactful messaging across various platforms, ensuring our community is informed, engaged, and empowered, promoting our vision of a thriving borough.” Someone actually got paid for drafting this.
But don’t rush to tidy up your CV. The closing date for applications was last weekend.
In any case, the reality of working life in Fisher’s Folly for the vast majority of long-suffering council staff is a good deal more grim than the sunny uplands portrayed in the purple prose of that job ad.
Even the “good old days” when the council had six dedicated staff in its comms team, appear to be long gone. The council, in a formal response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by this website, says that since 2021, “there have been three full-time members of staff in the council’s council’s press office”. They offered no figures for any part-timers or casual staff, and claimed, “Figures are not available before 2021.”
“There has been no outsourced media support for the running and management of the council’s press office, in any year from 2019,” the council claimed.
The amount spent for the running and management of the council’s press office since 2019 make for interesting reading, especially when considering Mayor Perry’s public pronouncements about “fixing the finances”.
The official figures provided under the FoI show that spending on publicity has gone up by 50% since Mayor Perry came to office.
The figures provided by the council are the running costs of the press office, and don’t include any staff salaries.
Propaganda: using public money, the council press office publishes anything Mayor Perry wants, including deliberately dissembling and misleading statements
In 2020-2021, the year that the council’s finances collapsed, the press office had a budget of £410,000, but very responsibly spent just £173,841.
And the following year, 2021 to April 2022, with a budget of £195,000, they underspent again, at £99,278.
Jason Perry was elected as Croydon’s Mayor in May 2022.
For some unexplained reason, the council’s FoI response failed to provide the requested figures for 2022-2023.
But in 2023-2024 – the first full year when spending had been set by the Conservative elected Mayor – the budget for the press office was back up to £215,000.
The actual spend that year was £146,124 – £50,000 more than in 2021-2022.
And opposition figures at the Town Hall are beginning to question the purpose of the council’s press department: is it there to inform the public, or are they being told to promote the (elected, party political) Mayor, misusing thousands of pounds of public money to do so.
Much of the council’s publicity output is centred around Mayor Perry, showing him in various locations around the borough making this boring speech or claiming to have achieved this or that.
Social media is being weighed down by little video speeches from Mayor Perry, where he is able to dissemble and deceive in an effort to enhance his own personal prospects of being re-elected in 2026 to his £82,000 per year salaried role.
Only last week, the Council Tax-funded press team published one tweeted speech in which Perry reported back from a cabinet meeting that under his leadership the council faces what he called “a slight overspend”.
That “slight overspend” is at least £20million.
In fact, the overspend could be more than double that, but has been reduced due to the shovelling of the last of the council’s reserves to cover it up. But even at the lowest estimated figure, it is certainly enough to warrant Croydon’s fourth Section 114 notice in four years.
When in the coming weeks Perry gets round to producing his council budget for 2025-2026, there will be plenty of items to scrutinise, but his spending on press and publicity will deserve special consideration.
Read more: Mayor Perry busts his unbalanced budget with £42m overspend
Read more: Cash-strapped council has spent £6.4m… to make more cuts
Read more: Council consultants take six months to discover the obvious
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
Absolute Joke…… Perry needs to go now!
Will you be drafting a petition?
£80k per year for pushing paper clips around a desk at Fisher’s Folly while waiting for your Local Government gravy train home seems far too much, even for a council that wasn’t already financially/socially/morally bankrupt and in special measures like Croydon Council.
There is a lot of talk about this petition to call another general election, only months after we had to endure one in the summer, but does it apply to all levels of election? If so, do we have to wait until 2026 to get rid of Piss Poor Perry, or can we bring forward that election and get rid of him sooner?!
Jason Perry makes Kim Jong Un look shy, retiring, modest – and gifted
Croydon doesn’t get any press coverage to speak of, so it’s hard to see what the cash is being spent on. I am, of course, referring to local newspapers, of which there are none, and not the borough’s peerless online source of news, info and (acres of) comment. I have no doubt that the council needs good comms and the comms unit should be advising directors on how to do that honestly and effectively. But without the CEO being part of the mix this is never going to happen – and so far she’s speaking to no one, apart from the town hall echo chamber.
Kerswell isn’t silent without reason. Perry wants it that way, so he can be the visible leader. He’s always grabbing publicity shots in his short-sleeved shirts, frequently with a grinning bearded buffoon by his side.
Mussolini used to leave the lights on in his office so that people would think he was hard-working. Perry prefers to go down the Goebbels route, hiring a squad of propaganda merchants at our growing expense to boost his re-election prospects.
Our part-time Mayor will take the money and the credit where it’s not due but he’ll never put in the hard graft
“Figures are not available before 2021.”.
What?
Peoples payroll/ pension/ movement records etc have to be kept for those purposes some for up to 40 years.
The Council is in in effect saying it does not know who worked or was working in any department and keeps no records of this? Who was the head of it? who did they report to? Ultimitely Ms Kerswell had reviews with the person who managed that departmetn and no one up to her knows if anyone worked there in 2020 – 2021? Does it have a cost centre? Was taxpayers money spent there? Yes as £173k was spent from a 400k+ budget.
So clearly someone was spending taxpayers money there.
Does the Council have some kind of exemption? Is it interpreting the regulations on data loosely?
Open and transparent? Can Mr Perry please spend the £80K on keeping accurate records and maintaining a corporate history that enables it to learn from mistakes and stop repeating them ad nauseum?
And the Audit Office carry out a high quality Audit that tells us where £1.5bn from 2011 to date has gone?