CROYDON IN CRISIS: Although he was a member of the committee that handed a £437,000 ‘golden handshake’ to Jo Negrini, the borough’s elected Mayor is now blaming the law for his own broken promises.
By STEVEN DOWNES
Surprise, surprise: Mayor Jason Perry, just after someone explained to him how the law on misconduct in public office works…
Almost a week since council reports were published that confirmed that the Mdetropolitan Police had dropped their investigation into potential wrong-doing over the borough’s financial collapse, and Jason Perry, Croydon’s £82,000 per year elected Mayor, has broken his silence over his latest failures to deliver.
And he reckons it is all someone else’s fault.
One of the key recommendations of the Penn Report in February 2021 was to call in the police to check for possible fraud and other wrong-doing in the months and years that led to the council’s financial crisis, including events surrounding the failed housing company, Brick by Brick, the £70million botched refurbishment of the Fairfield Halls and the dodgy purchase of the Croydon Park Hotel.
But council chief exec Katherine Kerswell and Perry contrived to delay referring the findings of Penn and others to the Met Police until last year.
The council papers ahead of Monday’s appointments and disciplinary committee, as first reported by Inside Croydon, show that the Met decided very quickly that it could not make a case with any real chance of getting a prosecution – something Kerswell and Perry ought to have known for years.
Off the hook?: Tony Newman, the former council leader
Yet Perry made seeking some kind of “retribution” for the council’s collapse one of his key promises when seeking election as Mayor in 2022. He even referred to “the unlawful act of avoiding procurement law” in his manifesto.
Now, even Perry’s promise to claw back some of the £437,000 paid as a golden handshake to former council CEO Jo “Negreedy” Negrini looks to have failed, too. Although as Perry was a member of the committee that agreed to make the Negrini payment, he ought to have known that would be the case all along, even when he was making his election promises
“Our residents are rightly angry that they are paying the price for reckless and poor decision-making, and they tell us that they want those responsible held to account,” Perry said yesterday.
Off the hook?: Jo Negrini was the council’s chief executive, who got a £437,000 reward for failure
Perry went on to claim that, “The council’s decision to refer the independent Penn and Kroll reports to the Met Police was appropriate, justified and in the public interest.” It was also done about two years too late.
Perry called the Met’s six-week-long investigation “a lengthy and detailed assessment”.
The Tory Mayor then trotted out as an excuse the difficulty in proving a case of misconduct in public office – something which will have been contained in all of the legal advice he and the council has received over the past four years.
Kerswell was back on duty today with her “Weekly Waffle” email to staff after missing a month while she recovered from surgery on her foot. And Kerswell was back at her patronising best.
The evidence the police require “is very particular”, Kerswell wrote to staff.
“In order to proceed with a prosecution under this offence [misconduct in public office], evidence is needed that ‘a public officer acting as such wilfully neglects to perform their duty and/or wilfully misconducts themselves to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder without reasonable excuse or justification’.
“The use of the words wilful and neglect are very specific, and evidence is needed on those points,” Kerswell wrote, as if she had only just discovered what the law says. The emphasis is all hers.
In her usual condescending manner, Kerswell went on to labour the point – probably cutting and pasting a briefing document from the council’s legal department, or from some expensively acquired external counsel’s advice: “‘Wilful’ in this context means ‘deliberately doing something which is wrong knowing it to be wrong or with reckless indifference as to whether it is wrong or not.
“‘Recklessness’ in this context means subjective recklessness, ie, the suspect was aware of a risk and in the circumstances known to them at the time it was unreasonable to take that risk.”
With her patronising dial turned up to 11, Kerswell continued: “I am sure you can appreciate why this offence is rarely used as there is such a complex threshold of evidence required.” Which raises the question: why did Kerswell and the committee of councillors not take that on board almost four years ago and abandon any action as pointless?
Foot note: if Katherine Kerswell didn’t know about the legal demands of a misconduct case, then what is she doing in the top job?
Kerswell went on to claim that misconduct in public office “was the only course of action open to the committee to seek accountability”. Which is not true now and was not true in 2021.
The situation now is that after half a dozen reviews and inquiries, countless thousands of pounds spent on legal advice from respected King’s Counsels and hours of council staff time spent on the matter, Kerswell and Mayor Perry have managed to deliver absolutely nothing.
One of piss-poor Perry’s newer lines, when talking about the council’s failing finances or the incompetence of the people running the borough, is to claim that the problems are “not unique to our borough”. Up to his being elected as Mayor in 2022, according to Perry, the problems in Croydon were indeed unique, and solely caused by his political rivals.
It is hard now to escape the conclusion that Perry has spent almost three years in office, and vast sums of public money, in pursuit of his own political agenda, without ever having any real prospect of success.
“The situation at Croydon,” Perry said, “which is not unique to our borough, has highlighted the very limited powers councils have to hold individuals to account.
“The law is simply not adequate as it stands. That is why I called on the government to give councils more powers to hold people in public office to account… I will be asking the committee to agree that we lobby the new government on this issue.”
Which is something Perry ought to have known all along, yet he never mentioned when he was seeking people’s votes.
Read more: Police drop all investigations into council’s financial collapse
Read more: More bad news for Perry over the Negrini ‘golden handshake’
Read more: After four-year delay, council to submit complaint reports
Read more: CEO Negrini’s long campaign to shut down Inside Croydon
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