KEN LEE reports from the frontline of budget discussions at the cash-strapped council, after a meeting where everyone is working very, very hard, but no one in charge bothered to turn up equipped to provide any answers
Very, very important: council director Heather Cheesbrough
Councillors from both larger political parties were left stunned and more than a little peeved at a Town Hall meeting this week when two of Croydon’s most senior directors turned up for the meeting to propose job cuts – but then admitted that they had no idea of how many jobs they wanted to axe.
Heather Cheesbrough and Karen Agbabiaka rolled up at the Town Hall for the streets and environment scrutiny sub-committee on Tuesday evening, where neither of them could answer some of the most basic questions put to them by councillors.
The committee of elected councillors was meeting to review information on three budget proposals to decide whether the proposals are “deliverable, sustainable and not an unacceptable risk”, what impact the proposals might have on the services provided by the council, to ask whether all reasonable alternative options had been explored, and whether Mayor Jason Perry will like the suggestions. Or, in councilspeak, “Do these proposals align with the Mayor’s Business Plan?”
Inside Croydon reported earlier this month on the somewhat credulous findings of the LGA Corporate Peer Challenge, the latest report to be published about the workings of Croydon’s cash-strapped and dysfunctional council.
This Peer Review included the assertion: “Members of the [Corporate Management Team] operate well together as a cohesive and supportive body, and are highly thought of internally and by external partners.”
Yes: highly thought of.
And: cohesive and supportive.
No answers: Karen Agbabiaka
Yet has anything really changed?
This latest scrutiny meeting felt like a throwback to the bad old days under former chief exec Jo Negrini, when her sidekick, Colm Lacey, could turn up for a review of his latest business plan for housebuilders Brick by Brick with every single financial detail deliberately left blank.
Lacey used to approach scrutiny by councillors with undisguised contempt. On Tuesday night, Cheesbrough and Agbabiaka just appeared to be incompetent and unprofessional, two other core attributes that had managed to help bankrupt the borough in the past.
Cheesbrough is the council’s long-standing head of planning who is paid around £130,000 for doing whatever it is she is supposed to do, while Agbabiaka is on close to £119,000 per year as the director of streets and environment.
But at least they showed up to face questions.
Katherine Kerswell, the council’s chief executive (now on £204,000 per year), was down to attend, but she was a no-show. Scott Roche, Mayor Perry’s choice as cabinet member for streets and environment (£39,195 per year in allowances), failed to turn up, too.
Listed on the council’s agenda papers as expected to attend was Steve Iles. Iles was Agbabiaka’s predecessor, and he hasn’t worked at Croydon Council since August 2023. Not surprisingly, Iles didn’t show up, either.
The meeting was all about one of the council’s directorates: “sustainable communities, regeneration and economic recovery”, but there was no head of department present available for questioning. Nick Hibberd, who had been doing the job, has quit Croydon, to become chief executive at Bristol City Council.
Unscrutinised: Steve Iles, a long-time council director, was listed in the official council papers as ‘expected’ for Tuesday’s meeting, even though he hasn’t worked in Croydon for more than a year
And Kristian Aspinall, Cheesborough and Agbabiaka’s colleague in the directorate, who is in charge of culture, libraries and community safety, wasn’t there, either. Apparently, he had a more pressing engagement.
This was a particular pity, because according to Cheesbrough and Agbabiaka, it was jobs under Aspinall’s control where the cuts were mostly being made – someone muttered that it might be something to do with libraries, but they couldn’t be certain. Could they get back to you on that, one or other of the clueless directors asked the committee’s chair, Conservative councillor Alasdair Stewart.
‘A bit more generous with the information’: the frustrated councillor Louis Carserides
According to Agbabiaka, these “savings” were all about deleting jobs that had been standing vacant for some time. Beyond just taking the notional, unpaid employment costs off the books, it was not explained how deleting unfilled jobs, where presumably no salary was being paid, could generate any real savings for the cash-strapped council.
The absence of any proper details was too much for Louis Carserides, a Labour committee member. “Can I ask that the officers are a bit more generous with the information in future?” Carserides said, trying hard not to sound too annoyed by the charade going on before him. This was, after all, he noted, all about “a specific agenda item”.
He needed the information, Carserides said, “So we can ask the questions that need to be asked.” He has a point.
Certainly Stewart agreed. Such information as how many jobs you want to cut was “a minimum requirement”, the unimpressed committee chair suggested to the directors. The committee’s work was made “absolutely impossible” without it, Stewart said.
“It would have been nice just to get an understanding of the impact on services,” Stella Nabukeera, another Labour councillor, said.
Carserides came back in, highlighting that the agenda item was all about the “re-alignment” of staff budgets – Cheesborough had spent 20 minutes earlier supporting a proposal to reverse earlier cuts to her own department, because its work was “very important”.
A savings figure of £600,000 per year was mentioned: “How have we come to that figure?” Carserides asked, not unreasonably.
‘Impossible job’: scrutiny chair Alasdair Stewart
“Each of the DMTs have worked very hard to come up with the savings we’ve brought forward,” Cheesbrough said, slipping into councilspeak, where every sentence must include at least one acronym. In this case, DMT is “Directorate Management Team”.
The DMT must have worked very hard indeed, but just forgot to tell anyone how many jobs were for the axe. “There have been underspends for a number of years, with vacant posts sitting there, unfilled,” Cheesbrough asserted, without sharing with anyone how many of these vacant positions there might be.
Cheesbrough and Agbabiaka promised to go back to their pal, Kristian, get the details off him and report back. Which would be nice.
But there is one slight problem with the process of scrutinising the work of the council’s very well-paid decision-makers and how they prepare the annual budget. The streets and environment scrutiny sub-committee is not due to meet again until April 1. The cash-strapped council’s budget-setting meeting is on February 12.
Read more: 92% of readers disagree with Kerswell’s Peer Review findings
Read more: ‘Mayor and CEO are respected and provide strong leadership’
Read more: IT’S OFFICIAL: Croydon still among country’s worst councils
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Rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying-
‘Organise couldn’t up in brewery a piss a.’
It could be incompetence George. Then again it could be deliberate.
In late 2022 Jason Perry was preparing the ground for his first budget as Mayor of Croydon. He wanted to give the residents of Croydon the opportunity to have our say on how he should approach the council’s financial challenge and urged us to fill in an online survey.
Over 1400 people responded to the loaded questions.
Perry “listened”.
Then he whacked up our Council Tax by 15%. You might recall that Labour very bravely abstained when it came to the crucial vote, showing as much backbone and principles then as Peter Mandelson has displayed in his recent kowtowing to Donald Trump.
This year, Perry is showing no signs of “listening to Croydon”, and all his guff about transparency has gone in the bin.
No wonder jobless Scott Roche didn’t bother to show up; he’s good at grinning for the cameras, but keeping a straight face at a Committee is beyond him. Bravo then to Alasdair Stewart for pretending he was annoyed by this farcical and very convenient concealment of the truth
How the hell is Heather Cheesbrough still employed? Time and time again her incompetence, her distain for residents, and her lack of integrity (let’s not forget lying about her credentials) have been exposed by Inside Croydon. It makes my blood boil every time I read about her. Why am I paying towards her ridiculous salary. She’s a bloody embarrassment. There isn’t a local government public servant in the country with her reputation.
We share your sentiments.
But wait… there’s more to come!
The little people will lose their jobs and the directors will take care of themselves. Heather Cheesbrough will have taken over a million pounds in pay and benefits on top of her annual jolly to the South of France at our expense. Yet as Director of Planning and Regeneration, she has overseen the biggest degeneration of the borough in its history, destroyed the relationship between the Council and residents and, along with her big number two Nicola Townsend, ruined the reputation of the planning department. I feel sorry for the junior members of her team tarred with the same brush and knowing they are waiting for dead men’s shoes (no other organisation will employ these two).
Incompetent and unprofessional to say the least.
With regard to the degeneration of the borough, destruction of Council/resident relationship and ruination of the planning department’s reputation (such as it was), we must not forget the considerable efforts of Townsend’s predecessor (‘Pragmatic’ Pete Smith) and of their loyal Application Team Leaders, the likes of Gentry, Freeman, Slominski and Furnell.
As for Kristian Aspinall, maybe he was interviewing for those recently advertised library jobs …. which he’s about to cut?’
What can be done to get these unelected people out of power? It seems clear how absolutely terrible they are at their jobs whether it’s down to incompetence, greed etc. Seems like there is no actual oversight and unclear what power the public has.
After 15 years of covering this council, and others, this is our formative conclusion:
1, Elected councillors exhibit a form of Stockholm Syndrome from the moment they have any power (ie. form an administration; opposition councillors spend their term wailing about their impotency), with political leaders actively censoring and silencing anyone who dares criticise the council’s senior management.
2, With a handful of notable exceptions, the council’s senior management don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks, or says.
That’s it.