CROYDON IN CRISIS: All those public consultations that don’t ever make any difference to what the council sets out to do? This week, one director made it clear that they are indeed pointless exercises, as KEN LEE reports
Budget showdown: our bankrupt borough is facing even tougher times. But one director believes her spending should be allowed to increase – whatever the public thinks
Croydon Council is ploughing on full steam ahead for the financial rocks once again, with a budget overspend this year predicted of more than £20million and a shortfall between income and expenditure for 2025-2026 of a whopping £83million. And all with this year’s budget and Council Tax-setting meetings for Croydon’s dysfunctional council coming up next week.
Yet at a meeting in the Town Hall Chamber last Tuesday, one senior council director, despite admitting “significant underachievement of income” by her department over the past four years, was lobbying to reverse cuts to her budgets and seeking an increase in her staffing.
“Having a permanent planning team is very important,” the very self-important Heather Cheesbrough told councillors on the streets and environment scrutiny sub-committee.
It was this meeting at which Cheesbrough, Croydon’s head of planning, who is paid around £130,000 per year, and her colleague Karen Agbabiaka (£119,000 pa as the director of streets and environment), had presented a case for making job cuts in other areas of the council, but turned up without one or two essential details. Such as how many positions were for the axe.
Above scrutiny: Croydon Council’s long-standing planning director Heather Cheesbrough
Cheesbrough was less shy in coming forward, however, in making her case for increasing the number of staff in her planning and regeneration department. It was all about administering Croydon’s Local Plan, the forthcoming revised London Plan, and handling planning applications for schemes across the borough.
At one point, seeking to justify an increase in spending in her department when most other areas of the council are making cuts, Cheesbrough said this:
“The Local Plan sets out the spatial strategy for development in the borough and so helps to crystalise in a spatial way the Mayor’s business plan, so the Local Plan is an important document in terms of carrying forward, spatially, the Mayor’s business plan.”
Clear?
Cheesbrough added: “Having a permanent planning team is very important.
“It’s always nice to have more staff.
“The team is very professional and very committed.”
Cheesbrough wanted previous cuts to her budget reversed into what councilspeak describes as “growth” – a £484,000 increase in her department’s spending.
But there was a snag.
The scrutiny committee was supposed to review information on this and two other budget proposals to decide whether they 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 “these proposals align with the Mayor’s Business Plan.”
Before Christmas, the 2025-2026 budget proposals were put out for public consultation.
‘Significant concern’: scrutiny committee chair Alasdair Stewart
The scrutiny committee’s chair, Conservative councillor Alasdair Stewart, asked what the public response had been to the suggestion that Cheesbrough’s planning team should benefit from an extra half-a-million pounds a year from a council notorious for having no money.
“I think it would be well-received by residents to have a permanent planning policy team,” Cheesbrough said.
Stewart pressed Cheesbrough.
What had been the result of the public consultation on this point?
“We’ve not had any feedback,” Cheesbrough was forced to admit.
“Can I take it from that that none of the proposals from the papers have been informed as a result of that public consultation exercise?” Stewart asked.
Cheesbrough said that she was not aware of any “adverse feedback”.
“But was there any positive feedback?” Stewart asked again.
“We haven’t had any,” Cheesbrough conceded.
“We can go back and check,” she offered, presumably in the knowledge that the budget-setting council meeting was just a fortnight away.
Louis Carserides, a Labour councillor on the committee, then asked what many residents often ask whenever the council carries out any kind of public consultation: “So what was the point of the consultation in the first place?”
One of the council’s longest standing directors had basically given the game away.
Pointless consultation: Louis Carserides
“Just for absolute clarity,” Councillor Carserides asked, “the results of the consultation have had absolutely no bearing on what’s in front of us today?”
Cheesbrough, looking a little discomforted, muttered something into her microphone about “finance colleagues would have been aware”.
Cheesbrough had begun her presentation by admitting that the planning department had been generating significantly less income for the council because of a reduction in the number of planning applications being submitted. Yet she went on to say that the extra £484,000 for planning “was a non-negotiable” as a “growth” item.
No one on the scrutiny committee bothered to adapt Carserides’ question to, “So what’s the point of the scrutiny committee then?”
The scrutiny chair drew a conclusion, Stewart saying that he has “significant concern that the proposal seems not to have been informed by public consultation – either positively or negatively.
“Or in any way,” Stewart said.
So nothing much at Croydon Council has really changed at all.
The cash-strapped council’s budget-setting meeting is on February 12. Conservative Mayor Jason Perry will push through another 4.99% Council Tax increase, meaning that since 2023, your Council Tax will have been hiked by 27%, to record levels, as £130,000 per year Cheesbrough gets a pay rise and, probably, extra planning staff.
Read more: Directors leave scrutiny short of answers over council job cuts
Read more: 92% of readers disagree with Kerswell’s Peer Review findings
Read more: Planning director worried about her career? So she should be
Read more: Home owner’s victory after four-year battle with planners
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Yet more incoherent guff from the box of rocks that is Heather Cheesbrough. Get rid of her and hire a couple of planners in her place.
This council is so ridiculously inept you couldn’t make this up. The way to get out of this mess is by growing the economy of Croydon rather than taxing the living daylights out of everyone. Right now on this trajectory , the rich poor divide will become even further. Perhaps, Westfield can save Croydon… but looking at slow and how half assed they are doing everything… I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’d take issue with your ‘slow and half-assed’ comment – they are looking at taking a MASSIVE risk by investig in our benighted borough. You seem to think they should be doing us a favour. If I were advising them – I’d suggest they look elsewhere, rather than putting millions on the line
It is neither slow nor half-arsed.
Westfield have built NOTHING in 13 years, and are the root cause of much of the borough’s, certainly the town centre’s, problems.
Where’s the risk in repurposing office towers into flats or building hundreds more flats?
Christopher, they have zero risk because they have the land rights for Westfield Croydon for fraction of the price.
Both Westfields in London are back near to pre covid footfall levels so the excuse to build more residential units are pretty lame though understandable as I could never imagine a Cartier store at North End.
As for my comment regarding “half assed ” they have changed architects from KPF to Allies to yogurt pots representing buildings in the Urban Room. Not exactly a show of confidence or professionalism.
Jeet Bains is Mayor Perry’s Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration. What does he do to earn his keep, and the extra £27,503.16 he gets paid by us for this ‘spatial’ responsibilities allowance? Does anyone know? Or is it just a sinecure?
That £27½k is on top of the £11,691.96 he gets just for being a councillor, and if it’s a pointless role, it should either go or be made an honorary position, without extra pay
Jeet Bains is too busy retweeting bullshit like Croydon ‘could become the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley’ right now. Like the rest of his colleagues they sell a dream whilst picking up a nice paycheck. The system is broken and cannot go on.
“It was all about administering Croydon’s Local Plan, the forthcoming revised London Plan, and handling planning applications for schemes across the borough.”
Coming from Cheesbrough (or any of her loyal workers), I would interpret this as “Wherever and/or whenever it suits (us), completely ignoring the adopted development plan and grossly mismanaging planning applications, to put ‘quantum’ before ‘quality’… AND sustainability, whatever that is.”
In December 2023, Cheesbrough had this to say about the changes to suburban densification policies following the arrival of our Directly Elected Executive Mayor.
“If you’re putting significant development into the suburbs … you’ve got to work with the communities that are on the receiving end of ‘it’.” (https://nla.london/videos/design-over-density)
You’ve GOT to? Really? Have I missed something? Since when exactly?
WHO on earth allowed her to say this, at OUR expense? Are they SICK?
This video is an embarrassing attempt to rehabilitate herself. It’s excruciating. She’s never given a damn about the communities that are on the receiving end of it. The only group that has benefited from her tenure is developers. They way she talks wistfully about Brick by Brick and then praises a dull, plain tower block with not one attractive design feature as ‘good looking’ demonstrates how utterly incompetent she is.
The piece de resistance is her saying about Croydon tower blocks ‘They are all designed to really high quality standards…they’ve got a top a middle and a bottom’. Croydon’s Donald Trump.
High quality huh?
https://insidecroydon.com/2024/09/18/another-croydon-scandal-the-3k-per-month-high-rise-slums/
Interesting that Cheesburger quotes iC’s nickname for the Bridge to Nowhere, but manages to get even *that* wrong, and fails to explain that it was her planning department that created a situation where a £22m piece of public infrastructure has been literally left hanging in mid-air for a decade…
But oh, the egotism of it all.
But, but, but in the video she says it’s going to connect West and East.
Although it’s blatantly clear that she doesn’t seem to know what it connects.
It’s very, very important
The video is pitiful. Croydon Vernacular? Croydon has a reputation for ugly tall concrete buildings. She should be challenging the mistakes of the past not repeating them. The building she comments on has no redeeming architectural features. Developers know they can get away with the minimum in Croydon as long as there buildings have a “Top Middle and Bottom” She points out but fails to mention she’s done nothing about the beautiful art deco building that is crumbling to ruin. Praising Brick by Brick is a kick in the teeth to residents who have to pay for their mistakes. Could she be more tone deaf?
That she is actually sitting in an Ivory tower looking down at Croydon and spouting this crap says it all. Her ineptitude is staggering.
Heather Cheesbrough embarrassing herself once again. She’s trying to sound like Kevin McCloud and coming off as David Brent. It would be funny if the consequences weren’t so disastrous for Croydon. Other parts of London have been developed sensitively and aesthetically and have included high rises. Look at Nine Elms or Elephant and Castle or Stratford.
Instead of using our money to go on jollies to the south of France she should have taken a trip to other parts of London. I understand her reputation is putting off investors. Probably why we only get unattractive tower blocks by developers who are close to planners. It’s time she got her head out of her backside and moved on. For everyone’s sake including her own.
Nine Elms “developed sensitively and aesthetically”? No.
It’s a cluster of hideous high rises, built for the rich and bought by corporate buyers, with poor doors for the plebs who can literally look up to wealthy neighbours, swimming in the sky
Former council tenants in Southwark might raise their eyebrows over the mention of the Elephant, too.
The same Heather Cheesbrough who allowed Silverleaf Development Ltd to use a backdated letter for a planning application that included my land (they had never contacted me or consulted me) when they had failed to serve legal notice?
Heather Cheesbrough who, along with Ross Gentry, made statements about the development that were provably untrue?
Heather Cheesbrough who ignored even basic questions – such as the height of the development – until ordered to do so under the threat of High Court action by the Information Commissioner? Even then she would cite documents that didn’t contain the information in order to avoid admitting that their planning report contained unsubstantiated statements.
Heather Cheesbrough whose team wrote a planning report that completely misrepresented the development to the Committee failing to mention that the development failed just about every policy designed to protect neighbours including mandatory policy?
Heather Cheesbrough who claimed not to know the developers diagrammes were inaccurate (in order to avoid showing the true impact on neighbours) even though it had been brought to her attention multiple times?
Heather Cheesbrough whose team unlawfully withheld documents that showed the development breached privacy and policy – despite Ross Gentry making an unfounded statement to the contrary – for which the Council had to apologise?
Heather Cheesbrough who ran up thousands in legal fees trying to defend a development that was ultimately turned down for being ‘harmful’. She also cost taxpayers thousands in three years’ worth of staff time at the Council, the Information Commissioner and the Local Government Ombudsman for a planning application that failed.
She was of course supported by Paul Scott (where is he now?) and Chris Clark. The latter twice tried to push the development despite knowing the development failed policy and there were potential legal issues.
Let’s not forget the thousands of pounds of our money wasted on other similar cases.
https://insidecroydon.com/2023/02/16/councils-planners-lose-multiple-cases-at-appeal-and-in-court/
When I started the process of taking the Council to court, two different barristers were very open about what they understood goes on between the planning department, Councillors and developers. I asked why nothing had come out and was told it was only a matter of time because ‘Silence is complicity’.
Very professional right?
The Penn report was full of the dodgy conduct at the Council – contracts being given to family members and so on.
Let’s hope staff in Planning and other departments start to whistleblow. If not out of integrity, then to save themselves. Especially as their jobs are now under threat. It may be the one thing that protects them.
You are far from alone in your experience of Heather Cheesborough. “I think it would be well-received by residents to have a permanent policy team”. Actually it would be well-received by residents if you left Heather.
Cheesborough suffers from the same hubris that Jo Negrini who appointed her did. She acted as though she was above policy, above the law and above the needs of residents. Her dismissiveness of residents’ concerns (in writing and at Committee) was appalling. However, her arrogance came to bite her in the arse as she was found out time and time again. Sadly it means we are stuck with her as she wrecked her own career. No-one will employ her such is the reputation she has earned herself.
If she had any self-respect, she would resign (again), take some time out, and think about why she failed so badly this role. Her continued presence is a deterrent to planners and to investment in the borough.
Aren’t we forgetting that the incoming Labour government promised during and after last July’s general election to increase the number of local authority planners dealing with planning applications, as well as making it even easier for developers to build homes, infrastructure, etc wherever they want?
Labour’s pledge to get Britain building again has resulted in significant changes to the government’s propoaed new National Planning Policy Framework, particularly the removal from the Framework of the wording (is it former paragraph 130?) which allows objectors to object to planning permission on the ground that the proposed new building isn’t in keeping with the “local character” of what is in the immediate vicinity already.
Planning law in England already starts with a presumption (albeit rebuttable) in favour of granting planning permission.
What has concerned me most is that for the last six months, in order to meet arbitrary building targets for new homes, infrastructure, etc, HM government has dangled the thinly veiled threat of changing the law to effectively suspend individual citizens’ right to object to future planning applications, regardless of whether a new building in a particular locality is appropriate, or infringes one or more of the numerous national or local authority plans and guidelines.
True, para 10 of the government’s National Planning Policy Framework states that (my emphasis) “So that SUSTAINABLE development is pursued in a positive way, at the heart of the Framework is a presumption in favour of SUSTAINABLE development”.
But para 12 goes on to confirm that “The presumption in favour of sustainable development does not change the statutory status of the development plan as the starting point for decision-making. Where a planning application conflicts with an up-to-date development plan … permission should not usually be granted. Local planning authorities may take decisions that depart from an up-to-date development plan, but only if material considerations in a particular case indicate that the plan should not be followed.”
In Croydon, the ‘particular’ material consideration that seems to so frequently persuade Cheesbrough’s ‘very professional and very committed’ team that adopted development plan policies can (or perhaps must) be ignored, is their quest (or perhaps career-need) for QUANTUM. As a consequence, much (or most) of the development in Croydon during this Director’s time in charge has by the government’s own definition, NOT been sustainable.
By the looks of it, there’s no sign of that changing any time soon, even if the government’ does ‘suspend individual citizens’ right to object to future planning applications’. Cheesbrough’s crew already (at best) pay only lip service to our objections, petitions and complaints.