The bright and breezy announcement appeared this morning on Croydon Council’s intranet: 4,000 shiny new laptops for staff have arrived! Whoop-de-bloody-whoop!
What was not included in the council’s internal comms message was that the estimated the cost of the Croydon laptop deal is close to £5million.
The decision to splash the cash was contained within an “officer-delegated report”, meaning that elected councillors never got much of a say in how this significant chunk of public money is being spent.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Conservative Mayor Jason Perry will be seeking to pass a budget which will bring the increase in Council Tax paid by residents since he took office to 27% – giving Croydon the second highest Council Tax in the whole of London.
Some opposition councillors are fuming that the generous re-equipping of the council staff is happening at the same time that council frontline services are being axed.
“We all know Croydon’s going through difficult times,” said Rowenna Davis, the Labour councillor who had been chair of the council’s scrutiny committee. “We know our Council Tax is going up, we saw the four library service closures…
‘It’s shocking’: Rowenna Davis won’t be accepting her new laptop
“At the weekend, I was out talking to people about the fact there will be no Croydon-run youth service anymore. But I wake up this morning and this is what I see on the council intranet…”
In an impassioned social media video, the councillor turned her camera to show the message from the council heralding the arrival of 4,000 laptops, all using the new Windows 11 operating system. “The wait is over,” the council’s internal website proclaimed, as if Fisher’s Folly had been enduring something like the Siege of Mafeking. “New laptop roll-out begins!”
You can almost imagine council CEO Katherine Kerswell saying: “Rejoice at that news!”
As with so much about Croydon Council, senior figures tend to overdramatise the work that they are doing, making even routine distribution tasks seem like conquering Everest. “As you can imagine,” they said, “this is a huge task…”
As part of the phased distribution, the council told staff, “We will email you when it is time for you to collect or have your laptop delivered to your home.” Which is nice.
Davis was underwhelmed at this news. “Four thousand shiny new laptops all being delivered.” Davis told her social media audience that she already has a council laptop. “I don’t need a new one,” she said.
“It’s shocking to me that we’re always told there’s no money, right? But there is money for shiny new laptops for council officers… 4,000 of them. There is money for consultants. There’s never money for the people.
“It’s always money for the council. I just don’t get this Mayor’s priorities.”
The new IT equipment follows recommendations by Boston Consulting last year, which included an upgrade of the council’s systems. Boston spent just a few months working at Croydon, during which time their over-riding finding was that the council’s website is a bit shit.
The wait is over: how the council broke the news to staff this morning. The roll-out is reckoned to be costing £4.8m
For this, Boston Consulting were paid £1.8million by the cash-strapped council.
At a council webinar last week (which was leaked to Inside Croydon; you can watch the whole demoralising hour by clicking here), the council chief exec spent several minutes going through the consultants’ recommendations, in an effort to justify their costs.
Kerswell and Mayor Perry’s plans hinge on even more “digital first” approach to council work. Kerswell highlighted last week how some staff had complained that their council-issued computers worked slowly and performed poorly.
The last time that all staff had their laptops replaced was around 2015. It was a period notable for the then council CEO, Jo “Negreedy” Negrini, demanding that she be provided with a top-of-the-range Apple MacBook, so she might undertake some “design work”. This was despite the fact that the Mac was incompatible with the council’s in-house computer system, or that she was rarely actually seen to use her £10,000 piece of kit in meetings…
In a council report last year paving the way for the latest re-equpping exercise, it was stated that there were around 3,700 laptop, desktop and tablet devices currently in use by council staff, mostly Lenovo Thinkpad laptops, “many” of which were then up to seven years old.
“They are at their end of life and need replacing,” the council report stated.
At that time, the council’s own figures suggested it had 3,200 staff. So that suggests a lot of money being spent on “spare” laptops.
In 2019, Croydon hired a contractor, Littlefish, to handle its in-house IT maintenance on a five-year deal, which was later extended by an additional 12 months through to March 2025. Littlefish was paid £1.7million for the one-year, 2024 to 2025 contract extension.
The council has been tendering for a contractor for a 2025-2030 IT maintenance agreement. “The contract will support the council’s ICT priorities and will allow the council to deliver a more modern ICT service for users,” said an official report last November.
“We are adopting a model that facilitates change at speed improving the agility and efficiency of the council.” Oh, how we laughed!
According to the author of the report, senior official Marie Snelling, the IT agreement will “support the council priority of OUTOME 1”, her capitalisation: “Balances the books, listens to residents and delivers good, sustainable services.”
It is hard to know who the council chiefs are trying to convince with this kind of hogwash, or how many actually believe the bullshit.
Odd priorities: council CEO Katherine Kerswell (£204,000 pa) and Mayor Jason Perry (£84,000) have overseen an overspend on budgets of £130m between 2024 and 2026
Davis, who is a councillor in Waddon, will be seeking selection by Labour to be the party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor at the May 2026 elections. Mayor Perry, despite his appalling track record of serial failures, has been selected to seek a second term.
Croydon Labour might actually begin its selection process for its mayoral candidate by the end of this month, according to party sources.
In the meantime, Davis intends to plug on using her old but perfectly functional council-issued laptop. “I won’t be accepting a new one!”
The Croydon Labour group, having ultimately abstained on Tory Council Tax increases the past two years, might usefully return the new laptops to the Town Hall, and save the council, and Council Tax-payers a few quid.
Read more: Council Tax hits £2,500 per year as debts continue to mount
Read more: Croydon In Crisis: budget overspend now close to £100m
Read more: Labour accuse Perry of ‘mismanagement’ of Town Hall finances
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