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Council bosses need to answer for Cheesbrough’s toxic legacy

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CROYDON COMMENTARY: The announcement of the departure from the council of its long-standing planning director has been widely welcomed by many residents. But as WAYNE MULLEN explains, after his four-year battle with the council over planners’ misconduct, some of those responsible remain in office – including the chief exec and Mayor Perry

Going but not forgotten: planning director Heather Cheesbrough came to symbolise the distrust between the council elite and the residents who pay their salaries

No homeowner should be forced to spend thousands, as I did, to protect their home from a development that would use part of their own property, remove their privacy and compromise their safety.

Yet Heather Cheesbrough spent thousands of pounds of tax-payers’ money on legal fees for a development that her own planning team’s emails showed they knew to be harmful and that was in breach of the council’s own policies.

Two years ago, in some detail, Inside Croydon covered the saga, which had been doggedly pursued by planning expert Steve Whiteside, here: Home owner’s victory after four-year battle with planners

Including the hundreds of hours of council staff’s time across multiple departments, all told this  one development will have cost the taxpayer six figures – all money that was wasted.

During Cheesbrough’s time as Croydon’s director of planning and sustainable regeneration, my situation will have been replicated multiple times. How much has she cost the taxpayer in total by trying to push through harmful developments over those 10 years? And how many of those managed to get through?

I’m not against development (I grew up in social housing in Croydon) but policy and law exist for a reason. At various points the council had to apologise for the actions of Cheesbrough, Nicola Townsend (the chief planner) and Ross Gentry (a senior planning official) for various offences, including withholding documents and making misleading statements.

Block heads: a private developer’s proposed block of flats, housing for 19 people on the site that has only ever been a single household, while intruding on a neighbour’s own land, was backed all the way by council planners Cheesbrough, Townsend and Gentry

These people clearly believed they were above the law, and that they were not subject to the Nolan Principles.

In my view, none of them them should be holding public office.

Council chief executive Katherine Kerswell knew, and she did nothing.

On one occasion, when I filed a Stage Two complaint about the conduct of Heather Cheesbrough through the council’s formal complaints procedure, my complaint was handled by… Heather Cheesbrough. Her boss was not available to deal with it – Shifa Mustafa had been suspended from duty because of her part in the financial collapse of the council.

As chief executive, Kerswell’s tacit endorsement of the conduct of planning officers, and her failure to act, makes her equally culpable.

Cause for complaint: CEO Katherine Kerswell allowed Heather Cheesbrough to ‘mark her own homework’ over a serious Stage Two complaint

It’s been an abject failure of leadership. No governance, no controls, no scrutiny, no ethics.

I wrote to both Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry about what was going on – concealing documents, lying, ignoring FoI requests for a year and a half on basics like the height of the development, when their own documents revealed that they knew the development was harmful and so on. It wasn’t just my correspondence that Cheesbrough ignored: she “ghosted” an elected councillor, and didn’t even bother to show up to an agreed appointment with the councillor.

I also remember the panic on councillors Chris Clark and Paul Scott’s faces when I told the planning committee that the developer was in breach of the Town and Country Planning Act by using a back-dated letter to serve notice.

Kerswell didn’t respond. She got solicitors to send me a threatening letter.

I started my career in central government. It was drummed into us that everything we did was subject to public and legal scrutiny, so we observed the letter of both policy and the law. To find that planners can mislead committees, ignore FoI requests, withhold documents, make statements that are untrue, and ignore law and mandatory policy, was a shock.

It’s much more than planning. When the likes of Heather Cheebrough, Ross Gentry, former councillor Paul Scott and current councillor Chris Clark are prepared to dismiss residents’ rights and concerns and disregard policy and law, they are reducing public participation and eroding the democratic process.

Scott’s puppet: ‘Thirsty’ Chris Clark was the councillor who chaired the planning committee. He is now Labour’s lead on planning matters

Gentry, of course, is notorious among Croydon residents’ groups for having a close, very close, relationship with some developers operating in Croydon – including one firm where his wife is a director.

But why did it take for the council to go bankrupt for Jo Negrini, Scott, Alison Butler et al to leave the council.

Inside Croydon had been realising concerns for years. Why are there still no internal controls?

If Cheesbrough is replaced, it should be with someone from outside of Croydon Council. I hope the first thing that they do is go through that department with a fine-tooth comb. Both Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry are under notice of potential misconduct and misfeasance, so I hope they are prepared to step down too.

I served notice on Kerswell, Clark and Cheesbrough that that they had failed in the statutory duty to prevent harm (their own documents confirmed they knew the development would be “harmful”) and that if the development went ahead I would be filing claims against them personally.

Thank you, again, Inside Croydon and Steve Whiteside for holding them to account.

I have been told that Cheesbrough had been applying for other jobs for months before the announcement of her departure, for a “career break”, was leaked to Inside Croydon this week. I am not surprised no one wants to employ her. Her reputation is tainted – and entirely of her own making.

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