Your Council Tax goes up next week, to record levels, and chief exec Katherine Kerswell’s salary has now risen to £204,000 at the cash-strapped council.
Spelling error: council staff who are not working from home ought to know how to spell the name of the building where they work in official correspondence
But as Kerswell wields the axe to more jobs in her drive for a “Digital First” council, standards are still slipping badly at Fisher’s Folly.
In fact, things have got to such a low that staff don’t even appear to be able to spell the name of the office building they are supposed to work from.
Bernard Weatherill was a generally respected Conservative constituency MP for part of the borough, who became known nationally and internationally when he was the first House of Commons Speaker of the televised era. When Jason Perry and his boss, Mike Fisher, over-paid by tens of millions for the council’s new glass palace on Cost You A Mint Walk, they decided to name the building after him.
Bernard Weatherill House.
Perhaps too many people have come to know it as Fisher’s Folly, because council staff appear not to know how to spell their office building’s name correctly. Even in official, council correspondence, and on the council’s website.
Ooops: there’s more than 700 examples of official correspondence going out with the council’s own address misspelled
For several years now, anyone seeking something like the truth about how Croydon Council is spending out money through a Freedom of Information request have been receiving responses from somewhere purporting to be called “Bernard Wetherill House“.
Same street and postcode, just a different, wrong spelling.
Even today, FoI responses have been sent out from the seventh floor of a non-existent building.
A simple search of the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website (highly recommended to anyone who wants to put their council on the spot about the number of times their road has been swept in the past year, or other such important issues) shows “about 700” examples of the mis-spelling, dating back to June 2023.
There’s another 136 examples on the council’s own website.
It is impossible to say with certainty when these Wetherill misspellings first began to appear, although we have pinned one instance on the website down to 2019.
Ooops: the staff responsible for the ‘Digital First’ council’s website still suggest the public can attend its offices ‘in person’
It’s not as if the correct spelling wasn’t staring people in the face every day they come into work for the evermore remote, “Digital First” council. It’s there, emblazoned in two-foot-high letters along the side of the building.
Talking about Kerswell’s drive to make the council avoid actually having to deal with people in person, news of the move to an appointments-only No Access Croydon doesn’t appear to have got through to… the team at Croydon Digital or in comms who are responsible for updating the council’s website.
The council website continues to suggest to the public that they can contact their council “in person”, almost three weeks since Kerswell pulled the plug on the homeless and the vulnerable from being to get to speak with council staff “in person” without an appointment.
Croydon Council: pay more, get less.
Read more: No Access Croydon: Kerswell closes off Fisher’s Folly to public
Read more: They voted to raise your Council Tax, then to increase their pay
Read more: Government grants Perry’s record £136m council bail-out plea
Read more: Top Tory admits Fairfield Halls could be sold for the right deal
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Heds should roll 😉