EXCLUSIVE: Key public meetings have been cancelled, without any explanation, as Jason Perry is accused of wanting to run the borough by Trump-style edict. By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
Rare sighting: Mayor Perry has been cancelling a range of council meetings and committees
Jason Perry, the Mayor of a borough that is £1.4billion in debt and has just secured a new £136million “capitalisation direction”, won’t be attending a public meeting of his own cabinet for three months.
The council has failed to respond to questions from Inside Croydon today to explain why a cabinet meeting originally scheduled for April 30, then moved to May 7, has now been cancelled.
“It’s beginning to look like Mayor Perry’s running scared,” a Katharine Street source said today, highlighting that the borough’s part-time Mayor has little more than a year until the next local elections.
The last cabinet meeting to take place was a somewhat rushed, one-hour dash through a few reports from council staff that was held in the Town Hall Chamber on March 26. The next one now won’t be held until June 25.
Given the pace at which Croydon Council’s spending ran out of control last year, there are well-meaning and entirely justifiable concerns that something similar could happen in the next few months, without the Mayor and his cabinet putting forward any explanation for their actions and, more importantly, any opportunity for opposition councillors to ask questions of the Mayor or the council’s senior executives.
Another significant date coming up is the July “exit” of the “improvement” panel, appointed in 2021 and in effective overall, statutory control of Croydon Council since around the time of Perry’s 15% Council Tax hike in 2023. Is their planned departure now in question, since the latest, record capitalisation direction settlement, and another sign of failure that Perry wants to avoid debating in public?
Fixing the finances: Mayor Perry has broken election promise, having begged for bail-outs totalling £224m during his term in office, more than Brick by Brick ever borrowed
There are other matters which piss-poor Perry no doubt wants to go away and no one notice or talk about.
The Taxpayers Alliance, a shadowy and opaque organisation that is usually reluctant to reveal how it is funded, conducts an annual “Town Hall Rich List”, the 2025 version of which was published yesterday. For a second consecutive year, there are no figures available for the salaries paid to Katherine Kerswell, Croydon Council’s CEO, and her six-figure salaried colleagues because there has been no accounts published by the council.
This is the sort of basic piece of checks and balances that would see Perry explode with outrage were another political party in control of the Town Hall. But this has now twice happened on Tory Perry’s watch – someone who when seeking people’s votes to become Croydon’s first elected Mayor promised to “fix the finances”.
Since Perry took charge of the council in 2022:
- Council Tax has increased by 27% (this month’s latest increase of 4.99% has Croydon with the second highest Council Tax in London)
- Perry has issued one Section 114 notice of effective bankruptcy (and has been lucky to get off the hook with a second in the latest financial year)
- He has had to seek “capitalisation directions” – government bail-outs – during his term in office of £224million – more than was borrowed by Brick by Brick
- Croydon’s debt remains stubbornly at around £1.4billion, despite Perry’s election promises
- And after he steered through a vote to increase Council Tax last month, Perry voted himself a pay rise, to £84,000 per year. Trebles all-round!
It is worth noting that there are 34 Labour councillors and 33 Conservatives, plus two Greens and one Liberal Democrat, but the council is controlled by Tory Mayor Jason Perry
‘Plain wrong’: Labour’s Stuart King, shocked by the cancellation of meetings
Given Croydon Council’s recent history and the absence of proper scrutiny as recorded in various reviews and reports published in the wake of the 2020 financial collapse, Katharine Street sources have been alarmed at the cancellation of council meetings.
“This is simply not good enough,” Stuart King, the leader of the Labour opposition group, said today.
“Reporting bad news may be tough for Mayor Perry, but this lack of openness and accountability is just plain wrong.”
There are only six cabinet meetings scheduled for the rest of 2025. In reality, these cosy little gatherings chaired by Perry offer little real insight into the workings of the council: the Mayor is a nasty piece of work, constantly belittling any opposition councillors who dare ask questions and often cutting them off and stopping them posing follow-up questions. It is almost as if the Mayor has got something to hide…
There are now just four real meetings of full council for the rest of 2025, where the public can present petitions and ask impertinent questions of the people who are supposed to represent them and keep the council’s professional staff in check (the council’s annual meeting in May, full of Trumptonesque ceremonials of not much else, doesn’t count).
Democracy disappearing: Green councillor Ria Patel is concerned by Perry’s antics
That’s hardly a significant workload for the well-paid Mayor Perry and his cabinet. Each of them pocket more than £40,000 per year, even though since 2022, Croydon is supposed to have had an executive Mayor, without need for cabinet appointees.
But meetings of all kinds have been disappearing from the council’s timetable.
Ria Patel, the Green Party councillor who has faced a constant battle to be allowed to speak at council meetings and committees since her election, said today, “The democratic process seems to be disappearing from Mayor Perry’s administration.
“Not only have they cancelled the cabinet meeting, this week they have also cancelled the constitution working group meeting, the audit and governance committee and the group leaders’ meeting.
“Perry promised to listen to residents. But as time’s gone on there is less and less engagement and we are just left with Trump-style orders appearing without any discussion.”
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Is it not a statutory obligation to publish accounts?
Of course.
But the large audit firms had a backlog before covid.
Now badly run and underfunded councils, like Kerswell’s Croydon, have a ready-made excuse for non-compliance.
The Cabinet roles are pointless, and the Cabinet Members do nothing. The reason Perry has them is so he can take our money and give it to his favourites to keep them sweet.
The two-faced short-sleeved shirker does this while cutting services and putting up our Council Tax (and his wages) to “fix the finances”
Close to £500,000 in SRAs are paid to Conservative cabinet members by the cash-strapped council.
How much of that is then paid over to the Conservative Party in Croydon in the traditional impost – a public subsidy of the political parties?
Does that skimming show up in their accounts? https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/English/Accounts/ST0028463
Running the borough by Trump-style edict is no problem except Mayor Perry hasn’t a clue what he is doing and just isn’t an astute businessman with high level contacts .
Trump style orders are a problem – we are supposed to live in a democracy, not a dictatorship.
We don’t want a Mayor making stuff up as he goes along. We need a Mayor who genuinely listens to residents and works with them to make Croydon better.
There has been a steady decline in the number of meetings to hold the Executive to account for a long time. In the 1980’s there were ten full council meetings a year. Those meetings had an hour of unscripted oral questions arising from written questions to kick off the meeting with sound accountability.
An extensive committee system underpinned the full council meetings. Questions followed arising from reports of each committee.