CROYDON IN CRISIS: MP Natasha Irons says that ‘democracy is being undermined by Croydon Council’, as the Conservative-controlled authority is refusing to debate the situation at the carers’ centre on George Street and the on-off-on-again sale of listed building Heathfield House.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Anti-democratic, and incompetent: Jason Perry is trying to block two large protest petitions
Executive Mayor Jason Perry has been trying to stop two petitions, which have been signed by thousands of local people, from being presented and discussed at Wednesday’s meeting of full council at the Town Hall.
The council’s efforts to block democratic debate have included officials lying to a local MP, disallowing thousands of signatures as being somehow “invalid”, and using a simple excuse of straightforward incompetence.
The petitions were raised calling for a halt to the sale of Heathfield House and for the Croydon Carers Centre on George Street to be saved from closure.
The Heathfield House petition has more than 2,400 verified signatures, the Carers Centre petition has been signed almost 2,600 times.
Under the council’s own rules, it takes just 500 signatures “from local people to trigger a public petition debate at a full council meeting”. And the council now even has it written in to its constitution that “electronic/online petitions may be accepted, provided the council can verify that the signatories are ‘Local People’ in the same manner as paper petitions”.
Yet Perry’s supposedly “digital first” council claimed that one of the petitions was not received in time, later saying that it had gone into a council official’s spam folder.
Meanwhile, the other petition was ruled out from being included on Wednesday’s agenda because council officials decided more than 2,000 of its signatures – about 80% – were not valid.
“Perry’s really got his bollocks caught in a mangle over the decision to sell Heathfield House and the change of carers’ support contractor,” a Katharine Street source said today.
“He’s been doing more U-turns than a delivery driver in an LTN.”
Going cheap…: Heathfield House, the listed Victorian era Italianta villa, could be auctioned for just £1m if Tory Mayor Jason Perry gets his way
Perry regularly tries to claim that he’s listening to the borough’s residents.
Attempts to shut down debate – and dissent – over Perry and his council’s bad decision-making comes with the next local elections now just over 12 months away, and with the Tory Mayor’s record in office a litany of failures and disaster – topped by his increasing Council Tax by 27% since 2023.
There are only four meetings of full council at the Town Hall Chamber in a year (a fifth, the May annual meeting, including the “Mayor-making” ceremonials for a civic Mayor, does not conduct any substantive council business). And Perry’s clearly in a deep panic over the growing level of awareness of his broken promises, bungling and mounting opposition to his policies.
But in trying to “bury bad news” by not allowing the petition debates, Perry and his £204,000 per year council chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, have only managed to expose themselves as anti-democratic, as well as incompetents.
In February, Heathfield House was put up for sale by auction at the ludicrously low guide price of £1million. After Inside Croydon’s reporting exposed the sale of the heritage asset, and more than a thousand people signed the petition within a few days, the council withdrew the property from the auction, claiming it was some kind of “mistake” by the professional and respected auctioneers, and later insisting that because it was a 125-year lease being offered for sale, the building was somehow not being flogged off.
Perry has since recorded a political video on the steps of Heathfield House, “the jewel in the crown”, he calls it, only further enraging the petitioners.
“You may have seen Mayor Perry posting a cheerful update suggesting that despite all our opposition, Croydon Council are still pursuing leasehold sale of the building, with no public consultation,” the petitioners said.
“We think it’s unacceptable that Perry can visit the house to film a video claiming he wants to ‘protect’ the house and repeating previous statements, whilst offering no transparency nor responding to those he claims to serve.”
The petition was formally submitted to the council on March 3, but by last week, there had been no response. When the council meeting agenda was published last week, there was no mention of the Heathfield House petition.
Irons works: Labour’s MP for Croydon East has been busy seeking answers from the council over Heathfield House’s future
Natasha Irons, the MP for Croydon East, had already written to Perry, backing the petitioners by calling for a halt to any sale, and to hold a public consultation and involve heritage experts in discussions about its future.
The MP wrote to Mayor Perry and the council a second time, highlighting how the petition had gathered enough signatures to trigger a debate at a full council meeting.
In response, the council tried to claim it “had no records of any petition”.
A council jobsworth wrote to the MP, and tried to maintain the lie that the sale of a 125-year lease is not selling the property.
“In response to your email we would advise that we have no records of any petition being formally submitted to the council,” the official claimed in reply to Irons, “and secondly the council is not disposing of Heathfield House.
“The council is exploring options as to how best to attract third-party investment into the property – money that the council does not have. This to ensure that public access to the property and wider park and ground areas are maintained as part of any investment.”
Irons wrote to the council once again, copying-in CEO Kerswell and council legal chief Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, this time with supporting evidence that proved that the petition had been properly submitted to the correct council email address and before the deadline.
According to sources inside Fisher’s Folly, Kerswell has today had a meeting with Green Party councillor Ria Patel, where the explanation offered for the council not having any record of the petition was that it had gone into the council’s spam folder…
Growing protests: but according to the council, 2,000 signatures were disallowed from the petition over the Croydon Carers Centre because they were not from ‘Local People’
As things stand, the Carers’ Centre petition won’t be debated at this week’s meeting, either. With the Carers’ Centre petition, the council claimed that the campaigners had not achieved the 500 target, as they disallowed 2,000 signatures.
According to correspondence from the council, seen by Inside Croydon, “The petition was submitted to Croydon Council’s Democratic Services on 9th March 2025. However, it did not include the required signatures at the time of submission.
“Upon receiving the petition, we advised the petitioner that signatures were required for the petition to be considered valid and recommended that she liaise with Change.com to obtain the necessary signatures. She was also informed of that [sic] the submission deadline for petitions to be considered at the April full council meeting was 25th March 2025.
“The signatures were subsequently submitted on 1 April 2025. We acknowledged receipt and informed the lead petitioner that although we would proceed with the verification process, however, as the deadline had passed, the petition — if validated — would be considered at the next ordinary full council meeting on 16th July 2025.”
Yeah, that’s right – no full council meetings to debate the business of piss-poor Perry’s council for three months. He’s well worth his £84,000 Mayor’s pay cheque…
The council bureaucrat’s email to the petitioners continued: “Following the conclusion of the verification process today, we can now confirm that only 473 out of the 2,534 signatures submitted have met the definition of ‘Local People’ threshold as set out in the Croydon Constitution. Unfortunately, this means the petition has not met the required threshold for debate at full council.”
Suspicions about how council business is being “controlled” have also arisen, with Perry and officials accused of censoring public questions ahead of its meeting – questions submitted by the public about the imposition of Live Facial Recognition cameras in part of the borough and about the council’s investments in the arms trade have both been ruled out.
Concerned: Cllr Ria Patel accused Perry of issuing ‘Trump-like orders’
Opposition councillors are furious at the way Perry and council officials are trying to silence public opposition to their incompetence and bad decisions.
“A council that is serious about ‘listening to Croydon’ would not seek to silence or stifle public opinions in this way,” Labour’s Stuart King, the leader of the largest group of councillors at the Town Hall, told Inside Croydon.
Despite several requests over concerns about Heathfield House, King has been denied access to the latest list of council properties for disposal.
“Mayor Perry needs to intervene to ensure that the views of 2,500 residents are not ignored in the council he leads. That means that the petition must be tabled and a full response provided,” Councillor King said.
Green Councillor Patel said: “The democratic process seems to be disappearing from Mayor Perry’s administration. As time’s gone on there is less and less engagement and we are just left with Trump-style orders appearing without any discussion.”
Patel highlights how Perry and his officials have cancelled a cabinet meeting originally scheduled for the end of this month, as well as a meeting of the constitution working group, an audit and governance meeting and the group leaders’ meeting.
And on the Heathfield House petition, Croydon East MP Natasha Irons told Inside Croydon: “It is deeply concerning that a petition with more than 2,000 signatures is being disregarded, and local democracy is being undermined by Croydon Council.
“The Save Heathfield House campaign is about protecting a piece of Croydon’s heritage and those campaigning for its future are doing so on behalf of the whole community.
“Croydon Council must urgently reconsider its decision to ignore the voices of the community.”
Read more: People’s protests force Perry into U-turn over Carers’ Centre
Read more: Heritage building Heathfield House is pulled from auction
Read more: Perry slammed for £439,000 in ‘golden hellos’ paid to new staff
Read more: Councillors now ordered not to complain over missed bin collections
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MPs can have “Recall” petitions to force them out of office, if 10% of voters sign it. How many of Croydon’s voters would it take to get rid of Piss-Poor Perry, or is there no such mechanism for getting rid of a (foolishly) elected mayor, so he may be “above the law” until next year?
If only a handful of votes are cast in the election for the next third-rate Croydon politician to get their hands in the democracy trough, does that mean that we could get rid of the elected mayor completely, having discovered that the promise of a directly elected mayor being a “bit less shit” than the old system was a lie, and it is really a “whole lot more shit” ?!
Unfortunately, under the original legislation that brough in directly elected Mayors, we have no option to get rid of a bad one and we have to wait at least 10 years before we can change the system.
One of my election commitments is I will look into getting rid of the Mayor system sooner than that if we can, and at a minimum I will start the process to allow us to get rid of the Mayor post as soon as possible.
It was just a few years ago that Gerry Meredith-Smith, the Chair of DEMOC, the campaign for a Democratically Elected Mayor Of Croydon, said it was a myth that a Mayor concentrates the power with one person. But that’s exactly what we’ve got, an elected dictatorship.
We were also told that having a Mayor would change the way our borough is run, and that it would make the Council more accountable and transparent. The change is that things are now worse than they were under Newman, and the Council is even more unaccountable and opaque.
Thanks to the naïve DEMOC campaigners, and the Tories who wholeheartedly supported them, we’re stuck with this undemocratic bollocks until at least 2034. And anyone who thinks voting in a Labour replacement next year for the part-time Tory pillock will get a rude awakening
Surely a mayor could be so much more than an elected dictatorship. But it depends upon whether the person elected has an ounce of honourability in performing their duties. The first Croydon mayor hasn’t exactly delivered in the way we hoped (to put it mildly) but I don’t see why it is a fait accomplit that everybody is like him.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” – John Dalberg-Acton
I’m zinc therefore I’m a pram -Alexie Sayle
Do-Be-Do-Be-Do – Frank Sinatra.
And your point is, Peter?
An “elected dictatorship” in Croydon? I guess that makes Croydon a smaller version of Russia, America and Turkey, and there are probably other larger examples(?!)
LGA??? Ombudsman??? CQC??? Surely this is illegal. With a CQC inspection imminent, this would be a good time for as many Croydon residents as possible to forward this article to them
Mayor Perry looking like Jabba the Hut everyday. Greed kills.
Give Perry credit for one achievement – he makes Trump look competent.