CROYDON IN CRISIS: In sinister moves that raise fundamental questions about freedom of speech and democracy, council officials have ordered a block on elected councillors emailing this website.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Siege mentality: Katherine Kerswell’s council has blocked access to this website for staff – though they can still read The S*n online or watch YouTube videos
There’s a growing sense of a siege mentality and paranoia among the executives who inhabit the loftier floors of Fisher’s Folly, after it was confirmed that Croydon Council staff have been blocked from reading Inside Croydon.
In an extraordinary anti-democratic attack on freedom of speech, even elected councillors have found that they are banned from using their Croydon Council email accounts to contact this website.
Jason Perry, the elected Tory Mayor at the crisis-hit council, has just awarded himself and the borough’s 70 councillors a pay rise, as well as nodding through hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of added costs with generous salary increases for senior staff.
For example, chief executive Katherine Kerswell’s handsome £192,000 per year, plus exes, pension contributions and the nice little earner that is her fees as election returning officer, has been deemed to be inadequate. So Kerswell was handed a £12,000 per year pay hike, putting her on £204,000 pa.
The pay bands of the council’s other top earners remains something of a mystery. The Tax Payers’ Alliance’s annual Town Hall Rich List has drawn a blank on Croydon for 2025, the second year running. All because under Kerswell, Croydon has failed again to file its accounts.
Quite properly, this ought to be a matter of considerable concern, since despite Perry’s pledge to “Fix the Finances”, Croydon continues to be burdened by debts of £1.4billion, while it has a projected overspend for this financial year of £100million. And all this, and Kerswell’s pay rises, are to be paid for by residents who since 2023, under Mayor Perry, have been hit by Council Tax increases of 27%.
Meanwhile, the council is becoming increasingly remote from the people they are supposed to serve.
Blocked: the automatic message Croydon Council staff receive should they commit the thought crime of trying to access this website
But workers in the council’s offices have noticed that their browsers forbid them to check out Inside Croydon, which some have claimed to be their only source of information about what is really going on at the Town Hall.
“This site has been blocked in accordance with the Croydon Council Acceptable Use Policy,” an official notice scalds staffers who dare click through to iC, “as it may be inappropriate for business use.”
As one of Kerswell’s demoralised staff said, “But we can still access quality news sites such as The S*n, so its not all bad news.”
A brief survey of staff’s browser access to other parts of the world wide interweb suggests that there have been no restrictions placed on other sites, such as YouTube or Reddit, which are clearly entirely appropriate for business use in the view of Kerswell and her closest colleagues.
Staff have reacted with “utter disbelief” that senior management would resort to such a Stalinist approach, while using council resources to achieve their goal.
As is increasingly the case, this decision by senior management has never been discussed in public at the council. Some elected councillors were unaware of any ban on Inside Croydon. Until, that is, they tried to send an email to this website, and found that that was blocked, too.
“A custom mail flow rule created by an admin… has blocked your message,” is the notification received by councillors using their council email accounts, confirming that this is not an accident or “glitch”, but a deliberate action taken by officials at Fisher’s Folly.
“Sending to inside.croydon@btinternet.com is blocked.”
But as with most things Kerswell and her lackeys try to do, their block on Inside Croydon is half-arsed and utterly ineffectual.
“We can still access your Facebook, Bluesky and Spotify,” one staffer advises. “I guess they would need to block all of it to block your pages.”
It is not the first time that Kerswell has tried to gag staff over the parlous state of the council. And after almost five years in the CEO’s job, Kerswell has plenty that she and her exec directors don’t want council staffers to find out about, nor to talk about.
Last year, Kerswell oversaw a spend of £6.4million on outside consultants, seeking their advice on… how to make more cuts. Grumblings and criticism from staff was waved away and ignored.
Blocking Inside Croydon comes close on the heels of Kerswell ordering the closure of Access Croydon, denying the public the opportunity to see a member of council staff without an appointment.
“The changes to Access Croydon are part of the council’s action to protect local services for residents,” Kerswell wrote as she prepared to withdraw another council service.
What public and staff encountered when the system started was described as “chaos”.
Within two days of the new system, tempers had become so frayed, security staff were targets for abuse from their own council colleagues, forcing Kerswell to issue a written warning.
By closing Access Croydon, Kerswell managed to shut the homeless out of their council.
People arriving to seek emergency accommodation are now directed to Central Library, to use one of their computers to register for an appointment in order… to register that they are homeless.
No Access Croydon: more than 30 charities and voluntary organisations have protested against the closure of the council’s public access area
Kerswell and piss-poor Perry have falsely claimed that the new system is “in line with local authorities across London”. In fact, just four other London boroughs have an appointments-only system.
One angry member of council staff said: “It is all about delivering the new target operating model: a self-service, virtual council, where you get to talk to a half-baked AI.”
And Perry and Kerswell have even come up with a way of blocking the public from using the few democratic avenues that are open to them to hold their dysfunctional council to account.
Over the past month or so, more than 5,000 residents have signed petitions, one to campaign against the threatened closure of the Carers’ Centre on George Street, the other to protest the sale of Heathfield House, the council-owned listed building on Gravel Hill.
Both petitions would usually be granted a Town Hall debate, but not in Kerswell’s Croydon.
One e-petition was ruled out because council officials disallowed 2,000 of its 2,500 signatures. The other got lost in a council spam folder, according to the lamest of lame excuses from Kerswell’s council.
But at least, according to Croydon Council, the petitions weren’t deliberately blocked. Maybe that will come next?
Read more: CEO Negrini’s long campaign to shut down Inside Croydon
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: Councillors now ordered not to complain over missed bin collections
The Croydon Advertiser sold an average of just 742 copies per week last year (ABC 2024 audit).
Inside Croydon is read by an average of 10,000 people every weekday
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