CROYDON IN CRISIS: The council appears to be sleepwalking into another financial crisis, without a full meeting at the Town Hall for three months, while bosses at Fisher’s Folly waiting for the next government directive. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Waiting for orders: council bosses appear impotent to act without direction from Whitehall
“Our situation remains serious”, according to Croydon Council’s finance chief.
Jane West, the council’s finance director, made the comment in yesterday’s weekly round-robin to council staff. Katherine Kerswell, Croydon’s £204,000 per year chief executive who would usually issue the all-staff bulletin, is away on holiday. Again.
That Croydon’s financial situation “remains serious”, despite the latest £136million bail-out from central government that was granted just weeks ago, ought to be a matter of grave public concern.
Yet between them, Kerswell and the borough’s part-time Mayor, Jason Perry, appear determined to keep a lid on exactly how they are running Croydon’s basket-case council.
According to West, the council chiefs have been working on another plan (yes!), this one called a Stabilisation Plan. It does not appear to be meant ironically.
Perry has overseen Croydon’s worst financial performance, and required greater borrowing, than ever before – worse, even, than when Tony Newman and his Numpties were in charge in 2020.
And that’s after his repeated hikes of Council Tax to record levels.
After almost five years, and following a series of failed plans and strategies, while paying up to £1,000 per day to individual members of the government-imposed “improvement and assurance” panel, it is hard to imagine quite how this latest scheme could make a significant difference.
No hiding place: Croydon’s part-time Mayor Perry has stopped staging his public meetings
That’s particularly the case as the council, under its Conservative Mayor, appears to be sleepwalking into its next crisis, just as they did in 2024.
Twelve months ago, the council’s politicians got distracted on the campaign trail for two sets of elections – first the London Mayorals, then the General Election.
By the time that they returned for Town Hall business, the council’s budgets were deemed to be “unsustainable” by West and Tony McArdle, the chair of the ineffectual improvement panel.
This time round, it is looking a lot like Perry and Kerswell have just given up on Croydon Council altogether.
With this Wednesday’s scheduled council cabinet meeting, having been postponed in April, now cancelled altogether (Why? No one is saying), there is not another significant public forum to review any of the council’s actions until late June, when Perry’s under-employed cabinet councillors get together again (for the first time since March).
The next Town Hall meeting of full council with any substantive business won’t be until July 16, a full three months since the last such meeting. The deliberate avoidance of accountability by the increasingly remote Mayor Perry and the council bosses is looking suspiciously deliberate.
The scrutiny committee meeting to be held on May 27 has therefore taken on additional importance, a rare milestone on the council’s progress while Perry, McArdle and Kerswell all wait, Macawber-like, for something to turn up.
Their collective solutions so far have amounted to more of the same – even more, and bigger, cuts to services, often under the guise of their “Future Croydon”, digital-first plan. Except that Croydon Council has reached the point where there is little left to flog off, and few services remaining to be cut.
In her note to staff, West encouraged them all to be “engaged and involved with the Future Croydon transformation programme”. That of itself suggests that, probably, few staff are “engaged” or “involved” with the on-going gutting out of their council.
Planning for failures: council finance director Jane West
In the staff missive, which has been leaked to Inside Croydon, West wrote, “Right now, we are waiting for final comments on our Stabilisation Plan from the improvement and assurance panel, which is set to be published mid-May, ahead of Scrutiny on 27 May. It contains accelerated actions from the Future Croydon plan, and the things we are committing to do to make savings over the next year.
“We’ll be sharing the plan with you, as well as more updates on the wider transformation programme and the initiatives within it.” Which is nice of them.
Back in February, when Tory councillors voted in favour of Mayor Perry’s latest Council Tax hike and to approve his budget for the current financial year, Inside Croydon warned that what was being pushed through was an unbalanced budget. This was based on the comments of West and McArdle’s latest report to government.
West’s remarks yesterday appear to provide further confirmation.
“From a financial perspective, our situation remains serious.
“As we are now in the new financial year (2025/26), directorate budgets have been reset to take into account the unprecedented demand we saw last year – which continues to grow.”
West referred to a meeting of the council’s senior managers held earlier in the week. “One big message shared at Tuesday’s session is that we all need to look harder at what other authorities are doing differently to deliver within their financial envelope. We need to look at what we can learn from others – and what we could do here.” Have they only thought of this whizz-bang idea now?
“Unlike some other councils, Croydon cannot absorb overspend from our reserves – we do not have that amount set aside, because of the challenges we’ve faced in the past.”
On his way out?: £1,000 per day Tony McArdle
And West again described the debt-death spiral that Croydon Council is trapped in.
“What remains unchanged is our reliance on Exceptional Financial Support from the government. Like all authorities, we are waiting to hear the outcome of the government’s spending review (set to be published in June), but we are clear that a cycle of borrowing isn’t a long-term solution for Croydon. As our debt increases, so does the level of money we need to sustain it – and in turn the amount of EFS we need grows.
“Quite rightly, the government wants assurance that Croydon is doing everything it can to improve its financial sustainability; which is part of the role of our improvement and assurance panel currently.”
McArdle – another who dodges public scrutiny and interviews – and his merry little band of commissioners were supposed to have an “exit plan” (yes, another plan) to end their stay in Croydon this July.
“As June approaches,” West wrote, “we’re set to hear about what’s next for Croydon in terms of how we continue to give that assurance and I’ll be sharing that with you as soon as we receive an update from the Secretary of State.”
Read more: Council Tax hits £2,500 per year as debts continue to mount
Read more: Government grants Perry’s record £136m council bail-out plea
Read more: ‘Mayor and CEO are respected and provide strong leadership’
Read more: Mayor Perry busts his unbalanced budget with £42m overspend
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