CROYDON IN CRISIS: Jason Perry has been accused of misusing public money on a thinly-disguised propaganda rag to boost his election chances. But there’s also serious questions about how the project was ever passed by the government’s ‘improvement panel’.
EXCLUSIVE by WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
Our Croydon, your money: the council admits to having more than 170,000 copies printed
It is 12 years since Conservative government minister “Big” Eric Pickles declared war on “Town Hall Pravdas“, freesheets printed by local councils as propaganda exercises, all paid for out of the public’s Council Tax.
Here in Croydon, it is another Tory, “Big” Jason Perry, the executive Mayor of our cash-strapped council, who has squandered tens of thousands of pounds of public cash on his very own rag, calling it – without a shred of shame – Our Croydon.
What the 32-page colour freesheet fails to tell anyone is that this single edition cost more than £35,000 of your money.
This at a time when Perry is handing P45s (or equivalent) to the borough’s last remaining lollipop ladies and men, closing our public libraries and making Access Croydon inaccessible.
But it is one year until the next local elections – when Perry’s £84,000 elected position will be on the line. So Perry is resorting to using the council’s propaganda department, and your money, to paper over the cracks and make out he is somehow worth re-electing.
Even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un does not have such a sky-high rate of fawning photographs of himself in Pyongyang’s daily papers as Perry does in Our Croydon.
Perry’s mug appears 11 times in the mis-numbered rag in total, including on the cover and on pages two, three and four.
And the Tory Mayor who has hiked your Council Tax by 27% since 2023 gets a name check no less than 21 times throughout the council-funded publication.
A mug’s game: Mayor Perry is namechecked 21 times and has his photo in Our Croydon 11 times. The self-styled ‘community’ paper has no pictures of any opposition councillors, not even the civic mayor
“It’s an egregious abuse of powers, and a waste of public money,” according to one Katharine Street source.
The printing and distribution of Our Croydon to 170,000 households came without any previous debate or public scrutiny at the Town Hall, and despite previous efforts to curtail councils from trying to pass themselves off as reliable sources of local news and information.
So secret was Perry’s propaganda push that when Our Croydon started to drop on doormats across the borough, senior councillors from opposition parties had no idea that it was even being distributed.
‘Town Hall Pravdas‘: Eric Pickles thought he had eliminated wasting money on council newssheets
“The spread of the Town Hall Pravda is manifestly unfair because they offer cut-price local news, but mixed in with council propaganda that pours taxpayers’ money down the drain.”
Not the views of Inside Croydon, but those of “Big” Eric (now Lord) Pickles, when he was Secretary of State for local government in 2013.
“These freesheets are often confused for the real thing by residents. I want our news to be told and sold under the masthead of an independent and free press, not through a knock-off Rolex imitation,” the former chairman of the Conservative Party said.
There’s little chance that Our Croydon will be mistaken for anything other than knock-off imitation news, except by the extremely gullible. And piss-poor Perry’s pals.
One significant question that arises from the newssheet’s production, however, is how Mayor Perry managed to sneak its costly production past Tony McArdle, the chair of the government-imposed improvement and assurance board.
McArdle is supposed to have put a complete ban on any “discretionary spend” by Croydon Council.
Questions to answer: Tony McArdle, who has banned all ‘discretionary spending’ at the council
“If ever you needed something to define ‘discretionary spend’ – council spending on something no one really needs – then Our Croydon must be it,” said one Katharine Street source, sounding furious that Perry has been allowed to get away with this blatant piece of politicking on the rates.
Inside Croydon understands that Labour councillor Stuart King, the leader of the largest group at the Town Hall, has requested an urgent meeting with McArdle to ask how Our Croydon could ever have been allowed.
The free newspaper appeared all within weeks of the government agreeing to the latest, £136million bail-out of Croydon Council, after Perry was unable to balance the books last year. Perry’s poor financial management had already seen him issue a Section 114 notice, an admission of effective bankruptcy, in 2022.
Council sources suggest that the cover story will be that its costs have somehow been defrayed by “sponsorship” (of which there is no sign on any of the 32 pages) and advertising.
Inside Croydon found ads on 10 out of the 32 pages – well down on the usual 50-50 ads-to-editorial split in proper, commercial publications.
And of those ads, many were on behalf of the council itself, its contractors or other council-funded organisations. So any “subsidy” of the production costs of Our Croydon will still be coming from residents.
Croydon Council stopped distributing its previous printed puff-job almost a decade ago. It was dropped as a cost-saving measure. But Perry’s Our Croydon threatens to be the first of several similar rags over the coming months.
It calls itself, “the council’s quarterly newsletter for our community”, which suggests that there will be one every three months, with the last tax-funded piece of Conservative propaganda potentially scheduled for April 2026 – possibly just days before the borough’s voters go to the polls.
Figures obtained from the council’s own procurement portal show that £35,194.66 of council spend was approved in two tranches by Susie Rundle, the former Sadvertiser junior reporter who was recently confirmed as the council’s head of media.
Of that, £11,014.66 was paid to Reach plc (publishers of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Express and owners of the barely-read Croydon Sadvertiser) for printing, with a further £24,180 paid to Local Green Guide, it is believed for distribution. On behalf of Perry’s supposedly “digital first” council.
Where’s your money’s gone: the council’s own procurement figures show more than £35,000 spent on print and distribution. But there will be other costs to the council as well
None of which accounts for the costs of time spent by council staff, particularly in Rundle’s propaganda department, but also spends on freelance photographers and graphic designers, to pull the publication together in the first instance.
If Perry carries through with his threat of three more editions of his rag, the total bill in a pre-election year will reach close to £150,000.
“It’s unbelievable that Perry has the gall to cut back on services for children, but can still sanction this piece of political propaganda for the near-equivalent budget,” one Inside Croydon reader observed today.
A Katharine Street source said, “What ‘spend control panel’ did this decision ever go through? Publishing this is an extraordinarily bad decision, among a whole series of very bad decisions by Mayor Perry, and a complete betrayal of residents’ trust.”
Read more: Now Perry wants to axe school safety patrols to save £58,000
Read more: Mayor Perry accused of ‘cover-up’ over Sentamu case review
Read more: Silicon Alley: 800 Croydon firms have closed under Mayor Perry
Read more: Perry closes down entire floor of flagship Central Library
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The position of Mayor is a waste of money and Conservative Mayor Perry’s priorities are cleearly to waste even more money promoting himself while he cuts services for the rest of us.
Sadly we have to wait another year before we can get rid of him. If you elect me as Mayor next year you will not only see services for residents put at the top of the Council’s priorities, I will also start the process to get rid of the Mayor post altogether and stop this huge waste of our money.
It was a self-aggrandising piece of rubbish. I wonder how much he spent on consultants to change from Your Croydon to Our Croydon?
Part-time piss-poor porky-pies Perry’s propaganda hasn’t plopped onto the doormat at Towcrate Towers.
Is that down to selective distribution, handed only to loyal subjects and floating voters? Probably not. More likely a cock-up on the communication front. Who did Jason hire to deliver the goods and how much did he pay them (with our money)?
There’s an online version on the Council’s webshite, which begs the question why this “digitally led” maladministration thought it OK to waste our money on going to print. I counted Perry’s name appearing 21 times, which along with 11 photos of His Mayoral Highness, is one heck of a monument to his vanity (and to the crawling of the PR team that put it together).
It also shows who is truly in his trusted inner circle. Cabinet Members Lynne Hale, Maria Gatland and Scott Roche feature in some of the group portraits. No such luck for Jason Cummings, Jeet Bains, Yvette Hopley, Ola Kolade and Andy Stranack. Have they done something to offend the Dear Leader? Is a purge on the cards? I think we should be told
Perry is wasting his time (not that anybody other than him doesn’t already realise this).
He’ll be judged on his inability to get a deal from government for a debt write-off. Instead choosing to increase council tax by 20%+ at a time when residents were already struggling. All of this increase to pay off interest on the giant debt pile whilst cutting services.
Only positive of the continued Westfield delays is that he won’t be able to take credit for any kind of progress on regeneration (though I’m sure he’ll try).
It really is infuriating to hear him continue to blame Labour after being in office for years now and only making things worse on the finances. I only pray residents don’t have short-term memories and let them back into power locally.
I just noticed! “e-Procurent Portal”. FFS. They can’t even spell “procurement”.
Dear Arfur, Who cannot spell please? This is a very serious matter.
Dear John, I was referring to the people running Croydon council’s procurement function, as per the screenshots above
This echos a lot of my thoughts on the matter when it landed on my doormat yesterday. I was pretty surprised and it needs to be fully scrutinised. It’s nothing other than an abuse of public money at a time when our services and assets are being stripped to the bone. I hope there isn’t an Issue Two posted through my door and it is kept online where it belongs. If this is the end of the debacle, this cynical waste of money to publicly fund Mr Perry’s mayoral campaign won’t be forgotten.
How about a petition to get Mayor Perry to pay for his personal puff job, as it is claimed he paid for the South Croydon ward by-election he caused in 2022 by standing for two separate elections?
So McArdle has been asleep at the wheel on scrutinising unnecessary council expenditure. No wonder he likes working with part-time Perry, they share the same semi-detached approach to public service while relentlessly taking home a massive inflated wage for their output.
In case you’re wondering the Electoral Commission don’t care that Perry has started his electioneering already using taxpayers money as it’s not under purdah! That said, I’m sure Ian Parker with his obsession on electoral expenses has already filed his report of illegality….
Councils do need to communicate with their residents, to let them know what they are doing, and of any new services, changes to services, or (currently more likely), cuts to services. I have not received a paper copy of Inside Croydon for years – is this because I get it online?
I do agree though that it should not become a mayoral puff sheet.
Inside Croydon has a proud record of never harming a single tree in its production, of never increasing your Council Tax to pay for its delivery, and of being objective in its coverage of the way the council is run, Michelle Ann.
None of which can be said of piss-poor Perry’s propaganda sheet.
What’s this about “Our Croydon” dropping onto people’s doormats? No such thing has dropped onto mine.
If it did, I doubt that I would trust it as much as Inside Croydon, or that I would learn as much.