CROYDON IN CRISIS: The fourth rescue plan issued by our cash-strapped council in as many years ‘cannot deliver a balanced budget’.
By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
Unsustainable: Croydon Mayor Jason Perry.
“Desperate” and “deluded” are a couple of the kinder things that have been said about the “Stabilisation Plan”, which Croydon Mayor Jason Perry and his chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, have been working on most of this year, and which was released to the public today.
Yet even if everything in their plan is to work, Perry and Kerswell have been forced to admit that, “The plan cannot deliver a balanced budget.”
It is an admission of abject failure so total that it is astonishing that Perry and Kerswell, and some of their acolytes, still remain in their posts.
It was just 12 short weeks ago that Perry’s Tory councillors voted for what they claimed to be a “balanced budget”, apparently in the full knowledge that it was nothing of the sort. Such action may break some legal requirements on elected officials and council staff.
The Stabilisation Plan is the fourth such rescue attempt in as many years. None of the others appear to have worked, so a dollop of scepticism about this one is probably well-placed.
It is Perry and Kerswell’s effort to clear a path for the council to be allowed to take charge of its own affairs once more, after nearly five years of being under the supposed supervision of government-appointed commissioners. But it comes soon after the latest annual government bail-out – this time more than ever before, at £136million – and without any real prospect of an end to Croydon’s debt death-spiral.
The plan has been released ahead of a scrutiny meeting on May 27 and a meeting of Perry’s cabinet next month. Perry, Croydon’s £84,000 per year Mayor, and Kerswell are keen not to allow anyone to rock the boat over their Stabilisation Plan: there’s no chance of it being debated openly at the Town Hall before mid-July. By that time, Croydon’s latest financial crisis may have reached new depths.
The failing council’s latest plan comes with yet more cuts to services, with a total of £48.3million of cuts in this financial year alone. That’s up more than £27million from what had been planned in Perry’s latest unbalanced budget was passed in February. “Pay More, Get Less” is clearly piss-poor Perry’s true mantra.
Some of the claims made in the Stabilisation Plan would be laughable, if the situation in Fisher’s Folly was not so truly dire.
The 30-page document is another exercise in navel-gazing by Kerswell and her six-figure-salaried directors, with little apparent consideration given to the 400,000 residents in the borough that they are supposed to serve.
Among some of the low-lights of the report, try these…
- “Croydon Council has an established track record in successfully delivering complex programmes.” Seriously.
- In his foreword, piss-poor Perry claims to have delivered “strengthened governance, more effective financial management and disciplines and improved service delivery”. Yes, that’s the same Croydon Council which has just had the begging bowl out for £136million because of its inability to balance its budget.
- “The top priority for my administration has always been ‘fixing the finances’.” See above. Perry has hiked Council Tax by 27% since 2023, raking in record levels of residents’ cash.
- “As a proud Croydonian, I am fully committed to tackling our financial challenges and leaving no stone unturned, but we must do so in a way that is sustainable, responsible and does not decimate our borough.” Too bad, too late…
- Further on in the document, it is stated: “The Stabilisation Plan will be governed through Croydon’s robust assurance frameworks, ensuring transparency, accountability, and effective oversight”. Which, as already explained, is simply not true.
- “To ensure the Stabilisation Plan is aligned with sector-leading practice, the council will engage the Local Government Association as a critical friend to provide external assurance on the Stabilisation Plan”. So Kerswell and her team don’t even trust themselves to be placed in sole charge of the council’s management. It is worthy of note that Katherine Kerswell’s husband, Barry Quirk was until recently a “strategic advisor” to the LGA. That’s the same body that originally identified Kerswell to be Croydon’s CEO and for Elaine Jackson to be her assistant chief executive. So hardly an impressive track record of success, then…
- “The Local Government Association’s Corporate Peer Challenge highlighted the council’s effective leadership and commitment to improvement.” Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? See above.
And while it is all written in the usual brain-dead councilspeak prose, you would think that, having been honing it for at least a month, they would have at least checked that it sort of makes sense. But no: “The Executive Mayor and his cabinet are committed to delivering this plan, listening to the perspective the [sic] Croydon residents’ [sic] before judging the necessary decisions for our residents.”
‘Unsustainable’: could council CEO Katherine Kerswell be heading for a fourth S114 notice?
The cold, dead hand of Kerswell, the £204,000 per year CEO, is all over this Stabilisation Plan. In her message to staff this morning, leaked to Inside Croydon, she claimed: “The plan explains how we will further manage demand, reduce costs and increase income. It supports the work we are doing with the improvement and assurance panel to deliver the final objectives of the Exit Strategy, which focus on Croydon’s finances and how we can continue our work to make them more stable.”
The clock has been counting down on Tony McArdle’s improvement panel, which last year thought they would end their work in Croydon this July. Some council insiders believe that the £136million exceptional financial support doled out by government three months ago kiboshed those plans.
“The Stabilisation Plan actions aren’t new,” Kerswell told staff. “Many of you will have seen them already as part of Future Croydon and the TOM.” TOM, for those who prefer to speak English than acronym, is something called the Target Operating Model.
“Things have been brought forward, so we can feel the financial benefits sooner,” said Kerswell, the only council chief in history to preside over three Section 114 notices.
“This includes areas like being more efficient in how we collect revenue.”
And now, after pissing away £6.4million on consultants last year, Kerswell is betting the house (not her’s, you understand, but the one which Croydon residents pay for) that that advice will come good. “Future Croydon is the only way forward for us,” she said, not reassuring anyone much.
Figures in the Stabilisation Plan show the real reason Kerswell has cut off Fisher’s Folly from the public, by removing access to Access Croydon: a saving of £111,000. She could double that saving if she handed in her notice on Monday.
Looking for a way out: Tony McArdle’s ‘exit plan’ could be in jeopardy
There’s to be another cut to staff, or what the Plan refers to as a “11% headcount reduction”. That’s even more than Kerswell warned staff about as recently as February.
The Stabilisation Plan also express the aim of reducing the number of agency staff by 25%.
Oh, and of course, there’s this: the Target Operating Model “will also bring different roles and different ways of delivering some services that will mean new opportunities for upskilling and really embracing what digital transformation can offer the public sector”.
Kerswell’s council is claiming to have met 96% of the objectives in the improvement panel’s exit strategy. But they have been marking their own homework once again.
They even claim, “Croydon was recently shortlisted for a national local government award for Most Improved Council”, without bothering to mention that Croydon Council nominated themselves…
And buried deep in the council’s waffle, they admit, “The council cannot meet its exit strategy objective relating to financial sustainability without government action on increased demand and costs for councils, and a resolution on its debt burden.” That’s the £1.5billion debt that has been hanging around ever since piss-poor Perry was elected in 2022.
Croydon’s fourth Section 114 notice could be here sooner than you might have expected. “The plan cannot deliver a balanced budget in [2025-2026].”
Warnings: Jane West
The reality is that Tory Mayor 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.
That Croydon’s financial situation, according to finance director Jane West earlier this month, “remains serious”, despite the latest £136million bail-out from central government, ought to be a matter of grave public concern.
Not that Mayor Perry and Kerswell and her bloated team of six-figure-salaried directors, appear that bothered. They certainly don’t appear keen for anyone to debate their “plan” (such as it is). Public meetings of Perry’s cabinet have been postponed, then cancelled, with no explanation. The next Town Hall meeting of full council won’t be until July 16, a full three months since the last substantive meeting.
The avoidance of all accountability by the increasingly remote Mayor Perry and the council bosses is looking suspiciously deliberate.
Read more: Council Tax hits £2,500 per year as debts continue to mount
Read more: Cash-strapped council has spent £6.4m… to make more cuts
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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“The plan explains how we will further manage demand, reduce costs and increase income“ – Doesn’t that mean ‘Provide less, sack the people that do the work, raise Council Tax’?
Nothing will change while we have Bozo Kerswell running Croydon Clowncil.
“The plan explains how we will further manage demand, reduce costs and increase income.” As usual, that must mean “managing demand” by making contacting the council even more difficult, “reducing costs” by making even more of the staff who actually did things/provided services redundant, and “increasing income” by the usual combination of a swingeing rise in council tax again next year, and also taking their begging bowl to government again?
“…I am fully committed to tackling our financial challenges and leaving no stone unturned….” Not even the stones that Croydon Council found Piss-Poor Perry and the Kerswell under?
Why has the Kerswell’s husband, Barry Quirk, recently left the LGA (at first, I thought he was on the GLA gravy train!) ? Does he also have “dead hands” and they have seen through him, although there is no sign of the council getting rid of his wife? Perhaps HER dead hands can’t negotiate as good a golden handshake as her shameless predecessor, Jo Negreedy, got?
She had a similar Negreedy-level payout from Kent county council for 16 months’ work.
Add up 84,000 Perry and 204,000 Kerswell and 35.000 Our Croydon = £323,000 savings.
Perry’s propaganda comes in paper version. I have no toilet rolls left. I will read it while sitting on the toilet
And the two deputy CEOs.
“Croydon has changed at an unprecedented scale and speed. We are rebuilding our council after one of the most challenging financial and governance crises in local government. We own our past, but we are not defined by it. This is a new chapter for Croydon. We are tackling our challenges, with sound financial management and robust governance. We are transforming to become a modern, cost-effective council, that puts residents first. Through our commitment to transparency and accountability, we are rebuilding trust. The government has recognised Croydon’s progress; through our relentless focus and commitment, we have improved – and at pace.”
So says Croydon’s entry in the Local Government Chronicle’s “Most Improved Council” awards 2025.
The judging panel includes ex-Croydon CEO Jon Rouse, the “alchemist who turned property into debts” https://insidecroydon.com/2013/01/22/jon-rouse-an-alchemist-who-turned-property-into-debts/ and and ex-Croydon Deputy CEO, Will Tuckley, a man so inconsequential in his time here that there is no mention of him on Inside Croydon. They must have wet themselves laughing at our borough’s attempt to gloss over the awful truth of how bad things have got since they abandoned the sinking ship. Even more so when the competing presentations were made on April Fool’s Day.
We’ll have to wait until 11th June to find out whether Perry claims the cup or gets the wooden spoon
This £136 million bailout happened under the improvement panel too so they are clearly no good either. For some reason they have to stick around too though because although things got even worse under their watch, they are bound to improve things because they are called the improvement panel… at least they can put Perry on the naughty step for sneakily sending out tens of thousands of copies of his rag around Croydon. Between them, the consultants, the Mayor and the CEO etc I’m starting to think when Perry said fix the finances he actually meant for that lot because all Croydon has seen is austerity.
Look…council tax is too high; business rates are too high; parking charges are too high. So on the revenue side, the only answer is to get more money from central government. They give Scotland a lot via the Barnett Formula. Let’s have the Perry Formula justifying a bigger payout for special case Croydon. Never mind that central government is bankrupt too…it can ‘afford’ to send billions to Ukraine to keep a war going. And then spending has to be cut to the bone. Starting with unaffordable final salary pension schemes. Resident workers don’t get these so why should the folks who work for us? You are talking a huge saving right there.
If they are serious about saving money and cuts, Fisher’s Folly needs to be abandoned like Lord Foster’s City Hall.
If that small piece of land opposite East Croydon station sold for £200m, Fishers Folly must at least be worth the same or more.
Why o why are these idiots allowed to carry on and be paid ridiculous amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing . Surley they must be held acoutable for failing to resolve a previously disastrous council and be asked to pay back their salary? Oh no that would be right thing to do, and is not in the remit.