CROYDON IN CRISIS: The borough’s increasingly remote and unaccountable Mayor and chief executive won’t even answer Council Tax-payers’ correspondence that challenges their abuse of tens of thousands of pounds of public money. By KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
A mug’s game: Mayor Perry is namechecked 21 times and has his photo in Our Croydon 11 times
Katherine Kerswell, the £204,000 per year chief executive, has failed to respond to formal complaints put to her last month over the abuse of public money on Tory Mayor Jason Perry’s Our Croydon political propaganda sheet.
Inside Croydon reported earlier this week how Perry’s cash-strapped council has spent at least £35,000 of your money on his Our Croydon, distributed to 170,000 households around the borough, while at the same time cutting services and axing jobs at the council.
It is one year until the next local elections – when Perry’s £84,000 elected position will be on the line. So after hiking Council Tax by 27% since 2023, 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.
Opposition politicians have cried foul over the misuse of public money for what is a blatant piece of political electioneering.
And now members of the public have submitted formal complaints, too.
But chief executive Kerswell has ignored the correspondence from a Council Tax-paying resident.
Unaccountable: Katherine Kerswell (right), Mayor Perry’s doting CEO, is paid £204,000 a year, but can’t be arsed to respond to residents
It is almost a month since one reader emailed the CEO.
“I am writing to you as CEO to complain about the content of the Our Croydon newsletter which I’ve received today,” the resident said in their email.
“This newsletter amounts to an election communication from Jason Perry, the current Mayor, who has announced his intention to stand as Tory candidate in the next Croydon mayoral election in 12 months’ time.”
The resident highlighted the use of numerous photographs of Mayor Perry throughout the 32-page publication, as well as “numerous quotes from him on various issues, some of which are politically contentious”. “Politically contentious” is the polite way of saying “lies”.
“There are also references to the Croydon mayoral election and a full-page article about postal votes in that election,” they wrote.
“It is not right that Croydon Council Tax-payers should pay for this election propaganda on behalf of one candidate.”
The resident has not even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement from Kerswell or on her behalf from her very well-staffed office.
Pretty vacant: Mayor Perry’s borough-wide tour ran out of steam and now appears to have been abandoned
The drafting and editing, design, printing and distribution of Our Croydon represents a significant ramping up of public engagement – at huge public expense – by Mayor Perry going into election year, and comes as a Freedom of Information request to the council has confirmed that Perry has abandoned his stated policy of staging public meetings at which he was subject to questions from residents (albeit very carefully chosen questions and questioners).
The council has confirmed in its FoI response that Perry – who has claimed to listen to residents’ concerns – has no plans to stage any Mayor’s Question Time events in 2025.
The last Mayor’s Question Time was held in July last year (after the General Election) in South Croydon, the ward where Perry was a councillor for 28 years until his election as Croydon Mayor. Just 81 people bothered to register for the event, while Perry required the out-of-hours support services of four council staffers.
Despite having promised to tour the whole borough with the Question Time events, Perry in fact only visited eight of Croydon’s 28 wards between January 2023 and July 2024.
A grand total of just 702 of Croydon’s near 400,000 residents bothered to register for the events, which according to the council’s FoI response, cost the council £980.43 in hall hire, leaflet printing and associated costs (the council failed to put a value on the hours of work by council staff in organising and attending the events).
Which perhaps in part, at least, explains why Perry is now campaigning for re-election by having Our Croydon stuffed through people’s letterboxes – and all at your expense, and all without any public debate or discussion, and judging by Kerswell’s refusal to reply, no accountability, either.
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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