CROYDON IN CRISIS: Our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE, on another year where our council is close to the top of a league table – for most upheld complaints
No real change: the only reason the number of complaints upheld against the council fell last year is because the Ombudsman investigated fewer Croydon cases
Katherine Kerswell, Croydon’s £204,000 per year chief executive, if she bothered turning up for work today, will have found an email from the Local Government Ombudsman that proves that her council has barely improved at all, judging by the continuing high level of complaints being upheld against it.
The full data won’t be made available until July, as is usually the case, the Local Government Ombudsman said today. But they add that they have issued their annual complaints data and updated their snazzy little online map in order “to support councils in providing more comprehensive information on the complaints they receive for people in their area to scrutinise”.
Under Kerswell and the borough’s Conservative Mayor Jason Perry, Croydon Council has never published any of the reports on complaints that have been upheld against them.
Nor has Kerswell and Perry’s council ever published any of the complaints data, crunching the numbers for what has been repeatedly shown to be one of the rottenest boroughs in the country.
Or there was the equally shocking case in which the council was found to have put a four-year-old child at risk of gang crime.
Then there was the case in which Croydon failed to provide respite for a disabled teen’s mum.
Or how about the time where Croydon Council’s failure to pay an agreed grant left a family living on building site.
In one case, raised by a family living in temporary accommodation provided by the council, Croydon was ordered by the Ombudsman to review how it looks after families in overcrowded housing.
There’s many more where that comes from.
Croydon Council has never itself published details of any of the Ombudsman’s adverse findings – which is why here at Inside Croydon, we try to keep our readers advised on the regular displays of gross incompetence and negligence by some working for the local authority.
Based on the data released today, in 2024-2025, the Local Government Ombudsman received 218 complaints about Croydon Council. That’s up from 186 complaints filed to the Ombudsman in 2023-2024.
Of the past year’s complaints, the Ombudsman decided, for various reasons, to investigate just 36 of them (a mere 16.5%).
Of those, 32 were upheld with the council at fault.
That’s a strike rate of
89%
These figures offer some interesting comparisons with previous years at the cash-strapped council.
In 2021-2022, the Ombudsman upheld 41 complaints against Croydon.
In 2022-2023, this rose to 57 upheld complaints.
And in 2023-2024, there were 42 complaints upheld against Croydon by the Ombudsman.
The council’s propaganda department might seize upon the 32 upheld complaints last year compared to the higher numbers for previous periods as some sign of progress.
Yet in each of those three previous years, the Ombudsman decided to investigate more Croydon cases than they did in 2024-2025. Indeed, in 2022-2023, the Ombudsman investigated nearly twice as many Croydon cases – 69 – as they did last year. If the Ombudsman decides not to investigate a case, then there will be no adverse ruling.
For neighbouring boroughs, the figures for 2024-2025 are:
SUTTON
86 complaints
22 investigated
13 upheld (59%)
BROMLEY
173 complaints
43 invewstigated
38 upheld (88%)
LAMBETH
309 complaints
63 investigated
58 upheld (92%)
SOUTHWARK
248 complaints
57 investigated
52 upheld (91%)
SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL
281 complaints
113 investigated
104 upheld (92%)
Surrey was among the worst offenders in 2023-2024, with the most upheld complaints, 141, of any local authority in England and Wales.
Early release: Amerdeep Somal, the Local Government Ombudsman
In releasing the data and the updated map, Amerdeep Somal, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said, “We are releasing this data today in response to councils’ requests to receive information earlier to help with their own reporting cycles on the complaints they receive.” Which might strike some as a tad odd, as most authorities, like Croydon, never put this data into the public domain.
“We will continue to publish more detailed national and regional data analysis, alongside our annual review of complaints and associated spreadsheets, in July.”
Read more: Poor councils make bad situations worse says Ombudsman
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