CROYDON IN CRISIS: The council has made no announcement about who has taken over the borough’s top planning job, but this website has discovered that Heather Cheesbrough’s stand-in replacement is an ‘interim specialist’ who has pocketed more than £500,000 in severance deals from other local authorities. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Yorkshire grit: Adam Wilkinson has done the rounds of local authorities – sometimes working for two at the same time
It has been two months since Heather Cheesbrough left her £130,000 per year job as Croydon Council’s “director of planning and sustainable regeneration”.
Yet there has been no official announcement, no press release nor any photo op with gurning Mayor Jason Perry welcoming her replacement.
There may be good reason for that.
Inside Croydon has conducted a preliminary check on the career record of Adam Wilkinson and discovered a litany of often short-stay, usually very lucrative posts in local government where Croydon’s recently appointed “interim director of planning and strategic planning” has pocketed more than £500,000 in golden handshakes and settlement payments, in addition to his very generous wages and pension pot.
As an “interim”, it could well be that Wilkinson is only working as the most senior official in Croydon’s planning department for a brief period, until a permanent successor for Cheesbrough can be found (though the council’s HR department will have had three month’s notice of the exec’s departure to identify the right candidate).
And as a stand-in, Wilkinson could be paid on terms at the cash-strapped council that include fees of close to £1,000 per day. It is, after all, the kind of deal that Wilkinson has secured for himself in previous positions.
It is not known whether all of Wilkinson’s recent employment history was included in his CV or job application when he was being hired by Croydon, though his appointment is likely to have been approved by both Mayor Perry and his chief exec, Katherine Kerswell.
A decade ago, The Times reported how Wilkinson was “a Northern Powerhouse chief on £1,000 a day”, and that he had previously received two payouts worth a total of £500,000 in what The Thunderer described as a “’revolving door’ scandal”.
“‘Revolving door’ scandal”: how The Times reported on Wilkinson’s special arrangements with councils 10 years ago
Then, Wilkinson was working three days a week as interim chief executive of the North East Combined Authority. He was costing the taxpayer the equivalent of an annual salary of £248,000.
Wilkinson had just been paid £140,000 as part of a voluntary redundancy package from Derby City Council in January 2015.
This followed a £365,000 pay-off Wilkinson received from Kent County Council in 2008, after working there for just a year.
That’s the same Kent County Council that would be heavily criticised again after making a £420,000 exit payment in December 2011 to its departing managing director, who had been in post just 16 months. The name of the civic bureaucrat trousering such a generous “golden handshake”? It was, of course, Katherine Kerswell…
At Kent CC, Wilkinson worked as director of environment and regeneration, but terminated his £70,000-a-year job after just 12 months, having belatedly discovered that commuting weekly from his family home in Yorkshire to the council offices in Maidstone “wasn’t working out”.
He was reported as saying at that time: “I was living in Maidstone during the week and going back to West Yorkshire at the weekend. It was tiring and stressful.”
Might Wilkinson be shuttling between West Yorkshire and south London while being paid by Croydon Council?
When Wilkinson rolled up at the North East Combined Authority, he was not working as a member of staff but was paid through a limited company — what The Times report described as “a tax-efficient arrangement”. They meant tax-efficient for Wilkinson, not for the tax-payer.
Then, Wilkinson was paid £825 a day, plus an agency fee of 16%, and was having his accommodation and travel paid for, too. “He will remain in post for six months to nine months until a permanent chief can be hired by the authority,” The Times reported in 2015.
Looks familiar: Adam Wilkinson is not the only senior council staffer to have taken a big pay-out from Kent
Might Wilkinson be operating a similarly “tax-efficient” scheme while working for Croydon Council?
Before he found such lucrative work at the NECA, in 2014, Wilkinson had landed a three-year contract extension as CEO at Derby City Council.
He quit that job in January 2015 (“voluntary redundancy”), helped on his way with £100,000 “compensation”, plus three months’ pay.
It was the “right time to look for a new challenge, perhaps in a different sector”, Wilkinson was quoted as saying by his erstwhile employers then.
But BBC Radio Derby’s council correspondent described the rapid exit as “not a surprise”.
“I’ve been told by multiple sources at the council that he has been looking for alternative employment,” the BBC reporter said. “It’s been something of an open secret within the Council House.” He suggested that Wilkinson’s relations with the council’s elected leadership “were uncomfortable”.
After Kent, Derby and the North East, by July 2017 Wilkinson had moved on to Northern Ireland. And south-east London. At the same time.
Even by Wilkinson’s standards for flitting between jobs, what he pulled off now was surprising, as he was pocketing generous wage packages from two local authorities at the same time.
Newry, Mourne and Down Council had appointed Wilkinson as their interim director for regulatory and technical services, working three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, according to the Newry Reporter) and being paid “in the region of £70,000 at a rate of £834 plus VAT per day plus daily receipted expenses up to a maximum of £165 per day”. So another “tax-efficient” Wilkinson arrangement at public expense.
Yet at the same time, Wilkinson was also the interim managing director of BexleyCo, Bexley’s development company. Yes, even Tory-run London boroughs were setting up their own versions of Brick by Brick.
The Bexley Times reported that Wilkinson would be on £145,000 per year as managing director for a three-to-four-day week (on top of his three days in Newry… do the math). “I feel honoured to have been offered the opportunity to fulfil the role as BexleyCo’s first managing director and I look forward to starting on July 3,” Wilkinson was reported as saying in a council press release.
Wilkinson’s latest civic love-in didn’t last very long. According to Companies House records, Wilkinson – who described himself as a “management consultant” – was appointed as a director of BexleyCo on June 28 2017 but had resigned by October 13 that year.
By January 2018, Wilkinson had moved on to Slough, the town that Betjeman wanted bombed and where Ricky Gervais set up his office.
Wilkinson had nabbed himself another interim appointment, as chief exec of Slough Borough Council. But this time, Wilkinson quit without any compensation package. In fact, Wilkinson quit the day before he was due to start in the role. “Adam has withdrawn for personal reasons,” Slough’s council leader informed a town hall meeting.
Jobs as interim chief executive at Cornwall and Isle of Scilly “leadership board” and as “director of economy and growth” at Cornwall County Council were to follow, while Wilkinson also had a spell as “interim commercial director” at Manchester City Council.
More recently, Inside Croydon has found reports of Wilkinson jumping on the council gravy train in Southampton, where from April 2022 he was working as “executive director – place”. According to the city council’s annual returns, the “role was undertaken by Adam Wilkinson via an external company”. Payment for the 12-month period 2022-2023 was a breathtaking £242,146, excluding VAT.
Local newspaper reports of his appointment deployed massive understatement when they described Wilkinson as “an interim specialist”.
His time in Southampton appears to have concluded in early 2024, without any need of a pay-off, freeing up 61-year-old Wilkinson for his big opportunity in Croydon.
It’s uncertain how long “Interim Adam” will be working at Fisher’s Folly, or whether he might be working remotely from West Yorkshire, or quite how much he is to be paid. All questions that have been put to Croydon Council.
But it is rather odd that Wilkinson has not had one of those obligatory photo ops with Mayor Jason Perry welcoming him to Croydon Council. Whatever have they got to hide?
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