CROYDON IN CRISIS: The council’s most recently appointed planning director was given the role while a company where he was sole director was being wound up in the High Court, an iC investigation has found.
EXCLUSIVE by KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
In the money: ‘Interim Adam’ Wilkinson had nabbed himself a top job at Croydon, while his limited company was being wound up by HMRC
Three-time bankrupted Croydon Council handed one of its most important director-level jobs to “Interim Adam” Wilkinson within weeks of the journeyman civic official having his private consultancy company formally dissolved after HMRC had the business wound-up for failure to pay tax.
Inside Croydon revealed earlier this week that Wilkinson had been appointed to the role as “interim director of planning and strategic planning” at Croydon, following a career consisting of often short-stay, usually very lucrative posts in local government which included pocketing more than £500,000 in a couple of golden handshakes and settlement payments, as he bailed out of previous council jobs.
It is not known what terms Wilkinson has been handed by Katherine Kerswell and Jason Perry, the dynamic duo running Fisher’s Folly. We have asked Croydon Council. They’ve refused to answer.
But it would not be unreasonable to assume that Wilkinson has been given similar generous terms to those he has enjoyed when working in similar jobs at other councils, with fees, travel and accommodation expenses and VAT totalling around £1,000 per day, even for part-time roles. All paid for by our cash-strapped council out of taxpapers’ money.
At Southampton City Council, where Wilkinson worked between 2022 and early 2024 as “executive director – place”, according to official returns his “role was undertaken… via an external company” and his payment for the 12-month period 2022-2023 was £242,146. Excluding VAT.
Not that Interim Adam’s high rate of pay is of any concern to Tory Mayor Jason Perry’s loyal foot soldiers on the council.
“If the council wants good people, it has to pay the market rate,” Alasdair Stewart, the Conservative councillor for Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown, told one of his residents in response to the Inside Croydon article earlier this week.
“You would be very unhappy if we had useless council officers in post, and so I make no apologies for the council paying the appropriate market rates to attract candidates with the skills and experience we need.”
Unquestioning: Cllr Alasdair Stewart, deputy chair of scrutiny
A real concern for residents here is that Stewart is supposedly the deputy chair of the council’s scrutiny committee. It would be hard to see how he might properly scrutinise the decision to hire Wilkinson given his embedded, unquestioning attitude.
Especially as it has also been suggested that Wilkinson may not even have the necessary qualifications for the job of “director of planning and strategic planning”.
Croydon’s 2015 job description for the then post of “director of planning and strategic transport” said, under “Specific Minimum Qualifications and Expertise”, that they wanted someone with “Full membership of the RTPI or qualified by skills and experience to secure full RTPI membership”. That’s the Royal Town Planning Institute.
And could Stewart be trusted to do a proper job in scrutinising the decision to hire or employ Wilkinson as Inside Croydon investigations show that his management consultancy company was shut down by HMRC a few weeks ago?
Our investigation involved conducting a basic check of Interim Adam’s official records at Companies House, which appears to be more than Kerswell, Mayor Perry or the council HR department managed to do.
Companies House records show that Wilkinson was the sole director of a company declared insolvent in April 2025, after His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs stepped in in December 2023.
A winding up order against Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd was then made by the Official Receiver on January 31, 2024, “under the provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986”.
Lewis Business Recovery and Insolvency, “an independent, friendly and professional practice” based in Leeds, was appointed in March last year to do the leg-work, in terms of divvying up Wilkinson’s company’s remaining assets among his creditors. In matters such as this, the taxman always gets first dibs.
By January 2025, matters came to a head with Lewis’s setting out to the High Court the grounds for compulsory liquidation of Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd. “The only asset of the company was an overdrawn director’s loan account in the sum of £27,850”.
Lewis’s wrote to Wilkinson asking for the money. He “advised that he was unable to repay the loan account due to his own personal financial circumstances”.
That seems extraordinary for someone who was being paid nearly a quarter of a million pounds a year when working for Southampton City Council between 2022 and 2024, and who had pocketed more than half a million quid in exit payments from Kent and Derby councils in 2008 and 2015 respectively.
But Lewis’s liquidators effectively concluded it would not be cost-effective to get the money back, and so let Wilkinson off the hook on that point.
Serious matters: if Adam Wilkinson cannot pay his bills and has his company wound-up by HMRC, how can he be right for the job of running Croydon’s planning department?
Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd was formally dissolved on April 13 this year. Its founder’s name does not appear on an official list of disqualified directors. According to the liquidators, “no ethical issues have come to light during the period reported on”. So that’s alright then…
Why does this any of this matter?
Since 2020, our council has gone effectively bankrupt three times, and for the past nine months has been teetering on the edge of a record fourth Section 114 notice.
So hiring someone who ran a company that couldn’t pay off £28,000 to HMRC is hardly a move to inspire confidence in Croydon Council’s due diligence process when picking senior staff, whatever the unapologetic Councillor Stewart seems to think.
Croydon’s track record in recruitment matters already leaves a lot to be desired, after the litany of scandals about Brick by Brick, the Fairfield Halls, Jo Negrini, Colm Lacey and Heather Cheesbrough.
Just how did the council, and the appointments sub-committee, come to decide that Wilkinson is the right person for the job?
Since the end of January, there have been just two meetings of the appointments committee, one mostly concerned with giving Kerswell and her senior staff a pay rise, and another, on May 27, to discuss “Senior staffing matters”.
Recommendation: CEO Katherine Kerswell submitted a report to the appointments committee at the end of May
The meeting was to consider in secret a report from chief executive Katherine Kerswell recommending an appointment. The report was approved by Councillor Jason Cummings, the cabinet member for finance.
The meeting was chaired by Mayor Perry.
Virtually all of its business was done behind closed doors, the public and press excluded from this travesty of democracy.
It is impossible, at this stage and based on the scant detail that the council has reluctantly placed in the public domain, to know whether Adam Wilkinson was asked about his business affairs.
There is nothing unlawful about Wilkinson seeking other work.
But did he volunteer to the council’s recruiters the information that we have found?
Was he even asked about it? If so, how did he pass muster?
Inside Croydon sent a series of urgent questions to Fisher’s Folly, which the council has refused to answer. So we’ve also submitted them under Freedom of Information Act:
- When was this appointment agreed by the appointments committee?
- If this appointment is for a fixed-term contract, how long is the contract?
- Please state if the contract is with an individual or a limited company.
- How many days per week is Mr Wilkinson engaged to work for Croydon Council?
- What is Mr Wilkinson’s daily rate under his contract with Croydon Council (please include whether this includes expenses, travel, accommodation costs, and whether it is inclusive or exclusive of VAT)?
- Please confirm that there was discussion between the council and Mr Wilkinson over his role as a director of an insolvent company before his appointment was approved.
We’ll update our loyal reader if we ever receive any useful, or honest, answers.
Because, of course, this matter’s unlikely to come before the council’s scrutiny committee any time soon, as long as the likes of Tory councillor Stewart take the view that “to recruit the top people, you’ve got to pay top whack”.
And you wonder why Croydon Council has gone bust three times already?
Read more: £1,000 per day ‘Interim Adam’ lands Croydon planning job
Read more: How the council’s planners help developers dodge conditions
Read more: Suspicions over secrecy surrounding Slominski’s return
Read more: Council in cover-up over planning’s husband and wife act
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Sounds like a similar Local Government Senior Management Grifter of the Kerswell-Reid type. Indeed he spent some time at Kent County Council. Any overlap in the brief gravy train visit to this location?
Perhaps Perry and Kerswell-Reid after so many S.114’s are now punchdrunk and believe financial bankruptcy is a positive attribute on the latest chancer’s cv who they have employ.
I expect that now he is being very well paid by Croydon council taxpayers, Mr Wilkinson will do the honourable thing and reimburse His Majesty (and us, his loyal subjects) the money owing.
Anything less would look like treason
Perhaps Cllr Stewart could chip in to a crowdfunder for him?
Paying lots of money doesn’t get you the best people, just the greediest
Nothing wrong in paying a competitive salary to find suitably qualified and experienced talent. The point here is whether Adam Wilkinson has what it takes to lead the Council’s Planning function and guide its decision-making. The evidence so far suggests not
There’s more than just that, though, Arf.
There’s the secrecy surrounding the whole process – with a significant amount of public money involved.
The council has supposedly been under special measures since November last year, due to its dire financial position. That includes no discretionary spending, and, under strict S114 rules, a recruitment freeze. Does that only apply to front-line workers’ jobs, and not for execs sharing a floor with CEO Katherine Kerswell?
There are two competency issues raised here, too. There’s Wilkinson’s competency to do the planning job, even for an interim period.
And there’s the council’s Human Resources department’s competency in question, after putting this candidate forward, possibly after incurring significant fees from headhunters, evidently without proper due diligence.
Most (beleagured) Croydon council tax payers should be fed up with the way in which alternating, self-serving Tory and Labour administrations have stitched up the boough, but the all-conquering Reform party is probably not the answer. Even in their fascist heartlands in Kent, Reform’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency, ie. service/cost-cutting) process seems to be dissolving into chaos, after the resignation of their (national) party chairman yesterday !
Shocking by any standards.
Councillor Stewart often makes ‘no apologies’ on Nextdoor. But like Michael Neal he’s the perfect committee stooge.
Please share some of his juiciest remarks; I got kicked out of Nextdoor
How do they manage to get away with this?
They are all out to fill their own pockets with our money.
They all look like they’ve spent years gorging themselves on pork and gravy, paid for by us. Disgusting.
Around one in three ppl are in arrears paying council tax in Croydon. We are busting our balls and are struggling to pay these greedy fuckers only for them to fuck things up further. What is the point?