KERSWELL’S CHAOTIC COUNCIL: A journeyman council director notorious for charging fees of £1,000 per day and taking massive pay-offs has quit as Croydon’s head of planning, following an investigation by this website. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
On his way out: Adam Wilkinson lasted barely a fortnight working for Croydon Council
Adam Wilkinson, the journeyman civic official described as an “interim specialist” who took up the role as Croydon’s “interim director of planning and strategic planning” at the end of May, yesterday resigned his position.
Wilkinson’s resignation follows Inside Croydon’s report which revealed that he was recruited by Croydon Council at around the same time that his private consultancy company was being formally dissolved as a consequence of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs having the business wound-up for its failure to pay tax, owing tens of thousands of pounds.
According to the council’s published records and Freedom of Information responses, Wilkinson had been working for Croydon Council only since the end of May.
His appointment had been recommended to the cash-strapped council’s appointments committee by council chief executive Katherine Kerswell (£204,000 per year) and approved by Mayor Jason Perry (£84,000 per year).
Under Kerswell and Mayor Perry, the council has become increasingly secretive, anti-democratic, and some even say underhanded. Croydon Council has made no announcement about Wilkinson’s abrupt departure, not even informing staff and elected councillors internally.
“Why am I not surprised that I find this out from Inside Croydon, about very important council business that I should be told direct?” one exasperated Katharine Street source said last night.
Inside Croydon had already reported how Wilkinson had enjoyed 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 generous settlement payments as he bailed out of other council jobs.
Records show that in his previous jobs, Wilkinson was often paid fees, travel and accommodation expenses and VAT totalling around £1,000 per day, even for part-time roles.
Due diligence: Adam Wilkinson’s often controversial career was not difficult to track down. This was The Times from 10 years ago
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”.
His payment for the 12-month period 2022-2023 was £242,146. Excluding VAT.
Then there were the golden handshakes Wilkinson managed to receive along the way.
In 2008, Wilkinson received a £365,000 pay-off from Kent County Council after working there for just a year.
In 2015, Wilkinson got £140,000 as part of a voluntary redundancy package from Derby City Council.
It is not yet known what terms were agreed over Wilkinson’s abrupt departure from his Croydon job. The council’s propaganda bunker never even got round to announcing his arrival. But Croydon Council now has even more questions to answer over Wilkinson’s brief stay as head of its notoriously badly managed planning department.
Wilkinson was taken on as a temporary replacement for Heather Cheesbrough.
Cheesbrough was a Jo Negrini appointee who during her time in charge of Croydon’s planning department misled over her own qualifications (or lack of them) and covered up for one of her senior planners, who failed to declare that he was married to the director of a local property developer.
Gone: former council planning chief Heather Cheesbrough
After almost a decade working in Fisher’s Folly, Cheesbrough left Croydon in April, apparently seeking a “career break”.
The council will have had at least three months’ notice of Cheesbrough’s departure, but according to a senior source on Katharine Street, their recruitment of a permanent replacement has been compromised because the best potential candidates are already in jobs, and often with six-month notice periods. “And you need leadership in the interim,” the source said.
If Wilkinson, who lacked the qualifications usually required for a senior planning appointment, was the best that Kerswell and Perry could come up with, then this raises serious concerns over the council’s Human Resources department and their use of executive head hunters, and the apparent absence of any proper due diligence over their selected candidate’s background.
The hiatus created by this latest council recruitment omnishambles comes at a turbulent time for local authority planning departments, and Croydon’s in particular.
As well as the government and London Mayor proposing wholesale changes to the planning system, rolling back of the Green Belt, and with the latest Westfield planning application for Croydon town centre expected to be submitted some time later this year, the currently leader-less planning department is also facing a hearing later this year over its draft Croydon Plan.
Wilkinson’s hurried exit will be a cause of embarrassment for Mayor Perry’s loyal Tory councillors, who had defended the appointment of Interim Adam potentially on £1,000 per day, saying that the council was “paying the appropriate market rates to attract candidates with the skills and experience we need”.
The trouble was, Wilkinson also had the kind of experience that would not usually be tolerated among staff at a public body.
Inside Croydon’s investigation involved conducting a basic check of Interim Adam’s official records at Companies House, which show that Wilkinson was the sole director of a company declared insolvent in April 2025, after HMRC 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”.
Serious matters: Adam Wilkinson could not pay his tax bills and had his company wound up by HMRC
By January 2025, matters came to a head with Leeds-based Lewis Business Recovery and Insolvency 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”.
Lewises 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”. Lewises liquidators effectively concluded it would not be cost-effective to get the money back, and so let Wilkinson off the hook.
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”.
Wilkinson had done nothing wrong in seeking alternative employment. But the decision-making process of the organisation that hired him, Croydon Council, probably does need careful scrutiny.
Since the end of January, there have been just two meetings of the appointments committee, the most recent, on May 27, to discuss “Senior staffing matters”.
Another disaster: council CEO Katherine Kerswell had not told councillors of Wilkinson’s sudden resignation
The meeting was to consider in secret a report from chief executive 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, based on the scant detail that the council has reluctantly placed in the public domain, to know whether Adam Wilkinson was ever asked about his business affairs when interviewed for the Croydon position. It may be that, after due reflection following Inside Croydon’s report, Wilkinson felt he needed to resign the Croydon job, perhaps for failing to declare the collapse of his business and the unpaid tax.
Even in the face of this latest failure of Kerswell and Perry’s council, some loyalist councillors were last night briefing about “recent progress” at Croydon’s planning department.
“All politicial parties in Croydon want to see our town centre regenerated and our planning team working effectively,” one council source told Inside Croydon.
“I look forward to the council appointing a permanent replacement to drive these priorities forward.”
They suggested that the council might have to seek a replacement interim director, while they await a permanent candidate to become available.
In the meantime, the questions which Inside Croydon sent to Croydon Council about Wilkinson’s recruitment and terms of employment all remain stubbornly unanswered.
Though following the resignation of their chosen candidate after just a couple of weeks in post, Katherine Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry have further questions to answer after their latest, and costly, piece of bungled administration.
Read more: Interim Adam gets council job as HMRC winds up his company
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: Council in cover-up over planning’s husband and wife act
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You couldn’t make it up. Replacing a failed CEO who was paid off over 400k with a CEO who was paid off over 400k after 16 months was bad enough. Then replacing delusional failed Director of Planning Heather Cheesbrough with another failed local government director who couldn’t even plan to pay his taxes – what a joke. Croydon has suffered due to its incompetent unethical and dishonest planning directors and managers. The last thing it needed was Wilkinson. Kerswell must go.
I disagree.
A fish rots from the head down. Scapegoating Katherine Kerswell for this latest fiasco lets the root cause of them off the hook. That’s Mayor Jason Perry. He’s been a terrible Mayor. He runs the borough like he runs his business, with him at the helm taking all the decisions (when he can be bothered to show up).
His lack of trust and refusal to delegate are glaringly obvious. His Cabinet Members are paid well to do nothing but agree with him.
The full-time job of running this Council demands a full-time job-holder, not someone like Perry who swans in for the occasional meeting or photo opportunity. He has got to go, because he is lazy, incompetent and narcissistic.
Croydon Conservatives will try to sweep this under the carpet. That or lie about it. It’s now down to the real opposition, our two Green councillors and one LibDem, to press the Tories on this matter, because Labour are too dim. That or complicit. There’s been nothing but silence so far from them, despite Labour leader Stuart King and his colleagues Enid Mollyneaux and Callton Young forming half of the Appointments & Disciplinary Committee
To be fair, Arfur, I think there would be few complaints around here if Perry and Kerswell were both to go next year!
I disagree.
You’re focusing on the small fry while the great white shark is cruising up behind you… Cue Jaws theme.
There appears to be a conspiracy of silence between elected representatives and senior council staff, going back years. Councillors won’t dare publicly criticise the council CEO and execs, until it is much too late. Give me one example of a councillor, red or blue, ever standing up to Negrini. Or, for all the grumbles in private, criticising Kerswell.
The council’s cadre of six-figure salaried execs allow the petty politicians to collect their allowances, dress up in silly costumes and spend far too much time delivering party leaflets no one ever reads, safe in the knowledge that they and their gold-plated public pensions are secure, regardless of how bad a job they do.
Council meetings are devoted to pointless political tit for tat, while Kerswell and her professional lackeys (TWO assistant CEOs??!! For what??!!) sit in the shadows, their performance beyond criticism.
These are the people who make the decisions. These are the people whose management drives frontline staff to despair.
These are the people who believe they do not have to answer to anyone.
It’s Katherine Kerswell who is up for a gong at the Local Government Chronicle Awards tomorrow night, not our part-time, piss-poor Mayor Perry.
If her performance is so bad, why doesn’t Perry do something about it? It’s his job to lead the Council and he is her boss
Because Perry really isn’t in charge.
Watch any of the videos of committee meetings where Perry is chair – on the Penn Report, or the decision on pursuing Negrini’s pay-off are good examples – and you’ll see who is really running the meeting: Kerswell.
Besides, he would shit himself if he really took executive control of the council. We’re paying £204,000 per year (plus the cost of Kerswell’s two assistant CEOs; so the thick end of half-a-mil a year) so that Perry can stay part-time pretending to be in charge.
But in the constitutional change of having an executive mayor, there should be no need for a CEO.
Councillors have a Monitoring officer at the Council who sees that they abide by the code of conduct and make decisions lawfully and fairly.
Councillors on committees monitor and review the council’s performance and decision-making process in order to ensure it is accountable to the public.
Information is provided to the committees by council officers.
This takes very little imagination to realise those implcations
Kerswell is the CEO. She is not being scapegoated. She is accountable.
Excellent work Steve by you and your team in exposing this fiasco.
I thank you. And my team (they know who they are) thank you.
Well done Inside Croydon. Yet again you are the only entity providing effective scrutiny of Croydon Council. The old boys and girls club that occupy the senior echelons of Local Government have been shown up for the grifters they are again.
So much for an elected Mayor changing how the Council works.
But with the hapless clowns at Croydon out-of-control with the public’s purse-strings, how much did interim Adam get paid for his few days’ “work” at Croydon Council?
How much does he owe HMRC?
With the council’s inexplicably generous payments to its self-serving staff, a golden hello for joining, a golden handshake pay-off for leaving, and only a few days of £1,000 per day, does that still provide him with enough money to pay off HMRC and try to get his company reinstated int time for him to use it on his next victims, a local authority without an Inside Croydon to expose him as a fraud so quickly?!
Kerswell and Piss-Poor Perry must go!
We’re fortunate to have Inside Croydon investigating and reporting on these things. We don’t hear of them through the mainstream local press (such as it is) or the hapless Labour “opposition” on the Council…still less from the Council’s propaganda bunker.
What a fiasco, Cllr Alasdair Stewart claimed that the senior management at the council are all first class. This is further proof that he is either deluded or a liar. How much was Wilkinson paid for doing sweet f all for a couple of weeks? Probably more than a lollipop lady gets in a year.
Yes the incompetent Stewart again participating in a process of recruitment with costs that probably has far exceeded the £50,000 that was apparently “saved” in removing the lollipop service. No doubt they will now waste yet more tens of thousands on a weekly basis as Kerswell Reid resorts to recruitng an Agency appointment to avoid the consequences of another fiasco she has inflicted upon Croydon. It is really time for her to go without any compensation package.
I think it’s more likely that he is now a part of the club. They’re nice to him, they make him feel good and happy about himself, so why would he dare speak about them in a negative light? I don’t wish to call this corruption, but if one has an ego the size of Mount Rushmore and enjoys the connections, why would one want to speak badly about the bureaucrats who stroke their ego? Why vote any differently?
Fat pigs at the trough. Jail them all.
This is what we might start to call the Negrini Dilemma.
On what charge?
Incompetence is not a crime. Even for repeat offenders.
“Incompetence” may not be a criminal offence, but taking large chunks of public money for doing nothing, or for doing something badly, is surely fraud, with the Appointments Committee as accessories to the crime?
If it hasn’t yet been tested as a case, perhaps Croydon can try to set a precedent here ?!
He will just move on to another council that doesn’t have the benefit of something like Inside Croydon to keep them in check.
How Wilkinson has the brass neck to apply for council jobs beggars belief. Well done again Inside Croydon for detailed forensic analysis on his background which is something Kerswell and Perry should have done before his appointment.
How bad do things have to get before something is done? It’s left to Inside Croydon to hold Kerswell and Perry to account. We’ve all known for some time – not least because of the efforts of IC – that something is very, very, wrong in the Planning Department.
The Penn Report highlighted ‘Collective Corporate Blindness’ and Heather Cheesbrough was a not insignificant contributor to that culture.
Post-Penn report, she continued to gaslight residents with claims that her team operated with integrity when time and time again IC proved that Nicola Townsend and Ross Gentry had submitted deceptive planning reports, withheld documents and mislead Planning Committees.
Why, given that context, would Kerswell and Perry hire someone with such an obviously poor track record?
Kerswell has – not for the first time – shown that she does not have the judgement or capability to be a CEO so there must be some way that her underperformance can be addressed. Perry will be voted out in due course but she cannot be allowed to continue in post. While this farce plays out and we pay for incompetents and their incompetence, people across the borough are suffering.
It has to stop.
Well done Inside Croydon Team.
I’m minded of what Chris Philp, second only to Nostradamus in terms of his powers of prediction said ahead of the referendum back in 2021.
“A Democratically Elected Executive Mayor… would be more accountable to residents, would cost no more because it replaces the existing ‘leader’, and could protect family homes across all of Croydon”.
There again, this is the guy who felt Liz Truss was a bit of alright…