EXCLUSIVE: ‘Like the captain of the Titanic, but she hasn’t realised we’ve hit the iceberg’. Council managers were ordered to attend briefing sessions on the chief exec’s pet project, Future Croydon, even though it looks doomed to be junked by Commissioners. By KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
In Fisher’s Folly, for Katherine Kerswell, it is business as usual, with her typically patronising tone in memos to managers, even reminding experienced members of staff to bring a pen to her meetings.
“She’s like the captain of the Titanic, still at the wheel,” one member of council staff said last night. “Except she’s the only person who hasn’t realised yet we’ve hit the iceberg.”
Kerswell has ploughed on with her “Future Croydon” project, despite it being dismissed last week by the government as flawed, too slow in implementing change, and far, far too costly for the cash-strapped council. Having spent £6million on outside consultants last year, Kerswell is clearly determined to get our money’s worth.
Yesterday and today, Croydon’s £204,000 per year chief exec has been spending her valuable time (all paid for by the Council Tax-payers) attending staff briefings – “Managers Touchbase”, she calls them – to update on the progress (or lack thereof) around the fanciful plans for moving to an AI-driven council.
Those consultants who cost Croydon so much last year are still coining it at the borough’s expense this year, with representatives at this week’s briefings.
Staff were advised that, “Representatives from digital and data, CYPE and strategic delivery partner Impower, the Adults Living Independently with Newton, and Oracle will be sharing information about their transformation as well as offering practical demos on exciting products they have developed, such as Power BI dashboards, AI, and resident apps.” Yes: “exciting”!
In an entirely unproductive use of their time, all the council’s middle managers had to attend one of the three sessions, which ran all morning yesterday and today, and all afternoon today, held on the 10th floor of Fisher’s Folly, in what Kerswell has called the “Transformation Space”.
At the top of the agenda for each session, Kerswell had set aside 45minutes for staff to hear her speak. Such joy!
Last week, local government minister Jim McMahon announced that he had lost patience with cash-strapped Croydon and its “runaway” finances under Kerswell. A report by the improvement panel had described Kerswell’s borrowing plans – which would take Croydon’s debts up from £1.4billion to £2.2billion by 2027 – as “impossible” and liable to cause the council’s “collapse”.
Yet here were all of Croydon’s middle management spending half a day this week being briefed on a scheme which is destined for the dustbin of history if government-appointed Commissioners arrive next month, as expected.
“Yes, they are still ploughing ahead with this crap,” according to one council insider after enduring the latest Death-by-PowerPoint presentations.
“The only word to describe it is ‘delusional’,” the council source said. “They’ve got their head up each other’s arses.”
According to our well-placed source, “Kerswell spent the first 45 minutes or so trying to convince staff that if the Commissioners come in they will be as supportive as the current bunch of overlords…”, meaning the improvement panel that was appointed by the previous Conservative government in 2021.
“Kerswell seems to think that they will find out in double quick time that she and Mayor Perry have done all they can and the only possible solution is a debt write-off, and there is no other conceivable solution.
“It’s obvious now that for the last four years or however long she’s been on this particular gravy train, the only plan they have ever had in their echo chamber is a debt write-off, and everything they have done is focused on that one single outcome.”
One of the sessions was called: “Spotlight on ‘Culture-Led Regeneration'”. According to the agenda, this would consist of “Croydon is Ready – Town Centre Vision”, the “Croydon Growth Plan”, and “Creative Health Croydon”.
Perry’s priorities: Jason Perry, Croydon’s £84,000 per year Mayor, thinks property developers will save Croydon
“It was like it was 2016 all over again, with all the same tropes and jam-tomorrow promises that were trotted out when Negrini and Newman were in charge,” said one council source.
And staff – the council’s middle managers, many of who have years of experience – were told what to bring with them to the meeting. “A pen,” they were told.
“When we got there, there was a pen on each of the tables,” an attendee told Inside Croydon. “And a single sheet of paper. Which was lucky really, because there wasn’t anything worthy of note said the whole time we were there.”
Mayor Perry was there, too, to rally the troops, Captain Mainwaring-style.
“Piss-poor”, as Perry is now known among council staff, described himself as being “furious” at last week’s intervention announcement by the government.
“Apparently, this is all being done as a political move to ensure he is ousted at the next election. He seems to have forgotten that he wrote to government admitting he could not balance next year’s budget.
“Funnily enough, being ousted might end up being the only thing he’s managed to do all by himself.”
Perry blathered on for a few minutes about how much interest there had been from property developers in investing in Croydon. “He did struggle to read his own speech,” one attendee told Inside Croydon.
The council source expressed some respect for the council’s finance director, Jane West, “the only one who seemed to be in any realm of realty”, they said.
“She appears to be trying to do her job properly but is being severely hamstrung by the ineptitude of Perry and Kerswell.”
Read more: Panicked Perry admitted to Rayner: I can’t balance the budget
Read more: Kerswell’s ‘Stabilisation Plan’ has failed before it is approved
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
Read more: Borrowing plan would lead to council’s ‘collapse’ says report
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Bring a “pen” along to meetings with the Kerswell? Wouldn’t a printer be better, because HMRC will never accept handwritten P45s, even from a council like Croydon that is bankrupt on so many levels ?!
Surprised they could even stretch to pens, couldn’t get a single bit of stationery the last 5 years I worked there…
Will the in-house IT team be fully responsible for this AI-driven Council or is the plan to contract this with the private sector?
As the Improvement Panel report points out: “Over the last year, a substantial risk has been identified in the increase in provider market costs which are impacting on the Council’s ability to manage within budget.” In other words, one of the reasons why the Council can’t deliver within budget is that the private companies who now provide our services keep putting their prices up.
What happens when the Council is fully dependent on AI services and the private provider says pay a load more or else they pull the plug?
I don’t think making the entire Council an economic hostage to profit-driven IT firms is a sensible way to try to get the budget under control.
Well quite, it’s utter drivel both she and old Piss Poor are way out of their depth, not so much still at the wheel of the Titanic after it’s hit the iceberg but more like calling for more deckchairs to be put out as the ship is in the final stages of sinking!
It’s professional idiocy
KK is now desperately clutching at straws. She thinks that by using AI for many council services in the future she can cut headcount and operating costs.This requires serious funding which is just not available now unless she borrows more thus putting the council into further debt. Utter madness.
Katherine Kerswell and Jason Perry only did what any decent employer would do, which is try and reassure staff. Whether they succeeded is another matter. But they could hardly say, like Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, “we’re doomed”.
Then again, Perry did, six months into his reign, utter the words “it’s going to get worse before it gets better”. Trouble is, with less than eleven months before he’s either re-elected or his political career is finished, we’ve not yet hit rock bottom. The worst is yet to come.
And what are Croydon’s MPs doing about it? Did any of them turn up for the Unite the Union rally at Parliament on Monday, calling for fairer council funding? Councils are in crisis after years of severe cuts to public services and jobs. UK local authorities were £122bn in debt as of 2024, with government lenders charging excessive levels of interest to cash-strapped authorities.
The Local Government Association estimates that councils will face a funding gap of up to £8bn by 2028-29 and 43 per cent of England’s 317 councils are at risk of bankruptcy.
This isn’t just a Croydon problem. We’re all being shafted by austerity. It’s time that policy choice was binned, because after 15 years of trying, we can see it just doesn’t work
“AI council” what an absolute crock of horse crap.
Why not try doing the extremely basic things we pay you to do like dealing with noise complaints, instead of just spending your entire time denying responsibility for anything. You should all be submerged in liquid manure.
There is one major difference with the Titanic. Captain Smith went down with his Ship. Kerswell Reid is taking down the council tax payers of Croydon, but it will be Chief Executives & Senior Officers first as she jumps into the pay off lifeboat leaving the Sinking Ship behind.