TOWN HALL SKETCH: At the first council cabinet meeting for three months, Croydon’s Tory Mayor stamped his feet and screamed in self-pity, and then admitted that he can’t fix the finances.
By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
He stamped his right foot once, twice, then a third time. And then he screamed across the Town Hall Chamber: “No fair!”
Well, alright, it perhaps didn’t happen quite like that, but Perry’s performance at last night’s council cabinet meeting had all the hallmarks of a Violet Elizabeth Bott spoilt brat tantrum. Just none of the charm.
Last night’s was the first meeting of Perry’s council cabinet in three months. Who said that Croydon’s Tory Mayor wasn’t dealing with the council’s financial crisis with sufficient urgency?
Having cancelled a cabinet meeting in May and having refused to hold an emergency meeting of full council to debate the government’s bombshell announcement that it wants to send in Commissioners because Perry has admitted that he is incapable of coping with his “runaway” budgets, last night’s performance in the Town Hall Chamber was all about self-pity.
Poor, poor Jason.
For Perry, as is well-established, is piss-poor.
Poor poor Perry: last night’s cabinet meeting was a session of self-pity for Croydon’s Mayor
Perry, as usual, shuffled through some papers and read from a prepared script. In the past fortnight, it seems, he has discovered a previously unknown concern for the council’s staff (those who he hasn’t made redundant), an aversion to raising Council Tax (after hiking residents’ bills by 27% since 2023) and a complete opposition to service cuts (after closing four libraries, axing a vital youth service and even handing P45s to the borough’s lollipop ladies and men).
Perry and his £204,000 per year chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, had both written to government ministers pleading to be given more time so that they can borrow yet more money for the cash-strapped council. Their letters went off yesterday, the June 25 deadline set by local government minister Jim McMahon a fortnight ago for responses to his Commissioners notice.
The lines to be taken had been carefully agreed and rehearsed. You could tell that from the repeated misuse of the word “decimated” by Perry and members of his cabinet.
The council’s case was backed up by “partners”, according to a typically misleading statement issued from the propaganda bunker at Fisher’s Folly.
“A range of local partners have submitted letters supporting the council’s position,” the council said, without naming who these partners are. That’s probably because no one will have heard of them. There are just three, which is not much of a “range” at all.
The Tory Mayor who was elected on a promise to “fix the finances”, it now turns out, couldn’t possibly ever fix Croydon’s finances. So it was unfair to expect him to do so without a major intervention from central government. It’s a risky argument to pursue, when central government is considering a major intervention.
“We have repeatedly pressed the government on the need for a sustainable solution to this historic debt burden, rather than the sticking plaster of capitalisation directions – which are payday loans adding to our borrowing costs,” Perry said.
“Yet the government failed to include a solution for Croydon in their spending review, whilst we understand that other authorities have been granted a debt write-off.”
What more could we do?: the cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, followed Perry and Kerswell’s script
Perry understands wrongly (not for the first time). A debt write-off has been considered for basket case Woking council, but nothing granted.
But still, poor, poor Jason.
Perry also claimed that sending in Commissioners would be the first time the government “has removed power from elected representatives where there has been no identified failure in governance”.
Yet there remains a failure in governance, as the council’s chair of scrutiny highlighted when, at last, Mayor Perry let someone get a word in during his little self-pity session.
Leila Ben-Hassel is the Labour councillor who chairs the scrutiny committee. It was one of the improvements the council agreed following the 2020 financial collapse that the scrutiny committee should be chaired by an opposition councillor. Only it is not much of an improvement if the council meets so rarely that it becomes impossible to scrutinise its decisions. Or if the scrutiny committee’s recommendations are pretty much ignored.
Councillor Ben-Hassel made this point, bemoaning the late delivery of Perry and Kerswell’s “Stabilisation Plan”, reducing her committee and sub-committees opportunity to review it, and mentioning that, without a cabinet meeting since March, the scrutiny committee had also been denied the opportunity to provide its feedback. So much like the unscrutinised bad old days under Tony Newman, really.
What Ben-Hassel and her cross-party committee found when they looked at the Stabilisation Plan was not entirely encouraging. The plan, she said, “is still in high-level form and does not provide details on how it would be fully resourced”.
And there was worse to come. “Considering there are only nine months left in the [financial] year, as a committee we had significant concerns about the council’s capacity and ability to deliver the accelerated actions at the pace required to realise the milestones and 2025–2026 savings targets set out in the Stabilisation Plan,” Ben-Hassel said. And if the Stabilisation Plan can’t work, then all of Perry and Kerswell’s other pipedreams – based on the recommendations of costly consultants – are also at risk.
When Ben-Hassel concluded her report, Perry brushed it aside without any comment beyond saying he’d deal with it “in due course”. So exactly like the unscrutinised bad old days under Tony Newman.
Perry had more important things to move on to. He wanted to get back to the self-pity.
He brought in Jason Cummings, his cabinet member for finance, who was suitably sympathetic. He, too, misused “decimation”.
According to Cummings, the council had done all it could do. “To do more would be reckless,” said Cummings, a cabinet member in a council which has recently added £27million more cuts to its previously planned £23million cuts for this financial year. Which, apparently, isn’t reckless at all.
Conservative councillor Cummings described how Croydon had been abandoned. “We had nothing from the previous government and we’ve had nothing from this one, either.” The most recent capitalisation direction – loan – was £136million, agreed by the government in March.
‘You know exactly how that debt came about’: how Croydon’s debt has accrued over the past 20 years, including when Perry was a Tory cabinet member up to 2014
Cummings made a plea on behalf of the residents, whose services he has helped to, well, decimate, and whose Council Tax he has been instrumental in hiking. “How many services must they lose? How much more tax must they pay?” Into the fourth year of a failed Perry administration might be a little late for such regrets to be taken as sincere.
Perry brought in Kerswell, almost as an additional member of his cabinet, rather than as a member of the council staff he is supposed to oversee. Although three of Kerswell’s six-figure salaried exec directors had failed to show up for the Town Hall meeting, like the hockey mistress at a private school for gals, she assured the Mayor and all listening that the letter she had sent to minister McMahon had been endorsed by her whole team.
“It’s owned by all of us,” said Kerswell, never one to take responsibility for her own incompetence when she can pass the buck to others.
There now came a brief interlude in this session of wallowing in self-pity.
Stuart King, the Labour opposition leader, was invited by Perry to say a few words.
Never taking responsibility: council CEO Katherine Kerswell has yet to resign
King reminded Perry that in July 2023 and now in June 2025, his council had been subject to public reproach for failing to deliver on its Best Value Duty. Perry could be seen to flinch. He gazed at King with narrowed eyes.
King continued. He had not seen the final figures for last year’s overspend yet. That was salt subbed firmly into the wound.
King criticised Perry’s response to government as “publicly confrontational and, frankly, angry”, saying that he felt that this “damaged prospects of a deal”.
This was insufficiently pitying for Perry’s liking, who dismissed it as “commentary”.
Of Croydon’s £1.4billion pile of debt, “You know exactly how that debt came about,” said Perry, who had helped to leave £800million debt on the council’s books when he was part of former council leader Mike Fisher’s administration. So Perry ought to know very well, too.
Perry contradicted King, saying he had been conciliatory. “I’ve worked nicely with two governments,” he claimed.
“I’d happily work with an envoy, or envoys,” Perry said. Just not a Commissioner, or Commissioners.
“Sending in Commissioners is the wrong conclusion,” Perry said.
“At the end of the day, fixing the finances of this council is beyond total local ability here. It needs that support from outside.”
Which, after more than three years of his failed administration, sounds like a reasonable argument for sending in Commissioners.
Poor, poor Jason.
Read more: ‘Solution to restoring sustainability lies outside our control’
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’
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