CROYDON IN CRISIS: Residents are stung twice for recruitment costs of head of planning, at a crucial time for Westfield development and review of London and Local Plans. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Short-stay: even by Adam Wilkinson’s usual standards, his work at Croydon Council was very brief
Adam Wilkinson was handed the position as Croydon’s top planning official by Katherine Kerswell, the council’s chief exec, without the appointment ever being discussed by the Town Hall’s cross-party appointments commission.
That’s according to an official response to a Freedom of Information request submitted to Croydon Council by this website.
Wilkinson has been described as an “interim specialist”, who often charged up to £1,000 per day for working in temporary top jobs at local authorities around the country.
Wilkinson resigned his cushty number as “interim director of planning and strategic planning” at Fisher’s Folly on the very next business day after Inside Croydon had exposed his chequered CV, including that he was recruited by Croydon Council just as his private consultancy company was being wound up by HMRC for failure to pay tax, owing tens of thousands of pounds.
Croydon Council has confirmed that there was never any discussion held with Wilkinson over HMRC’s action to wind up his firm, Adam Wilkinson Consultancy Ltd.
Flawed judgement (again): council CEO Katherine Kerswell
Nor was Wilkinson’s period when employed in the senior management of Rotherham Council raised by Croydon officials when recruiting him. Wilkinson had been at Rotherham at the time of that council’s cover-ups of the “grooming gangs” scandal.
All in all, Wilkinson’s appointment in Croydon appeared to have been made without much, if any, due diligence or checks being conducted by the council, or their no doubt very well paid recruitment agency.
Public records, including council accounts and newspaper reports, show that in his previous jobs, Wilkinson was often paid fees, travel and accommodation expenses, plus VAT, totalling around £1,000 per day, even for part-time roles.
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”. Records show he was paid a total over the two years of £476,604, ex VAT.
Eye eye: journalists have conducted better scrutiny of council appointments than the £204,000 CEO
And then there were the generous “golden handshakes” Wilkinson has received during the course of his career.
Inside Croydon’s reporting on Wilkinson’s ill-considered appointment has since been taken up by Private Eye magazine’s Rotten Boroughs column.
The abortive appointment of Wilkinson means that Council Tax-payers will now have to incur significant additional recruitment costs, as Kerswell’s chaotic council blunders around seeking to find a replacement for Heather Cheesborough, despite having had notice of her departure from the planning top job at the start of 2025.
There was, in any case, already doubts about whether Wilkinson was even properly qualified for such a specialist planning role. This, in turn, raises more questions over the competency of the council’s HR department and its boss, Dean Shoesmith, and its use of recruitment agencies.
It all means that Croydon remains without a head of department at a time of important changes to the planning system, with both the London Plan and the Local Plan under review, as well as Green Belt status facing possible big changes.
Add to that the continuing negotiations with property developers Westfield over the redevelopment of the town centre, and Kerswell’s latest costly error could yet prove to have catastrophic consequences for the borough.
Croydon Council refused to provide answers to questions of legitimate public interest about how much tax-payers’ cash was to be paid to Wilkinson.
“Further information relating to an individual’s contract of employment cannot be shared due to confidentiality,” the council said. Which, of course, is not true when dealing with senior appointees being paid potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money.
But then, Croydon Council has a well-deserved and on-going reputation for cover-ups of its poor governance and costly mistakes.
But the council did admit that Wilkinson was hired by Kerswell, with the approval of Tory Mayor Jason Perry, under “delegated powers”, which by-pass the appointments committee. Much as Negrini and Newman by-passed scrutiny and accountability at the Town Hall in the bad old days before the council’s first financial crash.
Never raised: Kerswell and the council never discussed this winding-up order with Wilkinson, and only found out about it after it was reported by Inside Croydon
So far this year, under Perry and his £204,000 per year CEO Kerswell, the appointments committee has met only three times, mostly in secret session.
In its FoI response, Croydon Council said that Wilkinson was hired on a full-time, six-month fixed-term contract.
The appointment “was made under the scheme of delegation, in accordance with the council’s constitution, in which the chief executive can appoint a chief officer on an interim or fixed-term contract of up to two years”.
This, according to the council, meant that “a full appointments and disciplinary committee was therefore not required”, but that “a full interview selection process took place which included meetings with politicians who endorsed the appointment”.
But as to matters involving HMRC and Rotherham Council, “there were no discussions between the council and Mr Wilkinson”.
And the council said: “All necessary pre-appointment reference checks via the recruiting agency were undertaken. There were no issues arising from the pre-appointment references and Mr Wilkinson did not make any declarations regarding these matters.” Buck duly passed for the council’s own recruitment omnishambles.
This sorry episode can only add further weight to the serious concerns about “aspects of leadership” that have been raised by a government minister over the running of Croydon Council, and the repeatedly flawed judgement of Kerswell, the CEO who took time out in the course of a busy day to issue orders to block access to Inside Croydon on staff computers in Fisher’s Folly.
Read more: Crisis for Perry as Interim Adam resigns council planning job
Read more: Mayor coming under pressure to sack council CEO Kerswell
Read more: CEO Kerswell ordered block on staff accessing Inside Croydon
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You couldn’t make it up!
Perry scores again! (Assist, Kerswell)
No, this is all down to Kerswell, as so many other matters have been.
The council execs like nothing better than to have red v blue rows in the Town Hall Chamber, while they carry on running things as they see fit.
Perry, like Newman and Fisher before him, will tolerate no criticism of their chief exec and directors. Nathan Elvery got promoted to CEO after he’d been subject to at least two internal investigations for procurement dodgy deals.
Yet it is these very people that the borough’s elected representatives are supposed to scrutinise and control.
If, as you suggest, part-time Perry can’t keep his CEO in order and simply agrees to whatever she tells him, he shouldn’t be Executive Mayor. Given his penchant for publicity, he’d be much better as a Ceremonial one, poncing about being photographed in stupid clothes (not much change there)
Isn’t one of the essential requirements of a ceremonial, civic mayor that they must not scare animals and small children?
How soon can the Government Commissioner(s) start and replace this latest bunch of buffoons taking Croydon Council for a ride?
Perry has trusted Kerswell Reid, and she has made him look a fool. He trusted Jo Negrini, too, approving her recruitment into a position of power, but he managed to miss the bullet for that one.
What goes around finally comes around.
2 years?
Interim appointments should only be for a matter of months unless it’s for a specific longer term project.
There’s an “interim” whose been working in the Croydon digital department since 2020.
Anyone fancy buying some “smart” bus shelters?
No suprise there. Kerswell did nothing about the disastrous planning team leaving Heather Cheesbrough hanging on until the bitter end. Ross ‘Dodgy’ Gentry still clings on. Six-figured Dean Shoesmith never makes more than a passing reference to residents in his ‘strategy’ documents. Instead he’s all about ‘healing’ the staff. Perhaps he can heal residents every month when we have to pay our Council Tax.