CROYDON IN CRISIS: LibDems’ election candidate has examined expenditure accounts and confirms that spending on temporary staff has risen to £53m per year under Tory Mayor. By STEVEN DOWNES
Poll position: Richard Howard looking to be the LibDems’ candidate for Croydon Mayor
Richard Howard, the Liberal Democrat candidate standing for Croydon Mayor next year, has accused his Tory opponent, Jason Perry, of losing control of spending at the council.
Responding to Inside Croydon’s exclusive report published yesterday that exposed the soaring levels of spending on agency staff – including payments of £725 per hour to one “transformation” consultant – Howard said, “Jason Perry has increased your Council Tax by 27% but has spent that money on consultants and expensive agency staff, all the while slashing council services.
“What are these people doing for their superstar wages? Wait for it… saving the council money!”
Howard has conducted his own analysis of publicly available data and confirms that Croydon’s spending on agency workers has almost quadrupled since Perry was elected Croydon Mayor in 2022. “We are now paying more in agency fees than interest on the debt – over £53million in financial year 2024-2025,” Howard said.
The council is required to disclose all expenditure of more than £500 under the local government transparency code. But Howard accuses the council under Mayor Perry and his £204,000 per year chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, of mounting a multi-million-pound cover-up of their agency staff spend.
“The council is trying to disguise these agency staff costs by labelling them as ‘Project Funding Control’,” Howard said.
Howard has discovered that a huge volume of these “Project Funding Control” payments are in fact being made to Adecco, the agency which has been contracted with Croydon since 2016.
“This level of agency staff spending simply cannot be justified and the council knows it,” Howard said.
“That’s why they are trying to hide this spending from the public. Both the government improvement panel and the council’s scrutiny committee have serious questions to answer as to why they didn’t pick this up when all ‘discretionary spending’ was supposedly frozen.
“Croydon Council has a huge issue with the levels of debt and the interest paid to service this. However, just as problematic is the culture of unaccountability and lack of scrutiny on spending that had developed and flourished under both Labour and Conservative administrations.
“This culture needs to change, but that can only happen under the leadership of someone who truly understands the finances and can look through the smoke and mirrors used to disguise the true nature of spending at the council,” Howard said in a social media post.
Lost control: Mayor Jason Perry
“Conservative Mayor Jason Perry has completely lost control of spending at Croydon Council.
“It beggars belief and this culture of wasteful spending has to stop.
“The scrutiny and overview committee has been blind to this for years because the members (all Labour or Conservative councillors) are either allied to the Mayor, or lack the skills and experience to analyse and interpret the financial data.
“This has enabled senior council executives to pull the wool over their eyes.
“This has to change, and I can understand why the government will only consider relief on Croydon Council’s huge debt mountain once they have demonstrated that they can deliver real value for money.”
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 per hour consultant
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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Perry is sacking lollipop ladies so that overpaid consultants can continue to milk the Croydon cash-cow dry
I wonder how many interim senior managers on large salaries choose to and are allowed to be interim, as they are better rewarded financially and can leave at short notice?
This starts the recruitment merry go round via expensive agencies
I set up and chaired the Scrutiny committee in Croydon Council 25 years ago to robustly investigate policies and challenge delivery of council services. Maybe it was too effective, because under both Labour and Conservative administrations the “Scrutiny” committee has become a political embarrassment.
Nowadays its rare useful recommendations are largely either rejected or ignored by the political and executive leadership.
When other scandals like Brick by Brick and Fairfield Halls aren’t called in for investigation by the committee you have to ask yourself whether this non-scrutiny is actually just a very comfortable and convenient arrangement for our tired and ineffectual political two-party system.
Thankfully the next mayoral and council elections are less than a year away.
The two parties running councils is a system that has failed in the 21st century. We need town specific parties such as a “town First” made up of local homeowners’ groups and local small to large business collectives working together for the benefit of the towns they live in. Not for national political parties to use boroughs as fiefdoms to play with and steal council funding.