Lack of proper governance over payments and ‘interims’ working at the council for up to five years raise further questions over ‘runaway’ spending for chief exec Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon Council’s chief executive Katherine Kerswell and Mayor Jason Perry have remained silent since this website exposed the staggering, and obscene, payments being made for agency staff, which in total have almost quadrupled since 2022 to £53.4million last year.
Probably the most alarming example of the cash-strapped council’s “generosity” with public money for interims and consultants was the example of the £726 per hour being paid to Barbara Giles for work as a “transformation” specialist assisting the council’s head of HR, Dean Shoesmith.
This has the possibility of being a “mates’ rates” arrangement. According to Croydon Council insiders who have come forward, Shoesmith and Giles are well-known to each other, having worked together over several years before Shoesmith came to Croydon. Of course, there is nothing untoward about that of itself, but what scrutiny – if any – was applied to this arrangement has never been explained by the council.
Mates’ rates: head of HR Dean Shoesmith, has worked with Giles in the past
Private correspondence between Kerswell and a resident over the weekend had the chief executive claim that the Inside Croydon report was factually inaccurate. When challenged to detail the claimed inaccuracies, Kerswell failed to do so.
Croydon Council had failed to respond to Inside Croydon’s invitation to comment on our findings.
According to official council time sheets, between July 19, 2024, and February 28 this year, there are 48 separate entries for payments to Barbara Giles. All had been approved by Shoesmith.
According to these documents, Giles was paid a total of
£163,713
for 225.5 hours’ work – a rate of £726 per hour.
There may be other records of payments to Giles which have not been accessed by this website. But over an eight-month period, with 48 separate records, there is ample proof of a pattern of payment to this one very special consultant.
In her own online profiles, Giles describes herself as “A passionate leader, who focuses on the challenges within business and works to realise practical solutions to support business goals through HR interventions”. Which is a long-winded way of sorting out redundancies.
And she self-describes as “Skilled in Transformation and HR Service redesign; Employee Relations, HR Consulting, Coaching, Executive Coaching, HR Policies, and Training Delivery, supporting start-up organisations in HR development as well as project management and delivery”.
As a “transformation” consultant, Giles will have been brought in by Shoesmith and Kerswell, as part of her Future Croydon programme, to… ahem… reduce the cash-strapped council’s costs.
Mayor Perry and his £204,000 per year chief executive, Kerswell, have placed much faith in “transformation” plans, after spending £6million last year on hiring in four firms of consultants, some of whom are still attending council meetings and briefings (and presumably charging handsomely for it).
Transformational: one of the timesheets, signed off by Dean Shoesmith, for payments to consultant Barbara Giles at £726 per hour
While Perry and Kerswell remain mostly silent on the issue of soaring costs of agency workers and temporary staff, one loyal Tory footsoldier, Councillor Alasdair Stewart, bleated about how putting these figures of “runaway” spending into the public domain was somehow “a politicial [sic] attack, nothing more”.
Stewart excused the council’s spendthriftery by saying, “If we’re doing lots of change and transformation, as the council are, you need people on short-term contracts and it doesn’t make sense to appoint people.” None of which excuses £726 per hour.
According to Tory Stewart, making these kind of interim hires may also allow some to reduce the tax that they pay. “Many of them… [do not] want a PAYE relationship with the council,” Stewart admitted.
The vice chair of the scrutiny committee added: “These types of concerns and issues have been covered extensively in the council’s scrutiny meetings, both as part of the budget-setting process and the standing financial agenda items.” Which sort of undermines his argument that putting these figures into the public domain is some kind of “politicial [sic] attack”.
It was Stewart, our loyal reader may recall, who defended the appointment of £1,000 per day interim planning chief Adam Wilkinson – also approved by Kerswell and Shoesmith. Another Inside Croydon report had revealed that the tax-efficient consultancy company run by “Interim Adam” had been wound up by HMRC for failure to pay tax.
Wilkinson resigned the next working day after the Inside Croydon report.
The council has since confirmed that Wilkinson made no declaration about the status of his private company when being recruited for Croydon’s top planning job. It is evident that head of HR Shoesmith, and the Starfish recruitment agency used by Croydon Council, failed to conduct their own checks on the expensive hire. Making it all another costly mistake for which Croydon’s Council Tax-payers will be picking up the tab.
Wilkinson resigned from Croydon Council on June 10. He had been in post for barely two months. His appointment was never announced publicly by Kerswell’s council.
‘Tax efficient’: Tory Cllr Alasdair Stewart thinks interims are a good thing. And not on PAYE, either
Interims are often appointed under what the council calls “delegated powers”, allowing the chief executive to make the decision without ever referring the matter to the cross-party appointments committee. Such interim appointments are supposed to be for a maximum of 24 months.
Yet in the course of this investigation, Inside Croydon has found examples of seemingly permanent “interims” at Croydon Council.
One senior appointee in the housing directorate has been hired on an interim basis for three years. Another senior figure has held interim roles in the Croydon Digital department (or whatever they are calling it this week) since 2020. Interims are generally paid at a higher rate than they might expect from performing the same work as a council staffer.
Though few, if any, could match £726 per hour Barbara Giles.
It seems most unlikely that Kerswell is unaware of the payment arrangements made for Giles through Shoesmith. Giles has appeared at council meetings, and has her own Croydon Council email address.
Last month, local government minister Jim McMahon announced that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is “minded” to send in Commissioners to take over the running of Croydon Council, following a highly critical report from the improvement and assurance panel which had been overseeing the council’s management for five years.
The improvement panel had reported that spending at the council under Mayor Perry and CEO Kerswell was “runaway”.
Soaring spending: how Croydon Council’s expenditure on agency staff has increased under Tory Mayor Jason Perry
Croydon has accumulated debts of £1.4billion, and struggles to pay the debt repayments and interests. Earlier this year, the government agreed to provide another bail-out loan to Croydon, this time £136million, more than anything granted to the borough before.
The massive overspend in 2024 and council officials’ plans to borrow their way out of trouble over the next four years would, according to the improvement panel’s report, lead to Croydon Council’s complete “collapse”.
Proper checks and balances on making payments do not appear to be in place. According to the council’s own records, almost £1.4million of payments from Croydon Council to one agency, Adecco, were approved by a member of Adecco’s own staff.
Mayor Perry and chief exec Kerswell have so far been reluctant themselves to answer direct questions about the spiralling costs of agency staff, the absence of proper governance over signing off Adecco invoices, or whether they approve of paying anyone at a rate of £726 per hour.
Perhaps they will provide some answers to the government-appointed Commissioners when they are expected to arrive later this month?
Read more: Council accused of cover-up over multi-million agency spend
Read more: Agency spend scandal: Perry blasted for ‘ridiculous shambles’
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
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This fool Stewart in his partisan defence of what his Council is doing is just revealing the utterly inept egregious morally hazardous person he in essence is. He is now defending tax avoidance as an acceptable course of action over the provision of public services at best value to the residents of Croydon. Who is the buffoon accountable to? The Councillor for Adecco Employment Services?
Absolutely disgusting and outrageous
When I was working freelance p/t I was only charging my client a very competitive £300 per day. I would have felt so guilty charging much more 🤔
What job were you doing Steve? And where and when was this? Your post needs to be put in context
“Never been explained”!!! This sums up Croydon’s total, utter lack of communication and complete distain for the people they are paid to serve. And .. no humility neither. I’ve just received the latest ‘Our Croydon’ full of gurning faces and no inkling that we are staring into the gates of hell. Why, why oh why is Crystal Palace’s success being commemorated in this risible organ long, long after the event? We already have decent photos and memories and don’t need the council to give us a front page cover that headed by the totally, utterly, inexplicable ‘Eat’ banner. And, the back page is taken up with an advert for a ‘degree’ in the quack ‘cure’ that is chiropractic.
In round numbers that hourly rate is £12/minute. Unless the clock is stopped, loo breaks and “tea” breaks are about £60 a time giving, say, a cost of £240 a day. That is outrageous.
Absolutely insane that someone can apparently justify this salary. The people running the entire country don’t earn that much!
So the council closed down community projects like the Cherry Orchard Garden Center to pay these fat fuckwits more?
Unreal
Seems like it 😡 they are shameless!
It’s incredibly beyond belief that these people in positions of great responsibility should abuse the very system that sustains their big bellies. They ought to be made to live amongst the homeless in the borough for a month or more as well as sell their homes and donate the funds to those in dire need.
What should be a shoestring budget has become a Shoesmith budget of over £700 an hour. In his defence of this bloated and flabby misuse of public spending, Stewart just sounds like he’s had one too many scotch on the rocks.
Is it not strange that nothing they do
is unlawful. Perry is the Godfather
of Croydon . Not the Mayor.
No one seems to be accountable !
Dear Sam, if anyone is planning to reopen the garden centre I would be happy to do many voluntary hours working on the project, especially if we could stir some s×+# and highlight the mistakes, greed and corruption that are not being addressed in our society at a time when we need strong and true leadership, honest and progressive, with the ability to face the hard times ahead and with the best future for the citizens of Croydon as first principal. Walk good
It is time for Perry and his gang of cronies to leave.Croydon residents can’t afford this mismanagement.