TOWN HALL SKETCH: When Mayor’s deputy tells a council meeting that, ‘Aside from the finances, we are performing well’, it is clear that outside help is urgently required. By WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor
“Data!”
Croydon Mayor Jason Perry had just discovered a new word.
“Data!” Perry blurted the two syllables out with relish, as if it was some kind of revelation, and did so five or six times in an answer to one question about how the council was able to plan for changes in demand in areas such as social care, children’s services and housing.
According to Mayor Perry, Croydon Council had had no data to work with before May 2022. But now, Perry said, “We have data!”
“We have really good control of our data,” Mayor Perry said again.
This all failed to explain, of course, the £30million overspend on Perry’s never-balanced 2024-2025 council budget, and why this year he’d had to go to government with his biggest begging bowl yet, for £136million in exceptional financial support.
Despite all of his “Data!”, Tory Perry and his council had failed to foresee what he called an “exponential” increase in demand for council services last year. Piss-poor Perry appeared affronted that anyone should question his council’s piss-poor planning. “To say that these things are predictable… It’s just not predictable.”
Blundering buffoon: Mayor Jason Perry has provided ample evidence that he is out of his depth
And thus, from his own lips, Jason Perry offered yet another reason why the government is likely to send in a Commissioner, or Commissioners, to take the running of the council out of his imcompetent hands.
The lead Commissioner, whoever they might be (but who were very likely watching on the council webcast), won’t have been impressed at Mayor Perry’s performance at last night’s “extraordinary” council meeting in the Town Hall Chamber. They will have concluded that somehow, three years ago, Croydon had managed to elect itself a blundering buffoon for a Mayor.
For while Mayor Perry may boast of having data, and lots of it, he clearly doesn’t know how to use it. Asked about the steepling costs of agency staff – up to £53million in 2024-2025, four times as much as before Perry took office – the Mayor bumbled his way through an explanation of how it was, err, necessary to have staff.
He then threw out an aside. “No agency staff are earning £700 per hour,” Perry said, appearing pleased with himself as he referred to Inside Croydon’s exclusive reports taken from the council’s accounts.
“I don’t know where that figure came from,” Perry said, grinning inanely.
“The council’s own invoices,” someone managed a helpful heckle.
Perry had just exposed himself as not being in command of his data.
According to the council’s own time sheets, between July 19, 2024, and February 28 this year, there were 48 separate payments made to consultant Barbara Giles for 225.5 hours’ work – at a rate of £726 per hour. All had been approved by one of the council’s most senior executives.
Last night’s council meeting could prove to be the last, or at least one of the last, where Perry and his £204,000 chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, are still in charge of Croydon Council. An announcement from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over the appointment of a Commissioner is said to be imminent.
Data: one of the timesheets, signed off by head of HR Dean Shoesmith, for payments amounting to £163,000 to consultant Barbara Giles – at a rate of £726 per hour. Mayor Perry claimed last night to not know anything about this
Last month, local government minister Jim McMahon announced that the MHCLG 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”.
Last night’s meeting offered some opportunity to question the Mayor over how this state of affairs had come to pass. Callton Young, the Thornton Heath councillor and deputy leader of the Labour group, suggested that the improvement panel had “lost patience” with Perry and Kerswell’s running of the council.
What had caused this “falling out” with the improvement panel, Young asked.
We’re doing alright, apart from the finances: Lynne Hale didn’t seem to understand what the problem is
“To call it a ‘falling out’ is a little strong,” Perry said, hastily adding that he had had a meeting with the improvement panel only that morning.
Tony McArdle, the chair of the improvement panel since 2021, wasn’t in the Town Hall Chamber, but was plugged in to the meeting online, potentially clocking up another £1,000 per day fee.
The appointment of Commissioners is as much a sign of the failure of McArdle’s panel as it is of the council that they had tried to guide out of financial penury.
Croydon’s 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”.
One of the criticisms raised about Croydon’s efforts to change was that the pace was never quick enough. Last night’s extraordinary council meeting was being held a full month since the Commissioner announcement. So, no real urgency over this latest Croydon emergency then.
Certainly, Perry’s Conservative colleagues did not appear to think there was much very extraordinary about the situation – five of them, including Helen Redfern, Mario Creatura and Tony Pearson – couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for the start of the meeting. It very much appears as if they’ve already given up.
Missing in action: at least five Tory councillors didn’t even bother to show up for the start of last night’s meeting. But Mayor Perry got a fan to stop him getting too hot under the collar
Five missing out of 33 Tory councillors adds up to an awful lot of allowances for absentees – although inevitably, during the meeting, Mayor Perry managed to defend his decision to increase the allowances paid to him and councillors at the cash-strapped council, while he was also hiking Council Tax by 27% in just two years.
Of those who did bother to show, a queue of Conservative councillors had been lined up – Llabuti, Fish, Bird, Price, Johnson and Parker among them – to pose patsy questions to their boss, Perry, about various hypothetical aspects of the imminent arrival of a Commissioner. The tone of the questions suggested that even the most loyal of Conservative loyalists had got over the denial phase, and had now reached the acceptance phase of mourning for Perry’s mayoralty.
Perry’s stock answer to the Tory questions was that he really doesn’t know what the Commissioner’s, or Commissioners’, brief might be. That is all yet to be revealed. But Perry’s posture has changed, too, from the temper tantrum of his video nasty the day after the MHCLG announcement, now to something more like a grovel.
“This council is not failing,” Perry tried to claim. “We are turning things around.” It is hard to gauge whether anyone believes Mayor Perry any longer.
King’s speech: the leader of the council’s Labour group, Stuart King, was strongly critical of Perry’s performance
He claimed there were “no other choices” when he went to the then Tory government and requested permission to hike Council Tax in Croydon by 15% in 2023. Other factors were “outside the council’s control”, Perry grizzled,
The meeting agenda had been skewed in favour of the short-handed Tories, as they got to make the same number of speeches as Labour councillors, while also having Perry reiterating his 10-minute hard-done-by speech (Croydon’s Green and LibDem councillors were marginalised yet again, allocated just a couple of questions).
Lynne Hale, Perry’s deputy, droned on in an ill-judged speech in which she actually seemed to ask for “the magic money tree”. The Commissioner decision, Hale declared, was “unfair”.
Talking about an “on-going sense of fury” and “frustration”, Hale tried to drag the narrative back six years, to the time when the council was run by what she described as “malign individuals” who had “got away scot-free”.
Ahhh. If only Mayor Perry had managed to deliver on that manifesto promise to bring the perpetrators to justice, eh?
“Aside from the finances, we are performing well,” Hale said, missing the point entirely.
Perry’s answers to his councillor’s planted questions allowed him, repeatedly, to mouth platitudes such as “business as usual”. “I will fight for this borough if required,” Perry said, claiming that he would stop the Commissioners from raising Council Tax by more than the maximum or “salami slicing” council services.
“Because that’s your job, isn’t it?” Stuart King heckled by way of introducing a question of his own.
Rowenna Davis, Labour’s candidate for Mayor in 2026, accused Perry of putting his political career before the interests of Croydon residents, describing his video nasty circulated on social media last month as “insulting”.
Davis criticised Perry and Kerswell’s “transformation” plans. “None of this survives contact with reality,” Davis said.
“Is it all someone else’s fault? Do you take responsibility for anything?”
In his own speech, King had been fiercely critical of Perry and the Conservative response to the ministerial announcement.
“Mayor Perry appears to dispute that this council is still in a financial crisis… I don’t think we can be surprised that the government of the day has decided it is time to act.
He did warn us: Mayor Perry’s warning in 2023 is just about the truest thing he has said
“I can fully understand the disappointment the Mayor feels, and the strength with which that disappointment is felt.
“But I cannot see how adopting such a publicly confrontational and angry posture, let alone launching a full-throttled political attack on the government of the day, makes it more likely that Croydon will get a deal from that same government…
“Your reaction was ill-considered and it has damaged rather than advanced Croydon’s prospects of securing a deal from this government…
“Everything the Mayor and his councillors have said since the announcement suggests to me that a cross-party consensus to work meaningfully with the government of the day… no longer exists.
“That is as regrettable as it is damaging.”
Read more: Ministry planning one-year stay in Croydon for Commissioners
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
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: Agency spend scandal: Perry blasted for ‘ridiculous shambles’
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If PP called for police action against the Labour leaders then surely a police investigation against all this spending needs to be done
We really need a tightening of the framework for Local Government, at a minimum to stop idiot and/or dishonest politicians from bankrupting councils in the way that the previous Labour administration bankrupted Croydon Council.
It’s surely beyond doubt that Mayor Perry’s Tory administration has failed. The previous Labour administrations also failed – remember Croydon’s first bankruptcy occurred under Tony Newman’s Labour.
The role of Governments, Labour and Tory, should also be questioned. The Tory government 2010-15 started an austerity programme which included cuts to government funding of local councils. This has not been reversed by the current Labour government. In the meantime demands on councils, in areas like homelessness and special needs provision for children, have increased.
The only answer is some form of debt write-off by the Government. But Starmer and Rachel Reeves are not prepared to countenance that. Hence the Government is sending in the Commissioners to kick Croydon’s can down the road.
Debt write-off is not the *only* answer, David.
A debt write off is also unfair to those councils that have managed to cut their cloth without bankrupting themselves.
Some sort of long term low interest loan might be the answer but it’s still going to be a chunk of interest to pay off every year.
It’s a knotty problem isn’t it?
There’s a limit to the amount by which councils are able to increase their capacity to raise funds locally, and some central governement funding of councils that is intended to cover the services that are considered essential (or at least the relative imbalance between the differing need for those services and the ability to raise funds locally for them).
The central government funding formula is never going to be perfect, so some councils are always going to be a bit better off and others a bit worse off. Pre austerity that meant some councils had a bigger discretionary surplus to set council tax levels lower or provide nicer amenities for their residents, and others somewhat less so. A bit unfair, but not a major issue.
Post austerity that changes a lot. Where funding is cut to the bone, the councils coming out of the funding formula best are just about in the black, and those coming out worst are some way into the red. Which leaves you wondering are successive councils of different political hues behaving recklessly because they’re incompetent, because the central goverment has encouraged them to do that in order to make ends meet, or some combination of both?
Then if you let the problem persist for a decade or two, how do you resolve the debt that builds up? Do you do nothing for fear of rewarding the failure of local politicians and those who elected them to do what little was within their control, do you sell off every piece of local herritage and community asset you can only to find that’s not made a dent, or accept that central goverment bears some responsibility for the problem, and should have an obligation to provide at least part of a solution that isn’t quite as punitive?
What’s unfair is punishing all of us for the foreseeable future for what a small number of councillors and senior managers did a few years ago or are doing right now. “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” might have seemed a good idea to priests in Jerusalem 2700 years ago but shouldn’t be the way we run local government now
“I will fight for this borough if required”. Not quite up there with Churchill’s rousing “fight on the beaches” speech. If Winston had used the words “if required” in his 1940 address to the House of Commons, wir würden jetzt alle Deutsch sprechen.
And it’s a little bit late (not to say stupid) to come out with that statement after more than three years in power. What’s part-time Perry been doing for Croydon since becoming Mayor in May 2022, if not fighting for this borough? Slashing public services, increasing taxes and spending our money on putting his face on paper and shoving it through our doors, that’s what
Yes Perry’s “if required” speech will go down with Churchills along with Nelson Mandela’s ” I am prepared to die if it will do any good” and Martin Luther Kings “I almost had a dream” in the annals of history. Sorry I meant in the annals of comedy. What a bunch of no hopers we have at the top of political leadership in Croydon.
In my personal opinion as a Council Tenant, I must say that Housing services have improved from the dark days in particular since 2021.However, but at this moment in time Tennent Survey Results (Data) show Overall satisfaction with Housing Services is 53% no improvement in last year’s performance, every target seems to be standing still which is not a sign of improvement. So, on this area alone I question the statements being made. Overall, these housing services are not improving quick enough and there is still a passing the buck culture in some cases.
Data? Wasn’t he a fictional character in Star Trek? As fictional as some of Perry’s claims?
Central Government does have some responsibiiity over the disaster and blight that has afflicted Croydon. The Cameron Govt. removed the financial monitoring and data collection of Council expenditure that was in the legislation created by the Thatcher Government in the form of the Audit Commission and the post of District Auditors which disappeared under the so called reforms of Eric Pickles over some ten years ago. It also introduced the Localism Act that facilitated both local political parties to undertake huge borrowing to ostensibly speculate in property development. The Treasurys of the Thatcher to Brown era would have intervened if they saw the huge amounts being borrowed through Public Work Loan Board debt being made without the creation of any underlying assets of matching value. Negrini’s purchase of the Croydon Hotel for way over value would have set any sane financial management alarm off. This all happened under the control of Michael Gove at the Department of Environment who did not bat an eyelid of the time of it happening then started to whelp as the disaster unfolded. All this disastrous mess would not have happened without the appropriate Central Government legislation and it’s negligence of oversight.
I don’t think the Labour government ever planned to work meaningfully with a Tory mayor. Perry was voted in by local people and should be allowed to continue in the role he was elected to do, for him not to is undemocratic.
So you don’t think upping the borrowing to £2bn (not in his manifesto) and telling the government he can’t balance his budget (a legal requirement) ought to sound an alarm bell or 24?
The bloke’s an incompetent idiot. But hey. You voted for him!
With the size of the debt that was inherited, there isn’t much room to manoeuvre.
You mean the £0.8billion debt that Perry and his cronies left in 2014?
800 million accumulated over how many years? Then 2014 to 2021, another 700 million added to the council’s debt. I think a lot of people voted for Perry because of how awful the Labour council leader had performed. We need sensible people running our public services, I don’t care what political party they’re from.
Accumulated in less than eight years, mostly through a disastrous JV with John Laing, who walked away with pots of money.
The additional £700m was between 2015 and 2020.
Extraordinarily, bungling buffoon Perry has proved himself worse even than bully boy Newman. Few would have thought that was possible.
Disagree with your first point. Agree with your second. Let’s vote Perry out on Thursday, 7th May 2026.
A Labour government coup in our council should be something we all oppose, particularly when you consider the key players in that party and the goings on that they did, allowed, excused and buried in our borough, as documented extensively in Inside Croydon
I do not understand why, when the Commissioners are sent in to manage a failing Council, the Mayor, Councillors and Council management are allowed to stay on. They should all be dismissed for their sustained failure, and prohibited from working in similar positions for other councils ever again. All too often failing officers get cushy jobs in other councils and failed Councillors get appointed in other boroughs or even stand for election as MPs! This probably how we got landed with Kerswell after Negrini pocketed immense severance pay.
You win our STAR comment award.
Perhaps the best illustration of this was when, earlier this year, Perry appeared at a property developers’ shin-dig, flogging off bits of London to foreign speculators, all organised by Mayor Sadiq Khan, where Jo Negrini was present to share her expertise…
Many moons ago, I learnt the hierarchy of:- Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom. Great to hear Mayor Perry is now on the first level. I look forward to hearing some knowledge or wisdom at some point in the future.
Hello Mayor Perry . From your last announcement, we know you read this website yet pretend not to. You cannot con the public with lie over lie over lie. Please give someone else a chance to do Croydon better. Please resign.
Inside Croydon mention a disastrous Joint Venture the council had with Property Developer John Laing. I’m interested in what went wrong with it? Does anyone know? Looks like us croydon taxpayers have been stung twice, in a very short space of time and we’re paying the price now with higher council tax and cuts to services.
The sums of money we owe are eye watering, money that was supposed to improve housing in our area, how did we get in a situation where we couldn’t make a decent return on the money we invested? We’d have been better keeping under a mattress.
Moya: most well-informed people know exactly what happened with CCURV. Inside Croydon reported on it, extensively.
Huge sums of public money were used to line the pockets of John Laing, after they built the Waddon Leisure Centre for a cost of almost double that of equivalent leisure centres, and they built Fisher’s Folly, the council’s offices, at a cost per square foot more expensive than The Shard.
The bills for CCURV were around £300million – Perry’s first instalment of the debts he has loaded on to the people of Croydon.
There’s no cause for your faux surprise.
Thank you for the information. I’ve lived in Croydon for about 10 years and only discovered Inside Croydon in the last 5 years, so that accounts for my lack of knowledge.