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’
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
