The government might have decided to send in Commissioners, but it will be Croydon’s Council Tax-payers who will be picking up the bill. Yet again. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s long-suffering residents will be expected to pay the generous daily fees for the four Commissioners who the government yesterday appointed to take charge of the management of the cash-strapped council.
And that means that Council Tax-payers will be paying at least
£642,000
per year for the expertise and experience of Ged Curran, Jackie Belton, Debbie Warren and Abi Brown.
The figures were contained within the quartet’s appointment letters from James Blythe, the deputy director for local government stewardship and interventions at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which were released yesterday when the ministerial announcement came through.
On his way out: Tony McArdle is estimated to have been paid almost £200,000 for his time on Croydon’s ‘improvement’ panel
It means that the four Commissioners are likely to be even more expensive for Croydon residents per year than the improvement and assurance panel, which was installed in 2021.
As a long-term investigation by this website discovered, Tony McArdle, the panel’s chair, and his colleagues will have cost Croydon close to £1million by the time they have their final day working in Croydon next week, after delivering not much improvement and probably less assurance.
And if Croydon CEO Katherine Kerswell is staging a farewell party for the panel, she has not yet sent an invitation to Inside Croydon.
But while McArdle was on £1,000 per day, lead Commissioner Ged Curran is to be paid £1,200 per day (starting yesterday), and his three colleagues are each on £1.100.
Significantly, the Commissioners have a cap on how many days they can spend working on the Croydon conundrum: 150 per year, or 120 in the case of Brown. They can only do more with prior permission from Angela Rayner herself.
- That means that Curran could expect to be paid £180,000 in a year by Croydon.
- Warren and Belton could be paid up to £165,000 each.
- And Brown might be looking at £132,000 for her work as a “political and governance commissioner” in Croydon.
Equally significantly, what is not capped by the MHCLG direction is “reasonable expenses”. McArdle, in his penultimate year in Croydon, claimed more than £5,000 in expenses.
These expenses is expected to be mostly on travel and accommodation expenses, and is likely to apply in similar fashion with the Commissioners.
Well-paid: lead Commissioner Ged Curran is on £1,200 per day
With Brown being based in the Midlands, the front desk staff at the Holiday Inn Express next to the pie and mash shop on Frith Road might expect to be seeing a lot of the former leader of Stoke council in the coming weeks.
Debbie Warren is, for now at least, the chief exec at Greenwich Council, and it has been reported that her fees will be “reimbursed” to her employers. So, effectively, cash-strapped Croydon will be subsidising the wage bill of another south London council.
Senior Whitehall official Blythe’s letter of appointment to Curran read: “You will be entitled to a fee for each day you act as lead Commissioner. You will also be entitled to reasonable expenses.
“Under the terms of the Directions, it is the council’s responsibility to meet these costs, and the Secretary of State has set these fees for you at £1,200 per day up to a maximum of 150 days per annum. These should not be exceeded without prior approval of the Secretary of State.
“As to reasonable expenses, we would expect these to be in accordance with the rules for senior officers set out in the council’s staff handbook.”
So a night on the piss at The Ritz might be pushing their luck, then.
Read more: Meet the Commissioners: council experts sent to save Croydon
Read more: Croydon residents pick up the £1m tab for ‘improvement’ panel
Read more: £603,000: the soaring costs of Croydon’s ‘improvement’ panel
Read more: Agency spend scandal: Perry blasted for ‘ridiculous shambles’
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Well, if the commissioners persuade the government to write off a substantial chunk of the Council’s debt then £642,000 could be regarded as a good investment.
Probably the best you can hope for is to reschedule than write off. Other Local Authorities will be looking at Croydon as a precedent to be followed as it is not the most indebted Council out there.
Four of them for 600K, bargain. A lot less than the salary for six months part time executives at the council for the last few years.
We’ve been paying Katherine Kerswell’s £200k exhorbitant salary for several years and she’s repaid us by driving Croydon off a cliff when she was supposed to guard it? Why is she still in a job? Why are we still propping her up?
My local councillor was in a couple of interviews when Jo Negrini was bringing her friends to the council as executives. There was no scrutiny, no in-depth discussion and no following-up – Jo ran the interview and was steering it to her agenda. The irony is, all these new executives, including Negreedy has been sacked or removed from the council.
What is it about Croydon that makes us accept low-grade, personally motivated leaders who use our borough as a financial sponge – the latest is Katherine Kerwell who goes through life squeezing payments and compensations from local councils funded by hard working people on a fraction of the salary Kerswell demands.
I find Kerwell’s mode of operation quite disgusting and her lack of performance intensifies this. She stays in her job becsuse she knows councilors are not unified enough to sack her. Disgusting, predatory, calculating behaviour – your strength gained from the weakness of others.
Why do we put up with this???
If anyone is wondering what’s happened to Tony McArdle and his £1k a day, don’t fret as today he’s been appointed as the lead Commissioner over Birmingham City Council.