In the first break with the omerta adopted by Mayor Jason Perry and council CEO Katherine Kerswell over the so-called ‘improvement panel’, a senior Tory councillor says that the appointees of the Conservative government ‘failed’.
By WALTER CONXITE, Political Editor
Robert Ward, one of the wiser and more erudite of Croydon’s 70 councillors, has today broken the Town Hall’s code of silence over what led, ultimately, to Commissioners being appointed this week to take over the running of the cash-strapped council.
The improvement and assurance panel, referred to in councilspeak as “the IAP”, was put in place in Croydon by a Conservative Secretary of State in 2021, in the first few months after the council’s financial collapse had been admitted.
Breaking code of silence: Cllr Robert Ward
The improvement panel’s tour of duty in Croydon was due to end next week, but its final report, submitted in April, together with another £136million of exceptional financial support was what prompted the current Labour government to step in and arrange further intervention in the form of Commissioners.
“The IAP clearly failed”, wrote Ward, the Conservative councillor for Selsdon and Addington Village.
“Croydon is paying the price.”
Local government minister Jim McMahon made another statement to the House of Commons on Thursday, confirming what everyone suspected he would do, and sent in four Commissioners for two years. How this might work out more effective than having a panel of six other local government “experts” in place for five years, no one in Whitehall has yet managed to explain.
With the appointment of the improvement and assurance panel due to expire within days, Commissioners have now been appointed to extend the government’s intervention until July 20, 2027.
Croydon has debts of £1.4billion, in what is widely viewed to be an “unsustainable” position, while the improvement panel said in its final report that spending at the council under Mayor Perry and CEO Katherine Kerswell was “runaway”.
Furious: Mayor Jason Perry
Perry could barely contain his rage when that report was made public last month. But his angry tirade directed at McMahon and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government did nothing to deflect them from their course of action.
Nor did Kerswell’s lengthy, line-by-line critique of the improvement panel’s report.
But Perry and Kerswell, and other senior Tory council figures, stopped short of public criticism, and condemning, the contribution of improvement panel chair Tony McArdle and his team’s contribution to Croydon’s plight.
Robert Ward, however, had other ideas, and today he went public on his little-used Substack account (here’s a publishing tip, Bobby: if you ask for an annual sub of $80 – much more than Inside Croydon! – then you’d best up your output from one article per year).
Ward wrote: “Change is hard. The bigger the change, the longer it takes, and the tougher the choices.”
Under Mayor Perry, Ward has been deputy cabinet member for contract management. So it will have been Ward who did much work on the decision to appoint rubbish contractors Violia to a £40million, eight-year contract, less than two years after Veolia was sacked for poor performance. As they say, change is hard.
Ward, who was first elected to the council in 2018, says that when he arrived, at a time of “peak Negrini” and with Labour’s Tony Newman as council leader, Croydon “was a dysfunctional organisation”.
Ward writes, “There was poor cost control and poor leadership across the council.” So nothing much has changed in seven years then.
“After four years as opposition lead on scrutiny, I knew things were bad. When Mayor Perry insisted on the opening the books exercise (of course criticised by the Labour opposition) even more was revealed. I would not have believed some of the shortcomings that came to light if I had not seen them myself.
Perry’s request: Croydon’s Mayor asked for a 15% Council Tax hike. Tory councillors voted it through
“Since then, there has been considerable progress, but much is left to do. Change of this magnitude takes years, certainly more than three from where we were in 2022, double that at absolute best.
“The appointment of an improvement and assurance panel was unsurprising. Debt was far greater than the assets the council owned. Coupled with continuing, unavoidable adverse current account balance (spending greater than income) meant that burden could only get worse. The solution had to be a debt write-off of some kind. For the government to do this, they needed reassurance Croydon had done all it could to fix the problem…”.
In his piece, Ward explains how the panel was eventually given directive powers, though he fails to mention that this was after the council, now under Tory Perry, was forced to issue a third Section 114 notice of effeective bankruptcy in November 2022, and that the Mayor asked to hike Council Tax by 15% – three times the capped amount – in April 2023.
Despite his reasonable, commonsense approach to matters, even Ward is incapable of avoiding the Punch and Judy politics so commonly witnessed in the Town Hall Chamber.
The improvement panel, Ward writes, “was generally supportive, never once using its directive powers. The Labour opposition offered no constructive ideas”. Ward fails to mention how rarely Mayor Perry has allowed contributions from any of the opposition parties on the council.
Criticised: Tony McArdle and his improvement panel failed, according to Tory councillor Ward
Ward says that it was “something of a shock” when he read the improvement panel’s final report. Perhaps Ward was dozing at the back of the Town Hall Chamber when the council’s massive 2024-2025 overspend eventually got discussed? Or the request for another bail-out, for £136million, went in? Or when the council’s own finance director described the 2025-2026 budget as “unsustainable”?
Ward writes: “The final IAP report is crucial. The expensive IAP whose costs are borne by the council, had no concrete suggestions on what might be done differently. That the council should go ‘further and faster’ ranks with my favourite platitude ‘work smarter not harder’, deployed when you have no idea what to do.
“The IAP clearly failed. The Labour government saw a political opportunity. Croydon is paying the price.”
Lead Commissioner Ged Curran, once he arrives in Fisher’s Folly this week, could do worse than spending an hour listening to Councillor Ward.
Read more: £642,000: the annual cost of government’s four Commissioners
Read more: Meet the Commissioners: council experts sent to save Croydon
Read more: From tantrum to grovel, Perry shifts posture for Commissioners
Read more: Panicked Perry admitted to Rayner: I can’t balance the budget
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Comes across as more semantic pedantic than erudite. Robert seems to feel his slow and deliberate weighing of every word adds credibility to the falacy of his sole argument that everyone got it wrong other than Perry.
Erudite compared to the borough’s other 69 councillors.
It’s a low bar.
Are you having a giraffe? The man who once told us Croydon’s homeless problem was due to statistical double counting. He manages to say something failed on his Party’s watch without anything like taking responsibility for it’s failure. Always somebody else to blame.
As with Ward the cheap partisanship is always clear to be seen. When this gentleman owns something for once in his life. Then he might has some credibility.
Bob’s blog includes a pseudo scientific denial of climate change, as you’d expect from someone who worked in the fossil fuel industry. His Conservative critique of Croydon’s catastrophes is equally implausible