Having delivered no appreciable improvement in Croydon after more than four years, the council’s ‘improvement’ panel left south London last week, to be replaced by Commissioners. But the panel members’ ride on the gravy train does not end there. By WALTER CONXITE, Political Editor
Tony McArdle, for more than four years the chair of the Conservative-appointed improvement and assurance panel in Croydon, which delivered no real improvement and even less assurance, has been rewarded with another top job, and a pay rise.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government last week announced that McArdle will be the new chair of the Commissioners for another struggling local authority, Birmingham City Council, where he will trouser £1,200 per day. All paid for by local residents.
This announcement has boiled the piss of Croydon-based red necks and Tories, who managed to forget that McArdle had been imposed on the south London borough, at considerable expense by Boris Johnson’s local government secretary, “Honest” Bob Jenrick, in 2021.
Riding the merry-go-round: Tony McArdle now gets £1,200 per day in Nottingham and Birmingham, despite his failures in Northants and Croydon
The narrative of hard-done-by Jason Perry, now Croydon’s lame duck Mayor since the arrival in the borough of our own team of Commissioners, is that they have somehow been stitched up by McArdle and his improvement panel.
“Tony wrote a glowing eighth report about Croydon Council… but then his final report just six months later… wasn’t so glowing,” one of Perry’s most loyal of supporters frothed at the mouth over the weekend.
“Was that because he had been told he was going to get a nice, new highly-paid job by Labour’s Jim McMahon by any chance?”
The answer to that rhetorical question is undoubtedly a resounding “No”, but that’s not something that will bother the right-whingers, who seek to blame anyone but themselves for a decade-and-a-half of austerity and Brexit damage.
They did, however, pose a more reasonable question: “He didn’t fix Croydon in four years, so why give him a highly-paid lead Commissioner role?”
When McArdle arrived in Croydon in 2021, he and his fellow panel member, Phil Brookes, had just spent two years operating as Commissioners at (Conservative-controlled) Northamptonshire County Council, the first local authority this century to issue the dread Section 114 notice of effective bankruptcy.
McArdle and Brookes’ solution in Northants was to split the basket-case council into two: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. Both new councils have struggled to deliver balanced budgets since.
In last week’s announcement, the MHCLG said that McArdle would continue in his role as lead Commissioner at Nottingham City Council, where he also receives £1,200 per day for his efforts and expertise. Nottingham City Council has been under special measures since February 2024.
During his time in Croydon, official figures show that for his part-time, advisory role chairing the improvement panel, McArdle was paid a total of £211,272.59 (including expenses), with the period January to July 2025 yet to be included.
In Birmingham, McArdle replaces Max “The Axe” Caller as lead Commissioner who, at 67, has decided to retire after taking £300million out of the annual budget of Europe’s biggest local authority.
Caller is one of eight Commissioners appointed to oversee England’s second city by the previous Conservative government, with the others all on £1,100 per day, plus expenses including hotel bills, travel and subsistence payments.
Between October 2023 and March 2025, Caller was paid a total of £302,228.29.
Labour-run Birmingham has been hit by a bin strike since January this year, as the council has sought to reduce the wages of its refuse workers. Despite his influential position as Commissioner, Caller has claimed that he has never sought to intervene over the bin strike.
In an interview last year, Caller said that he intended to step down as soon as he felt Birmingham’s recovery and improvement was secure. Caller said it would be a “disaster” if he stayed on for too long, as it would show the council was not getting better.
In his appointment letter last week, McArdle was put in place as lead Commissioner in Birmingham until October 2028.
Jim McMahon, Labour’s minister for local government, in his appointment letter to McArdle, referred to Birmingham being in the “midst of a dispute in its waste services” and that it has a “demanding improvement journey ahead”.
As with all such appointments of Commissioners or non-improvement “improvement” panels, in Northamptonshire or Nottingham or Birmingham or Croydon, the cost of these government-imposed “experts” is ultimately paid by the unfortunate residents of the mismanaged local authority area.
Gun for hire: former Croydon head of HR Pam Parkes is now telling other councils how to run their affairs
In Birmingham, McArdle will meet up with some familiar figures on this local government improvement merry-go-round.
Among his many roles, McArdle has also been an inspector for the “Best Value” inspection at Thurrock Council in Essex, where he was teamed up with Pam Parkes, the former HR chief at Croydon Council who left Taberner House in a bit of a hurry, but with a hefty “golden handshake”, in 2013.
Parkes has since gone on to become a freelance “gun for hire” to oversee other troubled councils, and she is reunited with McArdle as a Commissioner (£1,100 per day) in Birmingham.
Also in McArdle’s team in Birmingham is Jackie Belton, the CEO at Bexley Council who is also “double-dipping”, now getting a generous day rate for her role as one of Croydon’s four Commissioners. Nice work if you can get it.
McArdle’s improvement panel in Croydon was in place when Mayor Perry issued the borough’s third S114 notice in November 2022 and when he then asked to hike Council Tax by 15% in 2023 – Council Tax has risen by 27% since Perry became Mayor.
It was the McArdle panel’s final report, submitted in April this year, which described spending at the council under Mayor Perry and CEO Katherine Kerswell as being “runaway”.
That, taken together with Perry’s requests for another £136million of exceptional financial support, prompted the current government to step in and arrange further intervention.
He did warn us: Mayor Perry’s warning soon after taking office remains just about the truest thing he has said
The disappointment with McArdle’s panel was viewed more as a betrayal by Perry’s Tory colleagues on Croydon Council. The panel “clearly failed” according to one Conservative councillor, Robert Ward, who broke the code of silence that demands that such frank criticism of council execs and government appointees is never spoken in public. More’s the shame.
Ward wrote of McArdle’s failed improvement panel: “Croydon is paying the price.”
Just as Northants and Nottingham are doing, and Birmingham may well do, too.
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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Can Croydon take a back-handed compliment from Tony McArdle’s pay rise (a.k.a. reward for failure) by claiming that Croydon is not so bad, but he had to get paid more to have to go to Birmingham? “Happiness is Birmingham in your rear-view mirror” as they say
No because Lead Commissioners earn more than mere Improvement Panel chairs.
The new Lead Croydon Commissioner gets £1,200 a day whereas for an improvement panel chair it’s a mere £ 1,000
Commissioners have more legal powers than improvement panels so get paid more.
The mother of all cuts is coming ….. we ain’t seen nothing yet.
£1,200 a day, for a desk job, (cf. emergency services stressful, dangerous or highly trained work eg Resident Doctors’ or other NHS staff years of training, long hours, life and death decisions). No back-breaking manual labour. No personal risk eg. armed forces.
The ‘job’ is to reduce Croydon Council’s costs over income, but this adds to it.
There is no ‘performance related’ pay – a flat and fat fee.
This was one of four Improvement Panel members.
This is embarrassing unjustifiable and unaffordable.
The Improvement Panel write reports about the council they are supposed to be helping but are reports written about the performance of these panels and commissioners to keep justifying their bloated pay packets. Anyone can cut services and sell assets but ultimately that only makes things worse and rips off long term residents of an area. To genuinely justify those kind of salaries they should be coming up with creative approaches for economic growth in an area. These commissioners and panel members are a small club and we’re not part of it.
To be fair, we haven’t a clue how successful or unsuccessful Tony McArdle has been because of the Town Hall’s information blackout. Nothing appears to have changed from the outside and the debts are still there – of course they are – but he may have done things behind the scenes. Thing is – no one is saying anything, all we’re getting is back-slapping and gurning. That’s an effing disgrace.
Why do we, as a society, continue to reward failure?
Something needs to change!