EXCLUSIVE: Our Croydon Insider podcast, exclusive premium content for our paying subscribers, this month went behind the headlines to look at the scandal of agency payments at the cash-strapped council, where they are paying more than £700 per hour for one ‘consultant’, as well as discussing the latest Westfield ‘consultation’ for the town centre and debating the appointment of Commissioners to run the council
Our panel of Inside Croydon readers put questions to the Liberal Democrats’ 2026 Croydon mayoral candidate, Richard Howard, who reveals how he would defuse the council’s long-term debt problem, starting with a serious clear-out of the top-heavy management tier of “corporate directors” at the Town Hall.
With the 2026 council elections barely nine months away, we are well into the period of what some describe as “pot hole politics”, when various candidates pose for pictures for social media or election leaflets pointing gormlessly at holes in the ground, or piles of rubbish on street corners.
There’s none of that with the Croydon Insider, where our panel of readers cut through to the issues that really matter at the authority with long-term debts of £1.4billion, such as the £1,000 per day “interims” that ineffectual council chief executive Katherine Kerswell has surrounded herself with at Fisher’s Folly.
For the chop: Richard Howard says Croydon has too many overpaid execs, such as £204,000 per year CEO Katherine Kerswell
And our Inside Croydon readers – Anya Destiney, Oumesh Sauba and Johnny Dobbyn – also quizzed Howard about his plans on housing in the borough and how he would begin the long process of addressing the council’s debts.
Howard has already taken a hard look at the council’s top-heavy staffing structure.
“Croydon’s leadership is too big, too expensive and out of touch,” says Howard, a former British Army bomb disposal expert who served in Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and Iraq before retiring to civvie street and joining a leading corporate bank and then setting up his own finance business.
With an executive Mayor, Howard says Croydon no longer needs a chief executive. Howard is also pledging to reduce the Town Hall gravy train of jobs for the boys, and girls, in the Mayor’s overstuffed cabinet.
Howard wants to slash the council’s bloated senior management structure and reinvest the savings into frontline services.
Five years since the council first declared itself effectively bankrupt, it now has more staff on six-figure salaries than it did before 2020.
Croydon employs 26 senior executives – including a chief executive, an assistant chief executive and 24 other directors – across two tiers of management.
It also has eight councillors appointed as Cabinet members, each drawing an additional “special responsibility allowance” from public funds of around £40,000 each.
Howard says that if elected Mayor, he would abolish the chief executive and assistant chief executive roles, and cut the number of directors from 26 to 15.
Howard has crunched the numbers and reckons that these changes would save Croydon’s long-suffering Council Tax-payers approximately £2million per year, “all of which would be reinvested into vital frontline services that have been slashed despite record Council Tax rises”, he says.
Council Tax in Croydon has increased by 27% since 2023 under Tory Mayor Jason Perry.
Man with a plan: Richard Howard is the LibDems’ candidate for Croydon Mayor
“Croydon residents are paying more but getting less,” Howard said.
“While services are cut, senior officers and cabinet members continue to draw six-figure salaries and special allowances. That has to change.”
In our latest, bumper edition of the Croydon Insider, featuring Questions For The Mayoral Candidate, Howard pledged to restore a properly funded youth service within Croydon, increase staffing for housing repairs, and save the borough’s “lollipop ladies and men”.
“Croydon doesn’t need more politicians and directors. It needs youth workers, crossing guards, and public servants who put residents first.
Howard said: “I’m not just offering words of support – I’m offering a funded plan to restore services the Conservative Mayor has scrapped.
“Elected mayors across the country have shown that you don’t need a Chief Executive to run a council effectively. You need leadership, clarity and accountability – and that’s exactly what I’ll deliver in Croydon,” Howard said.
Richard Howard is the third Croydon mayoral candidate to be invited on to the Croydon Insider to face questions from our readers, after Labour’s Rowenna Davis and Conservative Jason Perry. The Tory Mayor failed to show up.
We’ll be putting more questions to the candidates for Croydon Mayor between now and election day on May 7 next year.
The Croydon Insider podcast is premium content available free to paying subscribers of Inside Croydon, and is also available to buy on our Spotify channel. Click here to listen now – a monthly subscription to support our investigative and agenda-setting journalism costs less than the price of a single pint in the Dog and Bull- Not all our podcast content is behind a paywall: our latest Under The Flyover interview sees comedian and Palace fan Kevin Day discuss the gross injustices heaped on his club by the football bureaucrats at UEFA. Click here to listen now
- Check out some of our recent news reports which led to discussions in this episode of the Croydon Insider:
Council chief made mates’ rates payments at £726 per hour
Another Croydon mugging as Westfield stages latest charade
Council accused of cover-up over multi-million agency spend
Bromley by-election sees historic first Reform win in London
Surrey, Lambeth and Bromley beat Croydon as rotten boroughs
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Howard makes an acute observation about the top heavy management of Croydon Council, but unfortunately due to Mayor Perry’s tenure he will not have the opportunity to have any discretion with the structure of Croydon management now it will be run for the next two years by Commissioners. It’s going to be a strange election to become a figure head hoping to inherit something that has been resolved to a more secure financial setting.
Whilst the commissioner could block my plans to reduce the bureaucracy at Croydon Council, the question is – why would they?
I am running to be the person who will work best with the commissioners to facilitate their earliest exit and a return to democratic accountability. As someone with both the financial expertise and a real vision for how Croydon Council can be run more efficiently, I see myself as best placed to make that happen.
Has Mr Howard done an actual analysis of what these people are actually doing before deciding whether their posts and their holders are no longer required?
Cutting staff at this level doesn’t always lead to savings (especially in the first year when there will be significant redundancy costs).
I know of councils that have cut senior posts and merged departments on the altar of saving money and supposed ‘efficiency’ but who have since needed to undo some of those changes and employ people because there was no capacity to do anything new in the system and existing services were suffering because the senior staff were stretched too thinly to be able to manage and lead effectively.
I’m not saying all these posts are sacrosanct but cuts made in haste will be repented at leisure.
And it’s important not to rush to get rid of a post because of whom the post holder currently is.
And I’d be interested to know which councils no longer have a Chief Executive because the current Mayor is fulfilling the role.
Have you listened to the podcast?
No because I have hearing difficulties which make it difficult.
Then we suggest that you do.
Under Kerswell, there are now 26 corporate directors and others on director-level salaries – and that’s not including the £720 per hour interim assistant for the head of HR and various other interims appointed by Kerswell under delegated powers. It does include two assistant CEOs, and it is a far greater number of execs than even existed under Negreedy, who was notorious for her own empire-building.
As is explained in the podcast, we have an executive Mayor, and other councils have indeed done without their CEO.
Chris, if you have the Spotify app, you can read the transcripts of these podcasts.
Yes, I have conducted a detailed comparison of Croydon Council’s management structure against other London Boroughs in terms of both span of control and layers of management.
Croydon has a multi-layered management structure where a Director reports to a Corporate Director, who reports the Chief Executive, who reports to the Executive Mayor. This is unnecessarily long with those in the middle of the chain adding very little value and only serving to insulate the decision-makers at the top from what is really happening. Other comparable London Boroughs operate with a single-tier of Directors which enables them to operate with around 40% fewer Directors than Croydon.
In terms of span of control, at the moment each Director at Croydon Council has between 2 and 7 Heads of Department reporting up them. Under my proposals that would be between 4 and 7, which would be entirely feasible.
Bristol and Leicester are examples of where the Chief Executive role has been abolished under a directly elected mayor. Leicester replaced the Chief Executive with a ‘Chief Operating Officer’ as the statutory Head of Paid Service, whereas Bristol had a ‘Managing Director’. I would like to explore both of these models alongside the option of double-hatting the Head of Paid Service with an existing post (such as the Chief People Officer).
Well he can say anything he likes, as he’s not winning in Croydon.
But as usual Lib Dem’s knowing nothing about how a council runs. We’ve had children’s services and housing in special measures under Labour. We’re out of that now, and his plan is to put us back where we were by slashing services and putting children at risk.
It’s a no from me.
If you read the article, or listen to podcast you would know that I do not plan to “slash services”. In fact, the exact opposite, I would use the savings in reducing Croydon’s bloated senior management to reinvest in frontline services.
Far from “putting children at risk” I would use these savings from management salaries and cabinet special allowances to reinstate the lollipop ladies/men that the Conservative mayor is cutting. I would also reinvest in a proper youth service that has been decimated by the current mayor.
If took time to look, you will see that Lib Dems have an extremely strong record in local government all across the country. Croydon deserves better than the continued failures of both Labour and Conservative run councils. If people want change and they vote for it, that is possible.