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.
- 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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