EXCLUSIVE: Just a couple of weeks since the government Commissioners arrived in Croydon, and an obvious way of saving money is being implemented. By KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
Could it be that the era of £1,000 per day “interim”, hand-picked by spendthrift CEO Katherine Kerswell, is now over at Croydon’s cash-strapped council?
It is certainly looking that way, after someone at Fisher’s Folly placed ads for four senior roles, each with annual salaries of up to £135,000.
Some are for significant council roles that the previous post-holder left vacant almost six months ago. All are advertised as full-time, employed positions, and all will replace interims previously hired by the council.
Coincidentally, the advertisements have appeared within a matter of days of the arrival of government-appointed Commissioners to take over the running of Kerswell’s omnishambles council.
In the last financial year, the council overspent its budgets by at least £30million, with steepling amounts being spent on agency staff, including paying for one “interim” consultant at £726 per hour, as exclusively revealed by an Inside Croydon investigation.
The job ads which have appeared in the local government trade press are for a director of planning and sustainable regeneration, a director of streets and environment, a director of property, procurement and capital, and a director of assets and repairs.
All offer the same salary scale of £129,901 to £135,064 – which starts at a much more reasonable average daily rate of £540.
Recruitment drive: how the council jobs have been advertised
All the job ads begin with the same lame, and deliberately misleading, bit of text: “This is an exciting time to be joining Croydon.”
As if no one of the calibre that Croydon needs in a senior executive position won’t be well aware of the realities of working for Kerswell at our council.
“That’s ‘exciting’ in the same way that boarding a roller-coaster ride with no brakes is ‘exciting’,” according to one staffer at Fisher’s Folly who has endured five years on the Kerswell fairground ride.
The job ad blurb continues: “Under our current political and officer leadership, a huge amount has been achieved as we move towards a more sustainable and prosperous future for our residents and businesses.”
The author of the job ad appears to be in a state of denial – so may have taken their lead from CEO Kerswell. “Our transformation programme and the development of our new target operating model are well underway, and we have made significant progress in laying the foundations of a financially stable future.” Perhaps they’ve forgotten about the £136million bail-out from the government earlier this year?
“Now that we have put the conditions in place for our future prosperity, there is a huge amount of work to do to finish the job.” Well, at least the second clause of that sentence was more truthful.
Whoever gets the planning job has their work cut out for them. “You will ensure that we move beyond being simply the planning authority to acting as a key enabler of growth and transformation.” Some might suggest that just getting someone as a capable and honest head of the planning department might be an improvement for Croydon.
Cut off: Kerswell’s council can’t even get its phone system to work properly. So much for ‘Digital first’
Whoever put this ad together appears to be a bit behind the times, too, as they talk about “the delivery of 1,400 new homes in the town centre”. It has been public knowledge for some time that Westfield alone want to build 3,000 flats. Or have the developers changed their minds again?
The other job ads require applicants to be prepared to offer additional attributes, such as “championing our new target operating model, the core of which is digital first”.
This from a local authority whose telephone lines have been down for at least five days in the past week and which is being dragged to the High Court for cutting off access to the public in need of statutory services.
Anyone recruited for these four positions ought to expect to have their appointment approved by the cross-party committee of elected councillors, unlike their predecessor interims, who will have been given the work by CEO Kerswell using delegated authority.
Until last month, when he departed Fisher’s Folly in a bit of an unseemly hurry before the Commissioners arrived, Huw Rhys Lewis BSc, BArch, MSc, MRIBA, MAPM, MRICS had been Croydon’s interim director of commercial investment and capital for almost two years.
An internal staff email, seen by Inside Croydon, said that “Huw is no longer with London Borough of Croydon… due to a snap decision to save costs engaging with interim personnel”.
Gone: Huw Rhys Lewis BSc BArch MSc MRIBA MRICS MAPM
Around the same time as Lewis’s departure, Kerswell confirmed in her weekly waffle to staff that Karen Agbabiaka, the head of highways and parking, had also left the building.
Agbabiaka had been in the £127,684 per year director of streets and environment post only since early 2024, overseeing an £80million annual budget and with responsibility for more than 450 staff.
She is said to have left because of a clash of management styles with her immediate boss, Nazeya Hussain, the corporate director for “sustainable communities, regeneration and economic recovery”.
Tony Ralph was quickly brought in as a interim replacement for Agbabiaka, although his appointment appears to be appropriate use of temporary cover, as it looks as if he will be replaced before the end of the year by whoever gets the director of streets and environment job being advertised.
The new director of planning and sustainable regeneration will effectively replace the deeply underwhelming Heather Cheesbrough, one of the last remaining appointees of former CEO Jo Negrini, who departed Croydon in March.
Gone: ‘Interim Adam’ Wilkinson resigned before the council even announced his arrival
Kerswell thought she had found an interim replacement for Cheesbrought in Adam Wilkinson.
But “Interim Adam” quickly resigned after an investigation by Inside Croydon revealed that the £1,000 per day interim had had his private company wound up by HMRC over unpaid tax.
Kerswell and the council have refused to provide an explanation for Wilkinson’s abrupt resignation.
The bungled – and costly – recruitment of notorious interim Wilkinson could be indicative of what Jim McMahon, the local government minister, meant when he referred to the serious concerns on “aspects of leadership” when he announced in June that his department was “minded” to send in Commissioners to take over the running of the debt-ridden council.
Any new director of assets and repairs would appear to be a replacement for Hitchin-based Sue Hanlon
Going: Sue Hanlon, ‘leadership consultant’
Since December 2023, Hanlon has been working in the housing department as a self-described “leadership consultant”, apparently “supporting the London Borough of Croydon to improve services, introduce and embed new ways of working, optimise IT systems to support service delivery and driving a culture change programme to provide resident focused services”. So someone fluent in the vacuous tongue of councilspeak that are so much liked by Kerswell and her like.
Kerswell’s own corporate management team schematic describes Hanlon as “director, housing assets and repairs”. Any full-time appointee for that job could be in place by December, thus avoiding Hanlon being an interim for more than two years, and thus entitled to stay on in a permanent role but paid at her temporary rates.
This clear-out of interims is likely to drastically reduce the council’s costs, while also neatly formalising arrangements for key staff, instead of running the risk of having His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on their back for allowing interims to use small limited companies to disguise what is in reality an employer-employee situation, but one that does not pay the full rate of National Insurance contributions.
Chief executive Katherine Kerswell was unavailable for comment, away on holiday. And anyway, we couldn’t get through to Croydon Council because their phones don’t work.
Read more: Property salesman Lewis quits council job over interim costs
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 per hour consultant
Read more: £1,000 per day ‘Interim Adam’ was Kerswell’s personal pick
Read more: Agency spend scandal: Perry blasted for ‘ridiculous shambles’
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£130k pa or £540/day still seems well-paid for a pleasant, reasonable hours, non-hazardous, non-arduous desk job, though I am a way out of touch with pay scales.
I accept that an employer is seeking to attract competent employees in a ‘free market’, but these figures have always seemed excessive to me compared with, say 12 hour shift, 7 year trained, life and death medical staff, road menders manual. Labour, or police or armed forces personnel.
The salaries also have not been met with results in the past, which might have more justified ‘negative salaries’ and ‘negative Mayor’s and Members’ Allowances’ and paying back money for bad decisions.
Thanks for another insightful bulletin.
Good luck with that
When will I get a rebate on my council tax?
It’s not just National Insurance that’s an issue if Croydon Council got it wrong by hiring people working through personal service companies and treating them as self-employed when they were effectively employees.
HMRC can make a company liable for 100% of unpaid income tax, National Insurance Contributions and the Apprenticeship Levy on these working relationships. There are also financial penalties of between 30% and 100% of the unpaid income tax, depending on whether a company was careless in checking these arrangements or decided to be a partner to tax evasion.
The Council’s auditors, Mazars, have twice reported their concerns about this risk to public finance. Were their warnings heeded?
Why is the Kerswell still taking Croydon Council for a ride? Surely the commissioners can find some grounds for sacking her ?! The council has many problems but as CEO she must be the main one ?!
No chance. Kerswell will hang on to the bitter end where a considerable pension awaits her. Otherwise it’s a Negreedy early payoff if sacked.
A deeper examination is needed for interim staffing which clearly costs more with agency and finders fees rather than open resourcing. One of the posts advertised from Housing currently operated by Sue Hanlon as named in the article has recently attempted to implement changes without complying with Terms of Reference and Governance with Tenants & Leaseholders. But within housing there are still 12 interim Managers and 7 interim staff members( at the last two quarters). I challenge this this of staffing as it is our rents and charges that fund this expensive practice.
The Rotten Constant in Croydon: Katherine Kerswell
For seven painful years, Croydon has endured the same catastrophic failure: Katherine Kerswell.
She has never lived up to the hype — not even close. Time and again, she’s shown a disastrous lack of judgment, alienated the workforce, and enacted a baffling recruitment policy that’s made the council a national joke. She is utterly unfit to lead.
Everyone knows she’s been playing the long game, manipulating her position so that if — when — she’s finally forced out, she walks away with a fat, council-taxpayer-funded golden parachute. That’s not leadership — that’s opportunism at its most cynical. Croydon was never her mission. It was just a stepping stone to her comfortable retirement.
And then there’s the £40,000 extra she grabs each year as the so-called Returning Officer — a job she’s repeatedly botched. Under her watch, Croydon became a national laughing stock, defined not by democratic excellence but by chaos and incompetence.
Enough is enough
It’s actually five years, Sally, since October 2020.
It just feels longer.