Mayor Jason Perry’s political rivals call for his resignation after a week when auditors have warned over ‘unsustainable’ finances and his CEO has left Croydon with a generous £50,000 pay-off. By STEVEN DOWNES

Double trouble: Mayor Jason Perry agreed for council CEO Katherine Kerswell to receive three months’ pay, rather than work her notice

Katherine Kerswell may not be replaced as Croydon Council’s chief executive before the local elections are held next May, and perhaps not at all if one of the candidates standing to be the borough’s elected Mayor has their way.

Local election candidates from other parties have also called for the immediate resignation of Jason Perry, the Conservative elected Mayor, after a week in which he was served a warning over the council’s “unsustainable” finances and held the exit door open for his CEO while handing her a £50,000 pay-off.

There’s been a virtual news black-out at Fisher’s Folly since Friday about the abrupt departure of the CEO, as failed Mayor Perry tries to pretend nothing has happened, and is definitely trying to avoid drawing attention to the fact that Kerswell was helped on her way with a generous lump sum to avoid her working through her three-month notice period.

Croydon’s 70 councillors found out about Kerswell’s resignation first from reading Inside Croydon.

An email from Mayor Perry, in which he dissembled over the fact that he agreed to a pay-off to the council’s head of service – just as Labour’s Tony Newman had done with Jo Negrini in 2020 – promised to advise about cover arrangements in due course.

No such update has yet been communicated, either to councillors nor to the council’s staff.

In the past, Jane West, the council’s finance director, has deputised for the £204,000 per year Kerswell during her boss’ frequent absences for hospital treatment and lengthy holidays. But West has already indicated that she will be leaving Croydon next year, and she is also more than fully occupied working on the likely impossible task of coming up with a balanced council budget for next February.

Plot-spoiler: whatever magic West might work, the next council budget will almost certainly have to include another 5% Council Tax increase. That will mean that since Jason Perry has been Mayor of Croydon, residents’ local tax burden will have been hiked by 33% – so we will all be paying one-third more than our 2022 Council Tax bills. 

That’s something else you won’t be reading on Mayor Perry’s council website, either…

Elaine Jasckson, Kerswell’s erstwhile assistant CEO – another to have had lengthy leaves of absence – is leaving her job next month, so there would be little purpose in putting her in the box seat before having to replace her as well.

In Ged Curran, the lead Commissioner, there may be a ready-made, “interim” replacement for Kerswell.

Curran was CEO for neighbouring Merton Council from 2004 to 2021. He is not, unlike his fellow government-appointed Commissioners, currently a serving councillor nor on the staff at other local authorities.

Paid a day rate of £1,200 (by government decree), were Curran to take over day-to-day control, it would certainly be a neat, if temporary, solution.

According to Katharine Street sources, Curran was de facto in charge in Croydon even before Kerswell was eased out with her pay-off, with the CEO deferring to the Commissioner on a regular basis in the weeks since his appointment in July.

Ready-made replacement?: Ged Curran was CEO at Merton for 17 years

Perry may not much like such a move, but then, with the council auditors having issued him with a formal warning over the dire position with the council’s finances, Croydon’s lame-duck Mayor really doesn’t have much of a say in the matter. Not that that will stop him trousering his £84,000 annual salary for the next few months of his failed term in office.

But some have called for the Perry charade to end now, and save the borough a few bob in the process.

“Kerswell’s resignation was inevitable,” Paul Aiinscough, a Green Party local election candidate in Fairfield ward in 2026 told Inside Croydon.

“However, the pressure for Executive Mayor Perry to accept responsibility and resign should be the next step in Croydon Council’s recovery plan.” 

Richard Howard, who stood against Perry in the 2022 mayoral elections and will be the Liberal Democrats’ candidate again in May, has promised to dispense with the needless duplication of having a chief executive and an executive Mayor.

Kerswell’s resignation “will make the disestablishment of the CEO position much easier to achieve, as they’ll either go for an interim, or the Commissioners will take direct control”, Howard said.

“Then, all a new Mayor has to do is not hire another CEO,” said Howard.

Curran and the Commissioners are due to address Wednesday’s meeting of full council in the Town Hall Chamber, which might add some clarity to the situation.

Read more: When’s a pay-off not a pay-off? When it’s 50 grand in Croydon
Read more: Auditors issue Perry with warning over ‘unsustainable’ finances
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 per hour consultant

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