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Now even Mayor Perry agrees we need to Fund Croydon Fairly

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Town Hall protest: in March 2023, Tory Mayor Jason Perry ignored hundreds of protesters on the Town Hall steps and a petition with thousands of signatures, and instead of seeking fair funding for Croydon, he chose to hike Council Tax by 15%

Columnist ANDREW FISHER, and this website, have been lobbying government to #FundCroydonFairly since early 2023. So why did it take Mayor Jason Perry so long to catch on?

In 2023, this website helped to launch a campaign for fair funding for Croydon, after Mayor Jason Perry announced that he would hike residents’ Council Tax by 15%.

Perry had been elected as Mayor in 2022 on a pledge to “fix the finances”. Instead, he has hiked our Council Tax, cut our services and ignored the campaign. Croydon’s finances have not been fixed, and Mayor Perry has squatted in the council offices like a spare part while an “improvement and assurance panel”, recently replaced by government-appointed Commissioners, have taken charge of running the council.

Perry is up for election again in six months’ time. And this week he has suddenly decided, now that there is a Labour government in Westminster, that Croydon’s funding isn’t fair after all.

This week, Perry posted on Twitter: “I’ve written to Steve Reed calling on government to deliver the Fair Funding Review in full – so Croydon finally gets its fair share.”

Years late: Croydon’s £84,000 per year Mayor is a bit slow to catch on

But Perry had more than two years, when Michael Gove was the Conservative government’s minister in charge of council funding, to have led a campaign to get fairer funding for Croydon.

Perry certainly went to Gove for multi-million-pound bailouts, and for permission for his 15% Council Tax hike. But Perry never lobbied Gove publicly to fix the fundamentals by boosting Croydon’s core funding settlement.

Considering Perry now says “Croydon has been short-changed for too long”, it seems a strange omission for him never to have publicly pestered his Tory Party colleague Gove on the matter.

Perry’s personal website states, “Mayor Perry has invited councillors, MPs and Mayoral candidates of all parties to join his call for a fair deal for Croydon and ensure the borough’s voice is heard as government finalises the new funding system.”

In February 2023, I wrote for Inside Croydon that Perry’s “first move should have been to invite all Croydon’s MPs and councillors (Conservative, Labour, Greens and Liberal Democrat) together and build a unified campaign for fair funding for Croydon. It’s still not too late to do that.”

Perry’s response was a stubborn silence.

Ahead of our time: Andrew Fisher was recommending a cross-party consensus in February 2023. Only now has Mayor Perry taken our advice…

More than 10,000 people also signed a parliamentary petition against Perry’s 15% Council Tax hike. Perry ignored them, too.

This week, on November 2, Rowenna Davis – Labour’s candidate for Croydon Mayor – launched a petition of her own, demanding “Fair funding for Croydon”.

This is a welcome change from the Croydon Labour group, which back in 2023 promised to oppose Mayor Perry’s 15% Council Tax hike, then sat on their hands and allowed the tax increase to sail through the council chamber. They could have used their numbers in the council chamber – Labour has 34 councillors to the Tories’ 33 – to pressure Perry to change course and the Conservative government to take action. But they melted quicker than a chocolate fireguard.

So in the course of almost three years, we’ve gone from being snubbed by all the parties, to there now being a cross-party consensus to fund Croydon fairly. You wait for one politician to back you, and then two come along at once.

It’s a bit like Tony Benn said, “It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause, and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.”

Your future in his hands: Steve Reed will decide on Croydon’s funding formula

Well, we still don’t know whether Steve Reed agrees that he should fund Croydon fairly.

As Secretary of State for local government, it will be the Streatham and Croydon North MP who will ultimately decide the new formula for local government funding, and whether Croydon does get fair funding.

Davis is certainly putting the pressure on Reed, her petition asking voters to “join me in telling the government: it’s time Croydon got its fair share”.

Cynics may wonder why both mayoral candidates posted about funding Croydon fairly on the same day. Well, here’s a bit of sleuthing that may explain the coincidence …

Last week, Davis sent out an embargoed press release announcing her “Fair funding for Croydon” campaign. Two days later, Mayor Perry published a blog on exactly this issue. Had he been tipped off?

Davis brought forward her campaign launch by a day, posting her petition online. Perry’s acolytes then accused Davis of imitating him. But Davis has printed campaign materials ready to go already, proving she got there first …

But what matters now for all of us is whether the Secretary of State Steve Reed actually delivers fair funding for Croydon.

Neither Perry, Davis nor any other prospective mayor can fix the finances without it.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Croydon comedy hero Mark Steel to record an episode of his popular podcast What the F*** is Going On?

As well as some analysis of the current state of British politics, we had a bit of a chat about Croydon and some reminiscing about the Corbyn years in Labour, from 2015 to 2019.

Did we figure out what the f*** is going on?

Well, you be the judge. You can listen to part one of the interview on Spotify here.

Perhaps soon we’ll reverse roles and and Mark will be one of the Andrew Fisher Interviews podcast series for Inside Croydon?

Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:

 

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