KEN LEE, our Town Hall reporter, on the latest £150,000 per year staff signing by Croydon’s bankrupt council
Budget-buster: Jason Perry has hired another £150k exec, while axing front-line council posts
Jason Perry, Croydon’s £84,000 per year executive Mayor who has closed four public libraries to save money and axed lollipop road safety patrols at six primary schools, has welcomed the appointment of Jenny Rowlands, another “interim” council official on a rate of pay that could be as much as £3,000 per week.
Jenny Rowlands, Croydon’s new interim assistant chief executive, attended her first public council meeting last week, when Mayor Perry made warm comments to mark her arrival.
Rowlands was at the council cabinet meeting at which Perry confirmed his plan to hike Council Tax to record levels.
By April, Croydon Council Tax will have been increased by 33% during Perry’s mayoralty. A Band D household in Croydon will be paying £600 more Council Tax this year than they were before Perry became Mayor.
Mayor Perry has never managed to deliver a balanced council budget since he was elected in 2022, and he has needed to borrow hundreds of millions of pounds from central government, including going to Whitehall for £132million in emergency funding a year ago.
Under Perry and the council’s previous chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, the number of executive director or corporate director-level staff, all on six-figure salaries, was close to the levels of empire-building seen at Fisher’s Folly when Jo Negrini and Tony Newman were in charge – before the council’s finances collapsed.
Meanwhile, over the first five years of this decade, more than 400 front-line council jobs were axed or left vacant.
‘Transformation’: Mayor Perry’s claims of having the council ‘back on track’ must refer to the high level of top salary directors he has employed with his former CEO Kerswell
Under Kerswell, by 2024, Croydon had almost twice as many “corporate” directors, each earning more than £140,000 per year, as when the architect of Croydon’s bankruptcy, Jo “Negreedy”, was in charge.
By 2025, the council’s finances had become so shredded, with the biggest bail-out yet and Perry and Kerswell seeking to borrow even more money, that the government sent in Commissioners to oversee the basketcase council’s finances last July.
Some might have seen Kerswell’s exit as an opportunity to save the council £200,000 or more per year by reducing the head count of the executive seventh floor of the council’s offices in Fisher’s Folly.
But not budget-busting Jason Perry.
Until 2020, Croydon had never had an assistant chief executive. The role was created so that Kerswell (who was on £204,000 per year by the time of her departure) could ease her workload, and Elaine Jackson recruited from Tandridge to help out, supposedly on a temporary basis.
Jackson had been due to retire by the end of 2025, but after her boss’s abrupt exit she was persuaded to stay on as Croydon’s interim CEO, through at least until after the local elections are held in May. Jackson’s position’s salary has been listed at £210,724.
‘Makes the impossible happen’: Jenny Rowlands quit as Camden CEO in February 2025
And now Jackson has Rowlands to help sort through the files on redundancy notices and job cuts for the council’s front line services. Rowlands is estimated to be receiving the equivalent of at least £150,000 per year, plus expenses and a generous pension contribution. Which is nice.
At last week’s cabinet meeting, it was more or less admitted that hiring high-level execs, some on as much as £1,000 per day, is all a bit of a scam to get around accountability rules. Most interims are appointed for no more than six months, and when they leave, there is no requirement for any redundancy pay-outs, providing the employers, the council, with flexibility over some appointments.
What was not mentioned was that interim directors can be appointed without their nomination ever going before the cross-party appointments committee – most interims were hand-picked by Kerswell when she was CEO. And it also avoids having to declare in public reports the pay deal agreed with the interim, many of whom operate through “tax efficient” (ie. tax-avoiding) private consultancy companies.
Rowlands’ pay arrangements with Croydon Council are not known. Yet.
This time last year, Rowlands was working as chief executive at Camden, a Labour-controlled council, a job she held for six years.
No real reason was given for Rowlands’ departure from that top job. “Ms Rowlands has not revealed what her future plans are but said ‘working in and with communities will remain my calling’,” the Local Government Chronicle reported in February 2025.
In February 2026, Croydon Council has made no public announcement of this appointment to the second most senior role in the organisation. Almost as if they have something to hide…
In July 2024, Rowlands will have been seen on television by millions of people across the country, as she was the election official who made the announcement that Sir Keir Starmer had retained his parliamentary seat at Holburn and St Pancras, on the night he was to lead the Labour Party back into government.
The occasion was deemed to be so important, that Rowlands had members of her family in attendance at the election count.
The Camden New Journal reported last year that Rowlands “is known to be a smitten new grandmother and is understood to be taking some time out to decide what she will do next”.
Playing second fiddle in Croydon was never suggested then as a likely next step.
Rowlands was known to have a close working relationship with Camden’s previous council leader, Georgia Gould, a Labour “nepo-baby” who became an MP in 2024.
It has been suggested that Rowlands may have opted to move on after Gould was replaced as leader by Councillor Richard Olszewski.
“Jenny is the kind of leader that makes the impossible happen,” Gould said of Rowlands. Might Croydon Mayor Perry think that his new interim assistant chief executive can help him cling on to office after May 7?
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 per hour consultant
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
Read more: Go West! Cash-strapped council’s finance chief is set to quit
Read more: £1,000 per day ‘Interim Adam’ was Kerswell’s personal pick
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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But this is not a new position is it? It’s always been part of the council structure even in the bad old days of Labour. I also can only assume that the salary you refer to is set Nationally and not set on a whim! Finally the current Interim CEO was the Deputy CEO to Kerswell! I get your point on salaries against council tax increases that the whole council agreed to since 2022 but the spin is questionable! It would be good if anyone can give some alternatives to solving Croydon’s finances instead of council tax hikes.
We know you have become a Perry stooge, Les, but didn’t realise you can’t read.
Our report makes it absolutely clear: Croydon did not have an assistant CEO until Kerswell demanded one.
And pay agreements with interims are set by mutual consent, so may be in excess of national agreements. Hence the £1,000 per day deals and £700 PER HOUR appointment agreed with certain consultants under your new bestie Jason.
Do try to keep up.
What happened to the administrators that the government supposedly appointed a while back? Did they ever do anything useful?
Commissioners, Adrian.
Kerswell’s gone. Perry’s cunning plan to borrow even more has been binned.
Errr, that’s it. So far, at least.
“Ms Rowlands has not revealed what her future plans are but said ‘working in and with communities will remain my calling’,” the Local Government Chronicle reported in February 2025.
In other words, she is wating to see where the Local Government gravy train will take her next ?