WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, on a sham challenge issued to rival political parties by a borrowing-dependent Conservative administration that is trying to con the public that they have ‘fixed the finances’
According to one Katharine Street source: “In the four years that he has been Mayor, Perry has never yet managed to deliver a balanced budget.
“He is saying that he and Jason Cummings have been working all year on this year’s budget.
“Yet they have kept the council finance details under wraps until just a fortnight ago.”
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
The council’s annual budget meeting is due to take place in the Town Hall Chamber next Wednesday, February 25. It is probably the most important meeting all year for a council with £1.4billion debts and which since 2020 has had to admit three times that it is effectively bankrupt, most recently in November 2022. Conservative Perry has been Croydon’s executive Mayor since May 2022.
Last week, Perry’s cabinet nodded through the 2026=2027 budget measures, including the latest 4.99% Council Tax rise, on top of previous increases since April 2023 of 15%, 5% and 5%.
The report to that meeting was made available to the majority of Croydon’s councillors, including members of the important scrutiny committee, just five working days beforehand.
Video nasty: Jason Cummings issues his ‘come and have a go’ challenge in the town centre that remains derelict despite Tory promises
This week, Cummings, Perry’s cabinet member for finance, has been appearing in social media videos and saying he has written to all Croydon’s councillors, calling out Labour, the Greens and other political parties – including Deform UK – in some kind of challenge to produce alternative budgets or amendments to his budget.
A sort of Town Hall version of the football chant: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”
Cummings is considered by most Town Hall figures to be the brains behind Perry’s council operation (on the grounds that piss-poor Perry has none).
Cummings, who is paid £40,000 per year in council allowances, says he sent his letter on the same day as last week’s cabinet meeting. Inside Croydon has yet to find any opposition councillors who have actually received this letter. Perhaps Cummings was saving on postage?
It appears that in fact, Cummings’ letter was only published on Croydon Conservatives’ website – a site with only a much-diminished readership.
Cummings’s “letter” is dated February 6. The deadline for submitting any amendments to the budget was February 13.
So, after having spent a year working on their budget with council officials, Cummings is challenging the opposition parties to come up with an alternative, within a week, and without the same access to council-funded back-up from Town Hall staff.
It is, of course, less than three months until local elections on May 7.
Cummings “has challenged those opposing the administration’s budget to be clear about the real choices they would make if they were responsible for running the council”, one Croydon Tory post says.
“Criticism alone is not enough,” Cummings says. Poor lamb.
“Any party opposing the Mayor’s budget must set out, openly and transparently, what services they would change, what savings they would deliver, and how their proposals would operate within Croydon’s strict financial and regulatory constraints.”
Yet no where does Cummings and Perry’s Tories state that they have only been “open and transparent” about their own figures for barely a fortnight.
“Publishing a letter that wasn’t actually sent, issuing a challenge that wasn’t needed, and giving other people a week to do the work that took Cummings a year is nothing more than political theatre,” said one opposition source.
“It is nothing other than a sham. And all done with local elections coming up.”
No opposition: at previous budget meetings, only three councillors have consistently opposed Tory proposals
At previous council budget meetings, the Labour group on the council – the largest, with 34 councillors – has tended to oppose the Tory budgets before caving in and abstaining, thus allowing the budgets to be passed by Perry’s 33 loyal Tory followers.
Only Croydon’s two Green councillors – Esther Sutton and Ria Patel (Fairfield ward) and LibDem Claire Bonham (Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood ward) – have consistently voted against the unbalanced, borrowing-dependent Tory budgets, including Perry’s record 15% Council Tax hike in 2023.
Cummings has been the cabinet member for finance through all this time.
Under Cummings, the council’s finance officials have stopped issuing monthly updates on Town Hall spending.
And a year ago, they went to government to seek the record £132million bail-out, increasing the council’s debts. It was this that prompted the government to send in Commissioners to take on the running of the basketcase council.
Croydon’s debt is still £1.4billion, just as it was when Perry was elected as Mayor in 2022. Yet Cummings and Croydon Conservatives are somehow claiming that they have “fixed the finances”.
Gaslighting: Labour bankrupted the borough, and Tories Perry and Cummings voted for it
“It’s performative political gaslighting,” one opposition source said tonight.
“After 14 years of austerity by Tory-led government which choked off funding to councils, including Croydon, and four years of Perry’s incompetent, blundering leadership, they now have the gall to accuse other parties of being ‘irresponsible’.”
Under Cummings and Mayor Perry, Croydon’s Conservatives have closed four public libraries, axed the dedicated youth outreach team and ended the lollipop road safety patrols at six Croydon primary schools. They also increased the salary paid to Mayor Perry and the allowances received by his council cabinet and councillors.
The 2026-2027 council budget has been put forward only with the apporoval of the government-appointed Commissioners, under the council’s new corporate director for finance, Conrad Hall. Perry, and Cummings, will have had limited say in the matter.
“Amending the budget is pointless if the guy in charge has lost control,” Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, told Inside Croydon tonight.
“In four years, Jason Perry has hiked Council Tax for residents by a staggering 33%. Despite this, budget overspends and financial errors have become the norm.”
No amendment: Labour leader Stuart King
Labour say that they will not be submitting an alternative budget or amendments ahead of next week’s meeting.
Inside Croydon understands that the Green Party has submitted an amendment ahead of next week’s budget meeting that both repeats their call to cuts allowances for the Mayor and senior councillors, and which would also restore the lollipop patrols.
Peter Underwood, the Green Party candidate for Mayor, said “One of the most obscene things we have seen on Croydon Council is Perry’s Conservatives and the Labour cabinet giving themselves a pay rise while approving a budget that cut safety measures for Croydon’s children.
“Our amendment would reverse both of those and put the money back where it’s really needed.” In previous years, the Greens’ budget amendment was not supported by Labour or the Conservatives.
“In an election year it will be interesting to see if they still vote against cutting their own allowances or restoring child safety measures,” Underwood said.
“This could make a difference on how the parties are seen when people get to the polls in the local elections on May 7.”
Voting on council budget measures is not always straightforward.
It is a fact that is left unmentioned whenever Tories Perry and Cummings try to assume the high moral ground over their own failed administration. But in 2019 and 2020, when the last two council budgets were put forward by Tony Newman and Simon Hall, the pair discredited for bankrupting the borough, Conservative councillors Perry and Cummings both voted in favour of Labour’s doomed proposals.
Read more: 33% Council Tax increase: Mayor Perry’s legacy for Croydon
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 PER HOUR consultant
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
Read more: Borrowing plan would lead to council’s ‘collapse’ says report
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
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