EXCLUSIVE: It’s trebles all-round for directors at Croydon’s cash-strapped council, as there’s a second generous pay rise in 12 months for council chiefs, while allowances paid to councillors are also to rise, and amount to £1.6m per year.
Yet long-suffering Croydon residents will now be paying Council Tax bills of more than £2,000 per year. By STEVEN DOWNES
Jason Perry, Croydon’s £84,000 per year executive Mayor, will tonight award himself a £2,700 pay rise – less than 48 hours after he was given a warning from Westminster following the latest multi-million-pound bail-out for his basketcase, cash-strapped council.
In the red: Jason Perry’s given himself a pay rise. Another one
For the avoidance of any doubt, Katharine Street sources have confirmed that part-time Perry’s pay increase is not performance-related.
Yesterday, Alison McGovern, the local government minister, handed Croydon its latest chunk of “emergency financial support”, this time £119million, just so that Perry and his interim CEO, Elaine Jackson, can make their budget balance.
“Given the support we have agreed to today, it is my clear expectation that your council… will take the action needed to deliver better and more efficient services, as part of your financial recovery,” McGovern wrote in her formal notice to Mayor Perry.
Tonight in the Town Hall Chamber, Perry will preside over the last full council budget meeting of his four-year term in office. Meanwhile, external auditors are poring over the books trying to locate £15million that has gone “missing” from the council’s education budget for SEND families – Special Educational Needs and Disabilities – and at the same time special debt-collection measures are being taken to chase an unpaid £20million for the purchase of Brick by Brick’s final properties.
Yet according to Tory Perry, he’s got Croydon’s finances “back on track”.
With Perry supposedly in charge of the Town Hall, Croydon has needed £317.3million in government bail-outs since 2023. The council’s debt today is £1.4billion, the same as when Perry was elected Mayor.
Tonight’s budget meeting is expected to set Croydon Council Tax for 2026-2027, with a 4.99% increase, the maximum allowed without a referendum or intervention from government (as Perry requested in 2023 when he hiked CTax by 15%).
Threshold broken: this year’s Council Tax increase means only the 3,830 Croydon households in Band A won’t be paying more than £2,000 per year in Council Tax
Croydon Council Tax has risen by a compound total of 33% since 2023, meaning that from April this year, those living in a typical, Band D, home will be paying £2,599.91 over the coming year – £600 more than they were paying before Jason Perry became Croydon Mayor.
Significantly, this latest increase means that 97% of Croydon households are now expected to pay at least £2,000 in Council Tax each year – paying more, and getting less from their local authority.
Government warnings and Council Tax pain hasn’t stopped Perry from pushing through recommendations that he and his council cabinet should all receive increases in pay or allowances of 3%.
In a report buried under a mountain of papers, Croydon’s Pay Policy Settlement (item 6) and Members’ Scheme of Allowances 2026/27 (item 6), come earlier on the agenda than the budget debate. Cynics might say that this is a sign of where Perry and the borough’s councillors’ priorities truly lie.
As they did last year, Labour – with 34 seats the largest group on the council – will not oppose the increase in councillors’ allowances when the item is brought forward tonight.
Councillors’ basic allowance, paid to all 70 councillors, will increase from £11,984 to £12,367.
The seven members of the Mayor’s cabinet will each receive an additional £29,093, up from the current £28,191. This means the likes of Scott Roche, the utterly rubbish cabinet member for streets and environment, who has seen Croydon become the worst authority in the country for fly-tipping, could trouser £41,460. Unless Perry sacks him, or the Tories lose the local elections on May 7.
Rewards for failure: despite the council’s appalling financial position, Conservative and Labour councillors are expected to vote themselves a pay rise tonight
There’s also extra payments for deputy cabinet members, opposition leaders, chief whips and even political group secretaries. It all amounts to £1.6million a year – back to the levels of largesse from the bad old days under Tony Newman, who used the allowances system to reward loyalty. And to reward failure.
Included among such generosity with public money is the salary paid to the elected Mayor, which in 2026-2027 will rise to £86,628, up from the present £83,942.
It is the second rise Perry has given himself in 12 months, his pay having gone up from £82,000 last year.
Labour sources say that they won’t oppose the increase in Perry’s pay or councillor allowances, because they see the payments as vital for allowing people of all backgrounds to seek election to the council. “It would be wrong to limit who stands for the council just to those who are independently wealthy,” said one of the borough’s councillors, who just happens to have a full-time job elsewhere and attends to council business in their spare time.
No opposition: Labour’s 34 councillors won’t be voting against Mayor Perry’s pay increase, or the increase in their own allowances, despite the council’s dire financial position
What is left unsaid is that Conservative and Labour councillors alike all secretly channel some of their allowances – usually around 10% – straight into their own party’s coffers, in what has become a scandalous subsidy of the borough’s political duopoly, using public funds from a local authority that has been bankrupted three times by the very groups who will tonight be voting these measures through.
When it comes to doling out public cash, Perry reserves his greatest generosity with other people’s money for the council chiefs and directors who, by most assessments, are the very same people who have got the council into the mess it is in today.
The Greens on the council have tabled an amendment for tonight calling for staff on salaries of £100,000 or more to have a pay freeze.
Perry is having none of that.
The part-time Mayor is not waiting for a nationally negotiated pay settlement to come through, and instead he is recommending that the council’s chief executive’s salary should increase from £204,000 to £210,724. Because, of course, the post-holders in that role have been doing such a bang-up job…
Who is really in charge?: Katherine Kerswell was allowed much leeway as CEO by Mayor Jason Perry
Not included in the public documents for tonight’s meeting is the additional 20% cost of funding the chief exec’s pension pot – another £40,000 a year or so that Council Tax-payers will need to fund.
There was more than a sense that last year, Perry was almost bullied into giving the then CEO, Katherine Kerswell, a £12,000 pay rise, from £192,000. This year’s increase looks like a carrot to entice whoever takes over, following Kerswell’s departure in October with a £50,000 golden handshake (another public money payment approved by Perry, just to spare the embarrassment of Kerswell working her notice period).
Elaine Jackson, who Kerswell appointed to the previously non-existent position of assistant chief executive, is filling in the top job for now, presumably until after the elections in May, when she can then take the retirement she postponed last autumn.
Despite the council effectively being in special measures, with government-appointed Commissioners overseeing Croydon’s omnishambles since last July, there’s been no freeze on recruitment. Not for top-level staff, that is.
Special scarcity allowance: Jenny Rowlands, in the council non-job of council interim assistant chief executive
Interim CEO Jackson wasted little time in hiring her own interim assistant chief exec, with Jenny Rowlands being handed the non-job. Council papers show that from April, Croydon’s assistant chief executive will be on pay of £165,667 – plus exes and pension contributions. That includes what the council calls a “Special Occupancy Scarcity Allowance” of £7,769.
All in all, that’s almost £3,200 per week, in a Tory-controlled borough which last year axed its primary school lollipop patrols to save 50 grand… What was it Alison McGovern said about “better and more efficient services”?
Perry’s pay rise bonanza extends to five other “corporate directors”, who will now be on salaries of up to £186,047 (apparently, there’s occupational scarcity in some of those roles, too), plus eight employees at director level, on between £129,901 and £135,064.
Again, none of the pay awards being approved by Mayor Perry tonight are understood to be in any way performance-related…
And all under a Mayor who refuses to take questions of genuine public concern and interest from the borough’s leading news website.
It might be worth remembering that when your Council Tax bill drops on the doormat between now and April. Or when you stroll to the polling stations on May 7.
- Click here for the council report on senior staff pay
- Click here for the report on how Perry wants to increase his pay and allowances for councillors
Mayor Jason Perry has refused to give a pre-election interview to Inside Croydon, where he would face questions about his record in office- Paid-up subscribers to this website can listen to The Andrew Fisher Interview with Labour’s Rowenna Davis by clicking here
- Andrew Fisher will be interviewing Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Howard and the Green Party’s Peter Underwood over the next few weeks
- We still have an empty Zoom slot available for Mayor Perry, should he pluck up the courage to face some proper public scrutiny
Read more: Budget-buster Perry hires another six-figure salaried ‘interim’
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
Read more: £1,000 per day ‘Interim Adam’ was Kerswell’s personal pick
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 PER HOUR consultant
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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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Porky Perry fattening himself up, rather like a Turkey, but he won’t have to wait until Xmas to get the axe! Local election is in May, bye,bye Porky!
The countdown to Piss-Poor Perry being booted out of office continues. The 7th of May is just over two months away. Can we start counting in weeks from the start of March, and in (his remaining) days from the start of April?
If his neglected plastic guttering family business also fails, while he has been gorging himself on the Croydon branch served by the local government gravy train, he will have to go somewhere else to beg because nobody in Croydon will ever give him any more money ?!
Harsh. But fair.