Inside Croydon has obtained a top-secret, ‘Part B’ council report providing key financial details on the collapsed property deal for Red Clover Gardens – all because someone at Croydon’s cash-strapped and incompetent council posted it on their own website
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon Council has been forced to pay half-a-million pounds of “hush money” to a property firm just to be able to repossess three blocks of flats in Coulsdon after the buyers failed to come up with the promised £22million to complete the deal.
That’s according to a confidential “Part B” agenda report, which Inside Croydon has obtained because Croydon’s incompetent council published it on their own website, despite its supposedly “secret” status.
The report clarifies the amount that the council has been stiffed for over blocks B, D and E at Red Clover Gardens: £22million. That’s £2million more than was included in previous council reports published before Christmas.
It was Perry who, in 2023, pushed through the dodgy-looking sale and lease-back arrangements for three of the five “architect-designed” blocks of flats built on the Lion Green Road car park in Coulsdon.
Taken together, the 157 flats were reckoned to have a market value approaching £50million. Mayor Perry’s crack negotiators at the council only managed to get a sale price of £38million, in the convoluted deal with Regen Capital, a little-known company that some suggested did not have the financial clout to undertake such a deal.
‘Confidential’: the council has published this supposedly secret ‘Part B’ report on the permanently deferred capital receipt for Red Clover Gardens its own website
Lawyers have been engaged to secure the council’s assets, and two charges have been placed on Regen Coulsdon – the subsidiary established to manage the arrangement – in order to take back three of the blocks on the site as council assets.
There has been “a change in disposal strategy” at the council, according this week to Councillor Jason Cummings, who is in charge of the finances in Mayor Perry’s council cabinet.
That “change in strategy” now includes the council paying £500,000 to a company that has defaulted on its agreement three years ago to buy the property at Red Clover Gardens.
Perry will undoubtedly claim that the residents of Croydon should be grateful that his top team of commercial negotiators got such a good deal: the audacious directors at Essex-based Regen had originally demanded a cool £1million to walk away from the deal.
The council report “Red Clover Gardens Deferred Capital Receipt” is dated February 10, and shows Mayor Perry as the “lead member”, together with his cabinet members Cummings and Lynne Hale (whose day job is working for Croydon South Tory MP Chris Philp, whose constituency includes Coulsdon).
Money no object: Jason Perry has been trying to cover up the collapsed property deal for the past year – even handing £½m ‘hush money’ to the company that defaulted on the purchase
The document is marked “Confidential”, and as a “Part B” agenda item. “Part Bs” in councilspeak are the bits of council business that officials really don’t want the public to see or know about.
For some reason, there was a two-week hiatus between the decision being taken and the publication of the report.
The report was published on Thursday, February 26, the day after the Town Hall meeting to discuss Perry’s council’s runaway spending.
The lead council official for the report is listed as Conrad Hall, the recently appointed interim director for finance, although the report shows his predecessor, Jane Hall, as the “decision-taker”. Hall left her job at Croydon Council two months ago, just after the settlement with Regen was reached on Christmas Eve.
The six-page report says that it includes “exempt information”: “Exempt under paragraph(s) 3 and 5 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 and the public interest in withholding disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
Which is councilspeak for telling the public that half-a-mill of public cash is none of their business…
Yet having gone to all that trouble to cover this up, someone at the council pressed the button to publish. Whoever it was deserves special recognition for bringing this latest Perry-inspired scandal into the public domain.
The report states: “Further to the Mayoral Decision on 19th December under Decision reference 3025EM – Red Clover Gardens Deferred Capital Receipt, the Council has now reached a commercial settlement with Regen Coulsdon.
“The approach aligns with the Recommendation to pursue without prejudice negotiations with Regen Coulsdon Ltd to seek a commercial settlement of up to £0.500m to transfer the asset and settle any disputed claims in lieu of the deferred capital receipt.”
Hush hush: how the confidential Part B report appears on the council’s website
The report goes on to state that the £0.5million settlement “include[s] a mutual waiver of claims each party has against the other and a mutual non disparagement [sic] clause”. Which means that Perry and Cummings can’t slag off Regen in public. And Regen can’t disclose publicly details of their lease disputes with the council. So it is half-a-million quid of hush money.
Looking on the bright side, the council report says: “The Council will receive the benefits of not having to pay Headlease payments whilst retaining the Underlease with Plexus and continuing to receive lease income. The Council will use Right to Buy Monies to pay for the £0.500m to receive 100% SDLT [Stamp Duty Land Tax] exemption.
“All other costs will be covered via Reserves or Corporate Contingency budget.” So that’s all right then.
Buried in the report is what appears to be the true amount unpaid by Regen: £22million.
Throwing £500,000 at Regen was seen as a better option than dragging them through the courts for non-payment of the £22million. “The enforcement option would have take[n] three to six months and would come with some uncertainties eg potential for cost increases.” The chances of any enforcement action costing the council more than £500,000 seem remote.
“The outcome aligns with the best option presented as part of the Mayoral Decision,” the report states. Because handing over half-a-million-pounds of public money to a couple of Essex businessmen as a kind of gagging clause is what small businessman Jason Perry appears to be best at.
By some calculations, Regen look to have walked away from its negotiations with cash-strapped Croydon Council with at least £4million of what used to be public money. The curse of Brick by Brick has struck once again.
By the time of this article’s publication, neither Mayor Perry’s Conservatives nor the opposition Labour group at the Town Hall had called for any kind of urgent, third-party investigation by the police or HMRC into the council’s latest financial scandal.
Read more: Tory council loses £20m over Coulsdon collapsed property deal
Read more: Perry has stabilised council finances in state of perpetual crisis
Read more: Brick by Brick’s final flats put up for rent at £2,400 per month
Read more: Coulsdon flats deal was rushed through as massive tax dodge
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
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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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Regen Capital are based in Essex, and still Piss-Poor went ahead and wasted (our) public money in a property deal. It is still two months until we can get rid of Perry the Plonker, and plenty of time for yet more revelations of his incompetence to be exposed.
The one thing that must happen this time, after the guilty parties in Labour’s crashing of Croydon’s finances all escaped justice, is that Piss-Poor should have his passport taken away, and he should be arrested straight after the elections, as he is an obvious flight risk, and Croydon has precedent for this with its first mayor, Jabez Balfour, who fled to Argentina , and was dragged back to the UK to stand trial. The mayoral system is doomed in Croydon, and we should give up with them altogether after both the first and last mayor brought the office into disrepute