Two years ago, I wrote of Croydon Council’s sale of the residential blocks at Red Clover Gardens in Coulsdon: “Does [Jason] Cummings [the council cabinet member for finance] think that Regen are waiving their payments for two years out of the kindness of their hearts? Of course, they know the council is desperate and the Tories are eager to get this to the other side of the 2026 elections. It is Croydon’s Council Tax-payers who get shafted in the end.”
Money-spinners: someone is making a load of money out these Brick by Brick flats. Just not the people of Croydon
With the council now forced to admit that they have not been paid £22million in settlement of their opaque arrangement with Regen Capital and its subsidiary, Regen Coulsdon, my prediction has, sadly, become reality. Croydon residents have been shafted again, and this time with Mayor Jason Perry paying Regen £500,000 hush money – more, even, than Tony Newman gave as a pay-off to Jo Negrini after she did so much to crash the council’s finances.
The curse of Brick by Brick has struck again.
What now needs to happen with Red Clover Gardens goes far beyond tidying up a failed transaction. It requires clarity and transparency about political judgement, governance standards, financial stewardship and above all, candour with Croydon’s residents.
It is why I have called for an independent investigation into the whole deal.
The story arc is now clear. In 2024, when I wrote that selling five blocks and then effectively buying back three of them through a complex leasing structure looked like a tax-driven refinancing device rather than a housing strategy, Mayor Perry’s council dismissed those concerns. The official narrative at the time emphasised “increased availability of social rented homes” and the avoidance of Right to Buy exposure.
Now, in March 2026, and our council has had to pay £500,000 just to secure repossession of the freehold of three of the blocks, in lieu of enforcing a £22million deferred capital receipt.
That is not a vindication of the original structure. It is an admission that the structure failed.
So, the first question is unavoidable: do Mayor Jason Perry and Councillor Jason Cummings accept that the original sale and leaseback approach was ill-judged?
In 2024, I argued that selling five blocks only to retain exposure through a complicated and opaque sale and leaseback arrangement and relying on deferred capital mechanics created complexity without eliminating risk. We have now ended up with the council owning three blocks outright after paying a settlement. If the ultimate outcome is partial council ownership, why was that not the starting position in the first place?
Which leads directly to strategy. What is the policy now with regards Red Clover Gardens?
In 2023-2024, it was clearly part of a disposal and refinancing strategy. Today, with the freehold transferred, the economic reality is closer to a retention model. Has the council formally shifted from “disposal strategy” to “retention strategy”? If so, where is the published business case explaining this radical change of approach?
There is also the matter of due diligence. Until last summer, the council’s management was overseen by a (Conservative) government-imposed improvement and assurance panel. The panel’s eighth report, published in December 2024, emphasised the need for robust governance, financial discipline and proper risk management as Croydon continued to rely on exceptional financial support – multi-million-pound government bail-outs.
Given that, how did the council structure a transaction where a deferred capital receipt could be breached by the investor, leading to default and emergency action? Was counterparty risk adequately stress-tested? Were macroeconomic sensitivities, referenced in 2024, properly modelled?
‘Completely naive’: Coulsdon councillor Ian Parker told residents that nothing could go wrong with the Regen deal
In 2023, Ian Parker, a Conservative councillor for Coulsdon Town, reportedly told a concerned resident that the deal couldn’t really go wrong. In light of an investor default, special urgency notices and a negotiated £500,000 payment, that assessment now looks at best complacent, if not completely naive.
The issue is not hindsight; it is whether councillors were over-reassured at the time by the council’s senior staff and whether internal advice downplayed risk.
We also neeed to know whether vested interests played any part.
There is a further structural question: why was the current end-state (council ownership of the affordable blocks) not pursued from the outset?
The council’s 2023 report explicitly sought to avoid Right to Buy exposure through an underlease to a registered provider. Yet the 2026 position achieves effective control without ongoing headlease payments. If that model is legally and financially viable in 2026, why was it rejected in 2024?
What assumptions changed? Planning? Funding rates? Stamp Duty Land Tax treatment? Or political expediency?
Whose idea was this opaque arrangement for deferred payments?
Accountability must also extend to origins. Who designed the original headlease and deferred receipt structure?
Was it financial engineering by a council official? Was it Mayor-driven urgency to close a Brick by Brick exposure? Or did it come from some external advisors?
Best value: did former finance director Jane West get the best price for Red Clover Gardens?
The Kroll Report into the £73million Fairfield Halls fiasco and the independent auditors’ Public Interest Reports into other failed council transactions repeatedly identified weak contracting discipline and over-optimistic assumptions in complex property structures. It is looking very much as if Red Clover Gardens repeated similar governance failures under a different administration.
The use of “special urgency” as an excuse to bypass scrutiny should raise a governance red flag. Regulation 11 was invoked because the council needed to act quickly to secure assets worth £22million.
But Regen missed a payment deadline in March last year, and then a longstop payment date in November. The council knew the payment dates in advance. Why was contingency planning not brought transparently to cabinet and the scrutiny committee earlier?
This artificial compression of scrutiny windows undermines the very governance improvements that have been demanded by both the improvement and assurance panel and the government-appointed Commissioners who replaced them.
And there are legal duties here, too. Section 151 officers – the council’s finance directors, which over the past year have been Jane West and Conrad Hall – must ensure prudent financial management. Long-term disposal of assets below market value requires approval from the Secretary of State. The council’s historic Public Interest Reports made clear that weak challenge and inadequate documentation can amount to failures of governance.
Slow progress: the Coulsdon site was late to be completed, and has been dogged by problems since
In this case, the key test is whether the council achieved best price and managed risk proportionately. Was paying £500,000 instead of taking enforcement action really best value for money for Croydon residents?
The political optics of this cannot be ignored.
The settlement includes a mutual waiver of claims and non-disparagement clause only a few weeks before the council and mayoral elections. Who benefits from Regen not being able to criticise the council?
What needs to happen next is straightforward.
- First, publication of a consolidated financial statement for Red Clover Gardens, setting out original acquisition cost, projected headlease liabilities, underlease income assumptions, deferred receipt value, and the final net position after settlement
- Second, an explicit cabinet statement confirming the council’s long-term asset strategy for the site: retention, disposal, or mixed tenure and the rationale for any shift
- Third, a full, independent investigation examining whether due diligence, counterparty risk assessment and scrutiny processes met the standards expected, addressing who was responsible for coming up with the deal’s structure, and who ultimately benefited from this arrangement
- Finally, political clarity: do the Mayor and Conservative councillors now accept that the 2023-2024 structure was a mistake?
Red Clover Gardens should not become another chapter in Croydon’s history of complex property engineering followed by retrospective rationalisation. It should be the moment where complexity gives way to simplicity, opacity to transparency, and defensiveness to accountability.
The inability of Jason Perry to obtain a long-term, financially sustainable deal from this or the previous government is due to his failure to demonstrate that the council has the necessary governance and financial discipline to ensure they don’t just make the same mistakes again.
This entire affair illustrates precisely why that deal is still not on the table.
- Richard Howard is a professional financial analyst. He is the Liberal Democrat Party’s candidate for Croydon Mayor, and a candidate in Coulsdon Town at the local elections on May 7
Read more: Tory council loses £20m over Coulsdon collapsed property deal
Read more: Perry agrees to pay £½m to reclaim flats at Red Clover Gardens
Read more: Coulsdon flats deal was rushed through as massive tax dodge
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