Richard Howard, the former British Army bomb disposal expert, has pulled the pin out on the 2026 Croydon mayoral election campaign by confirming that one of the first things he would do if elected as the borough’s executive Mayor is look to restructure radically the upper tiers of the cash-strapped council’s management – starting by abolishing the role of council chief executive.
Howard reveals his explosive idea in the latest Andrew Fisher Interview, as the Inside Croydon columnist delves into the policies and personalities of the leading candidates for Croydon Mayor.
Cash-strapped Croydon, which has debts of £1.4billion, currently pays its (interim) chief executive £210,000 per year, plus another 20% on top of that in pension contributions. Croydon also has an assistant chief executive, on £166,000 lus similar add-ons.
Both roles had generous salary increases voted through last month by Tory Mayor Jason Perry, who also gave himself a pay rise, to £86,000, not long after hiking Council Tax bills to more than £2,000 per year for most properties across the borough, and after having needed another £119million bail-out from government just to balance his budget.
For Richard Howard, after six years of the council bouncing from bankruptcy notice to cash crisis and back again, what Croydon needs is “transformative leadership”..
He tells interviewer Andrew Fisher: “And that’s something that I don’t think is on offer by either the current Conservative Mayor or the Labour candidate either.”
Howard says: “One of the first things I would do is that I think that the senior management levels is too over-bureaucratic and bloated. We have one of the largest numbers of directors and senior directors for any London borough. And that’s been the case for a long time, again, under both Labour and Conservative administrations.
“I don’t believe that you need to have an executive Mayor and a chief executive. So one of the first things that I would do is to disestablish the role of chief executive and take that under the executive Mayor. From there, what I would like to see is a less tiered approach. So a slimmed down, flatter structure.”
Howard also outlines how he would take a long hard look at the toxic pollution coming from the Beddington incinerator – a pet project of his LibDem party colleagues who run Sutton Council – and how he recognises that he would have to work with cross-party support at the Town Hall if elected on a brief of turning around the council’s finances.
The Andrew Fisher Interview and our other Under The Flyover podcasts are premium content for Inside Croydon’s paying subscribers, who help to support the headline-making journalism produced daily by Inside Croydon.
Click here to listen to the Richard Howard interview in full.
Read more: The Fraud: how Reed’s Labour spied on Croydon councillors
Read more: £84,000 per year Tory Mayor approves his own pay rise
Read more: Labour’s Davis looks to CPO the ‘hole in the heart of Croydon’
Read more: Budget-buster Perry hires another six-figure salaried ‘interim’
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