Council’s top lawyer questioned over the public funds used to distribute a propaganda freesheet worthy of something from the regime of dictator Kim Jong-un. WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, reports
Enough to make Korean dictator blush: Jason Perry has been misusing the council’s public funds to produce his propaganda freesheets
Jason Perry has been accused of abusing his position as Croydon Mayor and spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax-payers’ money on his own political propaganda, just weeks ahead of the local elections.
Perry, the £86,000 per year Mayor who has hiked Council Tax by 33% since 2023, has shamelessly included a two-page A4 letter with the annual Council Tax mail-outs sent to all property owners in the borough to try to suggest he’s been doing a bang-up job.
And on top of that, a fifth edition of Our Croydon, the council-funded freesheet, is also being thrust through residents’ letter boxes, whether they want it or not.
Whether they want it or not, residents are also paying for this barely disguised piece of Tory Party propaganda. Perry has authorised the cash-strapped council to spend more than £150,000 in the past year having this propaganda rag printed and distributed around the borough.
The true cost is undoubtedly much more, due to the use of council staff in the propaganda bunker working on the writing, lay-out, photography and editing of the publication.
Our Croydon is supposed to cover its costs through commercial advertising.
But apart from “house ads” for council departments and contractors, there’s little evidence of any ad sales in the latest edition: less than three of the 32 pages of the latest, February 2026, issue might be regarded as from external advertisers. Any commercial publication would expect to have 50% of paid advertising to be viable.
Produced on cheap newsprint that is good only for lining a cat’s litter tray, Our Croydon also compromises editorial independence, as it is printed for the council by Wretch Plc, the publishers of the Croydon Sadvertiser.
The Sadvertiser is the almost forgotten local newspaper which in 2025 was selling just 486 copies each week – down from 70,000 per week 12 years ago.
Blank sheets: the Sadvertiser has virtually no weekly sales any longer. Its publishers make money doing print jobs for Perry’s council
Wretch are also the organisation behind a couple of local news sites that use reporters whose wages are subsidised by the BBC, but which are not based in the borough. Their commercial relationship with Croydon Council may explain the softly-softly approach adopted to coverage of failed Mayor Perry’s various disasters and bungles inflicted on residents.
Inside Croydon reported last year how Perry’s cash-strapped council was distributing Our Croydon to 170,000 households around the borough, while at the same time cutting services and axing jobs.
It was more than a decade ago when Conservative government minister “Big” Eric Pickles declared war on “Town Hall Pravdas“, freesheets printed by local councils as propaganda exercises, all paid for out of the public’s Council Tax.
That appears to be of no concern to Tory Mayor Perry, who has shamelessly produced another “news” sheet so devoted to his image and “achievements” that, if it were published in North Korea, would make even Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un blush.
The latest Our Croydon might be better titled His Croydon: the 32 pages are crammed with almost 40 references to “Executive Mayor” or “Jason Perry”, including a whole page from the man who has presided over more than 1,000 fly-tips per week for the past couple of years, in which he claims he has made the borough “cleaner”.
Money for nuffin’: the council’s ad rates represent such poor value that hardly anyone bothers to advertise in Our Croydon, despite it having 170,000 guaranteed circulation
There is, of course, good reason for Perry to prefer forcing his election propaganda through your letterbox, rather than continuing with his series of Mayor’s Question Times public meetings around the borough: he just can’t trust himself not to drop another multi-million-pound bollock.
It was at a public meeting that Perry put his foot in it and told his audience that he couldn’t remove the ANPR cameras that he had had installed on six Low Traffic Neighbourhoods because the council needed the fine revenue that they would generate. A High Court judge earlier this month ruled Perry’s LTNs to be “unlawful”, forcing the removal of the fine-generating equipment – and leaving the council liable to make refunds of an estimated £10million in fines.
At least with Our Croydon, Perry has someone to check over the words attributed to him before he costs our skint council any more money.
A mug’s game: Perry was namechecked 21 times and had his photo in the first edition of Our Croydon 11 times. He is accused of abusing his office over the spend on the publication
Previous editions of Our Croydon drew formal complaints from residents to Katherine Kerswell when she was Croydon Council’s chief executive.
But Kerswell ignored the residents who paid her salary.
It might be regarded as extraordinary that this propaganda stunt – at your expense – is being pulled off right under the noses of the government-appointed Commissioners, who were sent in to Croydon last year to oversee how the authority is spending public money.
And the latest Our Croydon was produced in the same month that Perry was having to go to government to request another bail-out, this time £119million to balance his council budget for 2025-2026.
Stuart King, the leader of the Labour group at the Town Hall, has now filed a formal complaint to the council’s senior legal official, Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense.
King refers to “ongoing concern about the use of council resources to pay for the cost of printing and distributing the Our Croydon publication”.
King writes, “This is discretionary spend by the council at a time when it needs to borrow millions to balance its day-to-day spending.” Advertising from outside the council “has not covered” the cost of Our Croydon, as had been promised, King says.
“The topics covered in the publication are all issues being campaigned on by the Mayor in his political capacity. This cannot be a coincidence.”
King also raises the matter of a new weekly email on environmental matters, as well as the letter sent out to every household with Council Tax demands. “The letter uses language and content that is associated with the Mayor’s political campaigns,” King wrote.
“In light of these areas of concern, can you advise whether you are confident that these publications do not breach the authority’s responsibility to ensure council resources are not used for partisan or party political purposes or in a way that might advance the interests of one or more candidates at the forthcoming election?”
Councillor King copied his letter to the BBC-funded reporter who works for a small-circulation local newspaper which is owned by the company that has the printing contract for Our Croydon.
But this report on Inside Croydon is the first you will have read about it. Funny that…
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
- And you can listen to last week’s Andrew Fisher Interview with Liberal Democrat Richard Howard by clicking here
- Andrew Fisher will be interviewing 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: Campaigners accuse council of ‘misinformation’ over fly-tips
Read more: High Court judge orders end to Croydon’s ‘unlawful’ LTNs
Read more: Perry agrees to pay £½m to reclaim flats at Red Clover Gardens
Read more: Now Perry wants to axe school safety patrols to save £58,000
Read more: Silicon Alley: 800 Croydon firms have closed under Mayor Perry
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May be if i had known it was made with cheap thin paper i would saved money on our toilet rolls remember using paper in the outside toilet up north in 1966 when i was 7 yrs old those days have come back to croydon under perry’s spending.
Perry’s propaganda sheet included with my latest Council Tax bill was very timely, as I had just run out of toilet paper. Piss Poor must be given the order of the boot in May!
Having just viewed my online Council Tax demand from Croydon, I was very offended that an official bill for council services incorporated a propaganda flyer from Perry. To have lies included with the legal document was inappropriate. That every household in the Borough received this, prior to local elections, implied that this was an official statement concerning Council spending and budget explaining why the charges have risen. Is he legally entitled to do this?
I have challenged this to the monitoring officer yesterday, that is breach of legislation. I have also made a formal complaint. I suggest that everyone does the same,
Can you provide a sample letter and email address, please, Mark?
I haven’t received the bill, or the free sheet … am I off the radar? Or immune? BTW, all local authorities send out a load of guff and financial info with the bill. If there are blatant lies, or attempts to influence the forthcoming election that’s wrong. I don’t think it’s illegal until ‘purdah’ – if we’re allowed to use that term
Using council resource to send party political material is illegal, whatever time of year. It is an abuse of power and a misuse of our money.
I’ve just got my bill, including Perry’s piece. At last. It’s quite well-written, so I guess it’s someone else’s work. But it’s hard to see the allegations of propaganda standing up in court. There’s no mention of any political party and the ‘achievements’ as such are all debateable. I’m not a Perry fan, but this ‘achievements’ paper isn’t worth a fight – there are plenty of other issues that are worth pursuing. PS: I’ve seen much worse bill letters to tax-payers
MHCLG published the Recommended code of practice for local authority publicity in 2011 (available on the Gov.UK website), which sets out what is and isn’t acceptable.
Para 3: “Nothing in this code overrides the prohibition by Section 2 of the [Local Government Act 1986] on the publication by local authorities of material which in whole or in part appears to be designed to affect public support for a political party.”
That’s prohibition. Meaning that it is not allowed.
Para 16: “Any publicity describing the council’s policies and aims should be as objective as possible, concentrating on the facts or explanation or both. Local authorities should not use public funds to mount publicity campaigns whose primary purpose is to persuade the public to hold a particular view on a question of policy…”
Para 19: “Where local authority publicity addresses matters of political controversy it should seek to present the different positions in relation to the issue in question in a fair manner.”
And para 24: “… Publicity material produced by local authorities relating to a particular member must not seek to affect public support for that individual.” [where in this case, “member” means Perry]
To read the guidance note in all its glory, click here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a75a04aed915d506ee80433/1878324.pdf.
And please, will someone read this to Croydon Council’s Monitoring Officer, former esate agent Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, as either the council’s chief legal official doesn’t understand the law (or what “prohibition” means), or he’s failed to uphold the law.
Maybe Perry didn’t ask Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense about the legality of taxpayer funded election propaganda, or did but ignored the advice he was given
I remember when in Greenwich the council had to stop producing their newsletter because it contravened Eric Pickles rules. I have often thought that Jason Perry is using his position to extol his successes. I am fed up of seeing his photo on every publication Croydon produces. That’s propaganda! He needs to be stopped.
Ah, the Greenwich ‘newspaper’ – it was an affront! No wonder ‘Big Eric’ threw a wobbly – the right word given his bulk. BTW – Croydon produced MUCH worse shit under a previous Tory administration. Remember Hugh Malyon – 2001 to 2005? The Croydon paper back then reached astronomical levels of gurning photos and back-slapping
Hugh Malyan was Labour