With Tory Jason Perry’s election pledges dropping on residents’ doormats this week and Labour candidate Rowenna Davis publishing her manifesto, the claims and promises of the two front-runners for Croydon Mayor are examined here by ANDREW FISHER
While incumbent Mayor Jason Perry hasn’t (yet) issued a manifesto, his election leaflet sets out what he considers the six key bits of his record, under the title “Lots done. Lots more to do.”
Top of the Mayor’s list is “fixing the finances”, which will be news to both Croydon residents and the government Commissioners alike. This year, the council requested £119million of Exceptional Financial Support, up from £110 million last year, and up from £50m in 2023-2024.
He’s fucked the finances, not fixed them!
And that’s despite hiking our Council Tax by 33% since 2023.
Next up on Perry’s list is “Croydon Town Centre”, about which Perry says, “Businesses are opening… slowly but surely, the town centre is coming back”. The new shops in the Allders building are certainly open, but five times as many shops closed in the Whitgift Centre in 2025 than Westfield opened on North End.
As befitting of a Labour candidate, Davis advocates a more active interventionist approach to “Get our town centre back” by evicting “corporate squatters” to make way for “real developers”. Perry, as you’d expect from a Conservative, is happy to leave it to the market, claiming, “Westfield has unveiled its plans to revamp Centrale, with further plans for the Whitgift Centre coming soon”. It’s always “coming soon” with Westfield.
Davis says she will set up a Land Commission “to take action on the worst 50 stalled sites in the borough”. One solution would be a Land Value Tax on land with planning permission, to encourage developers to actually develop, but that would require national legislation. So Davis advocates “sending in environmental, safety and planning officers to inspect derelict sites, check on any breaches of the law and enforce them”, which suggests that if you don’t develop, you’ll be harassed until you do.
But Davis also raises the prospect of “reducing Section 106 criteria”, which usually safeguards public and community interest. This doesn’t sit well with Davis’s commitment to be a “people first” Mayor of Croydon.
Streeting visit: the Labour Health Secretary opened the facility in New Addington, not Croydon’s Tory Mayor
Perry claims “new NHS facilities”, with a photograph of the New Addington Community Diagnostic Centre.
Sadly for our hapless Mayor, this was funded by a £14million investment from the NHS Croydon Trust. The NHS is funded by central government, so the Tory Mayor is trying to take credit for funding from the Labour government.
In fact, the facility was opened by Health Secretary Wes Streeting on January 16 this year – something local Labour MP Natasha Irons happily posted on social media.
“Purley Pool on the way” declares Jason Perry in his leaflet. But where is it?
In 2022, when he was running to be Mayor, Perry pledged to re-open the pool. Four years on, and it’s still “on the way”. Perry’s lack of delivery makes Royal Mail look good by comparison.
Perry also states he is “protecting parks and green spaces”. From what?
Inside his gatefold leaflet, Perry explains, “I oppose Labour and Reform’s plan to build on Croydon’s precious Green Belt”. Now there’s a debate to be had about what the current Labour government has termed “the grey belt”, bits of the Green Belt which are not really green spaces. What has not been proposed – from either Reform or Labour, to be fair – is to build on parks.
The scaremongering is a bit rich, since during Perry’s term in office, he’s been caught out trying to sell off council-owned land, public open spaces and heritage buildings, such as Heathfield House.
Finally, Perry would like credit for “opening new family hubs”, but even the most cursory investigation exposes the fact that family hubs are central government-funded (by the previous Conservative and current Labour government).
Fly-tipping has increased massively in Croydon – giving our borough the unwanted title of fly-tipping capital of England. Davis in her manifesto pledges a “Clean Croydon” through deterrence with more CCTV, fines and crushing the vehicles of offenders – though how CCTV will be funded and who will enforce fines is another matter.
Her plan for free “Big Skip Days” is practical and pragmatic, since much of the fly-tipping occurs because the council has withdrawn free bulky waste collection, and hiked charges. A practical and cost-effective policy.
Davis’s pledge for a “safe Croydon” also reflects a bit of carrot and stick, with keeping more police in Croydon, alongside support for drug and alcohol addicts to get them off the street – again a practical policy, if the funding can be found. Councils’ public health budgets were slashed during the austerity years.
Intriguingly, she also promises “a new co-operative store giving residents cheaper groceries”. Davis’s pledge seems to be modelled on a similar commitment made by Zohran Mamdani, who took office as Mayor of New York City in January of this year.
American import: Davis’s manifesto has borrowed from Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York
Mamdani promised during his election campaign to establish municipal grocery stores that would “buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralise warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighbourhoods on products and sourcing”.
Some were sceptical that the New York Mayor, with considerably more powers and funding than a Croydon Mayor, could deliver these grocery stores. Many will be even more disbelieving that Davis will be able to do so.
Like Mamdani, Davis is not afraid to wade into foreign policy debates either: “There is a genocide happening in Gaza. I do not believe the council’s pension fund should be used to support arms companies that are supplying Israel at this time.” She’s right, and a principled and moral stand should be applauded.
Davis’s other commitment to help with the cost of living is rather more prosaic: “no more insane 33% Council Tax hikes”, pledging Council Tax will never rise by more than 5% a year, as Perry did with his 15% hike in 2023.
And that is the battle.
For the birds: some of Rowenna Davis’s proposals seem fanciful, at best
Perry wants to stand on his record, but that is weak – Purley Pool isn’t open, town centre redevelopment remains years away and the council’s finances aren’t fixed. Perhaps that’s why he offers only a leaflet, not (yet at least) a manifesto?
The problem with writing a manifesto, though, is you can roam too wide. Croydon is in dire financial straits – and some of Davis’s ambitions, like a punk festival and aviation festival (an air show?), are probably not priorities right now (and I love punk!).
There’s also room for errors to creep in, like getting the ownership of Fairfield Halls wrong, and strangely advocating for “a potential culinary school, a train drivers’ school, a university and further campuses”, yet strangely not mentioning Croydon College, the art school or London South Bank University.
But Davis at least sets out a decent vision for Croydon. Whether she can fully deliver it with limited powers and even more limited finances remains to be seen.
Paid-up subscribers to this website can listen to The Andrew Fisher Interview with Labour’s Rowenna Davis by clicking here - Andrew Fisher has also interviewed Liberal Democrat candidate Richard Howard and the Green Party’s candidate, Peter Underwood, will be facing Fisher’s questions soon
- Conservative Mayor Jason Perry has refused to face public scrutiny
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
- Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- Perry has stabilised council finances in state of perpetual crisis
- Reform backs policy that could see children killed on our roads
- In one-hour interview, pandering PM Starmer offers no answers
- Now even Mayor Perry agrees we need to Fund Croydon Fairly
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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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They’re all lying. Nothing ever improves but they still get paid with our money.
The laughable pretence in Croydon over the last two decades that there is some great divide between these two parties and that their actions are completely independent of each other.
When Barwell was the main mover and shaker in Croydon Tory Politics fifteen odd years ago and influential on the Whitgift Board his manoeuvring to bring Westfield into an expanded central redevelopment scheme was the original sin in the downfall of Croydon.
Perry then appointed Negrini to lead the redevelopment due to her perceived success in the Stratford Westfield redevelopment around the 2012 London Olympics. Labours victory in 2014 consolidated this direction by expanding her role into the Chief Executive of the Council.
No one at the time in the Conservative faction made any real objection about this appointment of someone with no Council Chief Exective experience. An example of Newman’s hapless ineptitude in attempting to build the Westfield consortium in to make the development a fait accompli. He can also be blamed independently in allowing Negrini to run riot with the woefully ill conceived fantasy that was Brick by Brick which proved to be the final hole in the Council Finances.
Remember though this all required debt approval by the Central Conservative Government who provided no oversight of the worsening position that was clear to any impartial observer and just required a setback to blow the whole card collection over.
The only democratic way to act in this election is not reward either of the two Parties who in unison have created this desperate situation and make them take responsibility for their actions.
So what are you suggesting, Derek?
Are you suggesting we abstain, vote for anyone but the Lab-Con clique or ‘none of the above’? Mind you, Inside Croydon always tells us that our council is ‘officer-led’ which I take to mean the councillors do what the staff tell them. So … voting makes no difference?
Surely whoever we vote for Gerrard Curran and his crew of Commissioners will remain the real authority at Croydon Council anyway until it can extricate itself from the black hole it built brick by brick so the whole election is a tiresome performative exercise like something out of North Korea.
There doesn’t seem much hope of that any time soon. Last I heard auditors Grant Thornton said: “The unsustainable nature of the financial position, alone, resulted in the council not achieving their exit strategy from existing government support.”…
To paraphrase Professor Godbole – “vote for who you like the outcome will always be the same”. Still, someone’s got to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic I suppose…
or, as a nod to Viv Stanshall, no matter who you vote for, the Council always gets in
There are certain functions that the Commissioners can’t do and that includes deciding on planning and licensing matters as well as schools (intake numbers, admissions policies and closures)
The Council is legally the Local Planning Authority, Local Licensing Authority and the Local Education Authority and the Commissioners can’t take over those powers. Only councillors can exercise them.
So no the elections aren’t just performative.
And if councillors meekly accept officer recommendations that speaks to something about the quality of councillors in not challenging officer reports and recommendations. That’s part of the role of being a councillor!
The other part is that elected Mayors and Councillors need to provide more robust policy frameworks for officers to work within – and often they don’t (and that’s not just a Croydon issue).
“Make XXXXX Great Again” may be a good election slogan but officers need to know how a party wants to make the XXXXX great.
Many of the problems the Reform controlled councils have is that Reform didn’t have detailed manifestos that officers could use to understand what Reform Councillors wanted to do from the get go.
if you dont vote, you cant them moan about what does happen…use it or lose it IMO .
Not voting reduces influence, weakens collective political signals, and communicates dissatisfaction ambiguously, often having little tangible impact on election outcomes. Knock yourself out Derek – its a futile act you are advocating.
“Purley Pool on the way”. Aye, last spotted in the British Virgin Islands…..
How much of the budget goes on things like social care, child services and debt interest? Things that are largely out of the mayor’s control.
Some suggest that the Mayor, or council directors, can control social care and children’s services costs – by “managing demand”. Not everyone’s convinced, and statutory services – including accommodation and libraries – still have to be delivered.
Servicing Croydon Council’s debts, however, is probably something more within the control of the people running the Town Hall (and I include in that the senior directors).
Croydon’s debt remains around £1.4billion today, just as it was in 2022.
Remember, in 2014, when Perry and the Tories were last in control of the council, they left a stinking pile of debt of around £700million – the little graphs on the Tory election leaflets are deceitful about that.
Data from the Office for Local Government (OFLOG) says that at the end of 2021-22 – ie. before Perry – Croydon’s debt servicing costs were approximately £50million per year, accounting for 16% of the council’s core spending power. That was bad enough – around double the median for English councils.
But under Perry’s latest, 2025-26 budget (the one that’s so crap the Commissioners say it will have to be re-done later this year) it is estimated that servicing the debt would cost up to £86million.
Or as our colleague, Andrew Fisher, says, Perry’s has fucked the finances.
I have to admit that up to now I haven’t bothered voting in local elections but I think that with the threat of fascism and Deform it is very important that all decent people cast a vote. As somebody once pointed out, fascism is allowed in when good people do nothing.
In the 1992 Millwall by-election in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, British National Party candidate Barry Osborne won 20% of the vote on a 33% turnout.
Encouraged by this, the BNP picked Derek Beackon to stand for another by-election the following year. He took 33% of the vote on a 44% turnout, and was duly elected.
In the 1994 council elections, Beackon saw the number of his votes rise from 1,480 in 1993 to 2,041. However, a concerted effort by opposition parties saw turnout increase to 66%, and so Delboy’s brief career as a councillor came to an end