Perry’s pile: thousands of library books dumped outside Broad Green Library by contractors working for the council last August symbolise the botched reorganisation of our libraries

Pay more, get less.
Under Jason Perry, the council has become increasingly reliant on volunteers to deliver services paid for by our Council Tax – from litter-picking in Croydon parks, to voluntary groups running the four public libraries closed by the Tory Mayor. STEVE WHITESIDE examines the botched arrangements surrounding four valuable public buildings

A year on from the start of the “new model” library service and more than six months after the signing of “Licences to Occupy” Croydon’s four closed library buildings – Broad Green, Bradmore Green, Sanderstead and Shirley – I’ve taken a look at how those four “community hubs” are taking shape, comparing the council’s promises with reality.

Following its meeting on September 17, 2024, the scrutiny committee recommended that there should be a full review, including an assessment of the mitigation measures, after 12 months of delivery of the new library service. That recommendation was accepted by the council’s cabinet (meaning Mayor Perry) on September 25, 2024.

Since that new model became fully “live” in April 2025, that 12-month assessment is now due. But the scrutiny committee meeting scheduled for April 21 has been cancelled. Perry is using the pre-election “purdah” period to dodge that promised 12-month review.

On February 9, I wrote to the chair of scrutiny, Labour councillor Leila Ben-Hassel. I asked for the date by which the data and assessment of mitigation measures would be published, an assurance that this review would be the first item on the agenda for the first scrutiny meeting of the new municipal year and that a written briefing would be issued to all current members of the committee before the pre-election period began, to ensure the findings were on the public record. There has been no response.

Council over-staffing: only in Perry’s Croydon does it take two mayors to cut the ribbon at Broad Green’s re-opening

I am left to assume that this piece of significant council business, involving millions of pounds’ worth of public property, will now be left undiscussed and unreviewed, until after the elections on May 7.

But what has been left behind since the closure of the four libraries, and the rebranding as “community hubs”?

Last September, Inside Croydon reported that Perry’s “plans” for the closed libraries looked little more than cobbled-together afterthoughts. Recent council responses to Freedom of Information requests, and its failure to respond, are troubling.

What were we promised?

When told by Kristian Aspinall, the now ex-director of culture and community safety (so the council employee responsible for our libraries), that the council had been unable to find partners who wanted to share library space, to generate extra income for the cash-strapped council, the scrutiny committee, through Councillor Alasdair Stewart, asked the rather obvious question: “If we… haven’t seen a way to make income-generating opportunities at the moment, what is it that’s going to change that will mean… there will be interest from groups and others in making use of these buildings when there’s no longer a library located there?”

Man without a plan: cabinet member Andy Stranack

Stewart’s Conservative colleague, Andy Stranack, is the cabinet member responsible for libraries. Stranack’s answer was simple: “What we’re offering here is to stop a library service and provide the sort of multi-functioning space that actually our voluntary sector is crying out for.”

Mayor Perry added more detail, claiming that a number of those voluntary sector groups “work with other partners… they have health funding and various other things and access to other funding that the council can’t access”.

Neither Mayor Perry, Stranack nor Aspinall were able to name a single community group who would definitely be taking on a community asset transfer of a library building. Instead, Aspinall told scrutiny that the council was unable to “commit to any takeover of a building” unless and until the decision was taken to close them as a library.

If there was a good reason given for that, I missed it. So Perry’s plan was to close the libraries first, and scratch around for tenants later.

In his report to cabinet, Aspinall assured us that any consideration of Community Infrastructure Levy funding for each site to cover “a proportion of the core building costs during a transitional period” would depend upon a “viable business plan and operating model being submitted”.

Much like a library: Shirley library, now run by volunteers since its closure by Perry’s council, is open just three hours each weekday

The report seemed clear: following the “initial phase”, there would be no further financial support from the council for any organisation taking over the running of the library buildings.

But other council records show that this was is not true.

The council’s “S106 Approved Expenditure Tracker”, a record of CIL payments, shows that £20,000 of funding had been allocated to each of the chosen operators by March 2025 – two months before Perry’s decision on the “bids”. I’m still waiting for a copy of the relevant CIL expenditure request form(s) and any related business cases.

And where are those “viable business plans and/or operating models”? And how long was the “transitional period” or “initial phase” supposed to last under Perry’s plan?

Rising damp: The Story Sanctuary – ‘a creative health and wellbeing centre’ – has taken on Sanderstead Library, but has not signed the lease

Apparently, there was a “summary of bids” within the confidential (Part B) of the decision paper titled “Community Base Lease Awards of former libraries”, put to Mayor Perry in May 2025 by Aspinall and Huw Rhys-Lewis (another now ex-director of Croydon Council). The paper also projected “financial returns” from the new uses of the closed libraries of between £8million to £40million over the course of the 25-year leases.

Much like with the council’s long-withheld new bins contract, I’m still waiting for the council’s “public interest” reasoning in claiming that these bids should remain confidential.

I’m also still waiting for a full explanation of how they came up with those projected financial returns.

For the moment, just to put that possible £40million into perspective, the council has so far committed just £80,000 in CIL seed funding. It seems a staggering leap of faith, or perhaps just creative accounting, to suggest that a small one-off payment will magically trigger millions in revenue and savings.

In local government jargon, “preventative demand reduction” usually refers to keeping people healthy and out of expensive social care. Expecting volunteer-run “hubs” in re-purposed library buildings with microscopic budgets to pick up so much slack for statutory services cannot be considered a “viable business plan”. More like an abdication of responsibility gift-wrapped as a success story.

The May 2025 paper also tells us that the “bids” were shared with “friends” groups (where they existed), ward councillors and residents’ associations. How accurately these would represent the views of the wider community may be open to debate. According to the paper, a summary of that feedback has also been hidden within the confidential Part B appendix. I wonder why?

Having read what he wanted written, Mayor Perry duly accepted the paper’s recommendations (and projection) on May 14 last year.

What have we got?

In a response to another information request (FOI/14728), the council has recently said that six-month occupation licences were granted at the Broad Green and Shirley sites on August 18, 2025, and to Bradmore Green and Sanderstead on September 23, 2025,.

But none of the four leases has yet been completed and no formal extensions to the licences have been granted.

Business hub: Bradmore Green library is now being used by a commercial nursery firm

Which all seems odd, since even according to the council’s own website, some of the sites are already up and running. Shirley is described as having launched in December 2025, “offering traditional library services and community-led activities”, and Broad Green in February, as a “community-led, volunteer-supported hub open seven days a week”.

Elsewhere, in January, Sanderstead Residents’ Association’s website announced that, “The Story Sanctuary, in the old library building, is now open and events are happening”. Meadows Preschool officially opened its doors at the “Bradmore Green Hub” in Old Coulsdon with various events and activities occurring alongside.

A second response to FOI-14728 perhaps plugs some of the gaps, explaining that the delays in signing leases are due to “Finalising agreed works forming part of the Licence to Alter” (at Broad Green), “finalising internal adaptations and non-structural works” (at Shirley) and the “finalisation of plans” (at Bradmore Green). But how are those “agreed works” and “internal adaptations” to be paid for?

After all, the May 2025 decision paper had confirmed that the leases would place full repair and maintenance obligations on the tenant, and that any costs incurred by the council would be recovered from the tenant.

But what about before and until those leases are signed? Who pays then?

Information request FOI/14731 asked what repair, maintenance, insurance or utility costs at Sanderstead have been met by the council since the library’s closure, beyond any transition grant, and how or when any such costs will be recovered.

That’s not a side issue. It goes directly to whether public money is being used to deal with long-neglected defects after closure, despite what I believe the public saw as clear indications that the selected tenants would carry that burden.

Have we been deceived, again? Is public money that should have been spent by the council on the buildings when they were part of the public library service (to make them safe, accessible and comfortable, for customers and staff), now going to be spent on them when they’re operating under private management?

The situation in Sanderstead appears awkward for the council. The council now claims that, “from the outset” their preferred organisation advised that, as a new entity, its management structure was not finalised and it was never in a position to complete a lease within the initial six-month period.

If that’s true, it raises an obvious question: was that risk disclosed to decision-makers at the time, before the licences were signed and the public was told there was a workable plan? What other risks were known to the decision-makers, but kept a secret from the public? What else has been concealed? And why?

Financial footing deserves scrutiny

The filed accounts for A Collective (SW London) CIC for the period ended March 2025 state that the company was “a private company, limited by shares”, with total capital and reserves of £79. This does make the council’s recent “from the outset” explanation something that ought to have been backed by contemporaneous disclosure, rather than a forced “retrofit”.

Then there is the size of the outstanding repair bill.

Election sweetener: Perry has handed public property, such as Broad Green Library, to private concerns, such as the Asian Resource Centre

On its “Current Projects” page, The Story Sanctuary acknowledges that there is more than £200,000 of overdue maintenance and improvement works for the library building, as identified in a 2020 survey. Rising damp has been found in parts of the building. They also say that some of those items are not considered to be their responsibility. Repair and maintenance only become its responsibility once a lease is signed.

So if the leases are still not signed, who’s been paying bills and invoices? If it’s the council, how much is that, when exactly will it stop and can all that be considered “Best Value”?

The Story Sanctuary’s “manifesto and speculative proposal” document shows that they have been aware of this since 2024, but at that time felt that although daunting, to raise the required funds was achievable, dependent at least in part on the council’s negotiating stance. Something that could be tested once selected they say, during a “discovery phase”.
But what exactly was, or is, that “discovery phase”? Has it started? And when will it end?

Might “Making It Up As We Go Along Phase” be a more accurate description?

None of the above is a criticism of volunteers or community groups trying to make something valuable out of buildings the council chose to close. We know very well that negotiating with Croydon Council can be a torturous and frustrating experience.

The criticism is of the council’s handling of public assets worth millions of pounds, and the council’s lack of accountability.

Residents were sold a story of orderly transition and significant community benefit. What the paper trail actually shows is something far more makeshift: expired licences, no formal extensions, no completed leases, unfinished works, with questions unanswered or pushed off into procedural side alleys.

That is not a trivial detail. These were much-loved and well-used public libraries, which the vast majority of users wanted kept open. And they remain public buildings.

Ahead of election day, voters are entitled to know whether Perry’s council ever had a genuine, deliverable plan for the libraries before it closed their doors, or whether Perry has simply claimed a “success” first, leaving the hard work of making these schemes work for later, if ever.

Perhaps the chair of the scrutiny committee should reconsider the decision to cancel that meeting that was due to be held on April 21?

Read more: Perry dodges scrutiny as council delays refunds of LTN fines
Read more: It was a bad deal for Croydon. Why did they allow it to happen?
Read more: Time for better than Perry’s half-truths on Bridge to Nowhere

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