EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES, Inside Croydon Editor
Two of Croydon’s councillors, who receive tens of thousands of pounds in allowances from the cash-strapped council over the course of their term in office, submitted not a single members’ enquiry through a purpose-made Town Hall system through the whole of 2025-2026.
That’s the startling discovery made by Inside Croydon as a result of our annual Toss-cars Awards – where we ask the council, through a Freedom of Information request for their official work log data.
With just a few days until the local elections, Croydon residents have a once-in-four-years opportunity to select who will work in their interests at Croydon Council.
After they gave themselves a pay rise last year, all Croydon councillors are now on a basic allowance of at least £12,367, going up to £86,000 for our elected Mayor.
So it would seem perfectly reasonable to want to know how much work Croydon’s elected representatives have been putting in on your behalf.
Or which of our 70 councillors have barely been bothering to make any members’ enquiries on your behalf.
Those are the councillors who couldn’t give a toss – hence our annual Toss-cars Awards, now in their fourth year.
Our Toss-cars Awards appear to work. Of the 10 laziest councillors on our 2025 lists, six are not standing as candidates in 2026.
Our Toss-cars are handed out to the ne’er-do-wells and couldn’t-be-arsed who can’t be bothered to submit enquiries to paid council staff on behalf of the residents who elect them.
Our figures are based on official council data, provided under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Croydon’s omnishambles of a council lacks the kind of transparency found at other local authorities, where such routine detail is shared with the public. Given that Inside Croydon has been publishing this data since 2022, you might wonder why your council has not got round to publishing such information of genuine public interest.
We asked for the number of member enquiries submitted by each of Croydon’s 70 councillors, plus the Mayor. This year, we also requested the number of reports filed by councillors using Croydon’s Crap App.
Casework volumes are but one measurement of a councillor’s workload, and effectiveness, as former councillor Robert Canning has explained. There are other things that take up the time of our 70 councillors, like ward tours, police liaison meetings, ward surgeries (though some councillors duck even those).
Labour dumped Sherwan Chowdhury, a councillor since 2006, after we published our Toss-cars results in 2025, which showed that the Broad Green councillor had done just three pieces of casework in a 15-month period.
It doesn’t always work like that, though.
After Tory Richard Chatterjee won our 2023 Toss-car for being the laziest of the borough’s 70 councillors, the Town Hall veteran was awarded with the honorary role as Croydon’s civic Mayor for 2025-2026, donning the silly ermine robes and chains while he was handed more than £20,000 per year of your money for doing little more than cutting a few ceremonial ribbons.
So, drum-roll… these are your Toss-car Award-winners for 2026
No1=
Zero: Adele Benson, Tory councillor for New Addington North
Our 2025-2026 winners, who between them did not submit a single piece of casework through the council’s members’ enquiries system for a full 12 months, are Conservative councillors Adele Benson (New Addington North; £12,367) and Sue Bennett (Shirley North; £12,367).
Yes. You read that right. Councillors Benson and Bennett both submitted zero members’ enquiries between March 2025 and March 2026. Even by Croydon standards, that is a new, all-time low.
Benson has been a ward councillor for just four years.
This is the second time that she has featured among the Toss-cars Awards bottom 10. She missed out in 2025 simply because she did not feature in the official council data whatsoever. That is now looking very much as if Benson may have done zero casework in 2024-2025 as well as in the past year.
Benson logged a mere five pieces of casework in 2024 – so there’s some evidence that she does actually know how to use the members’ enquiries system.
Zero: Sue Bennett, Tory councillor in Shirley North
Benson has been re-selected by Croydon Tories and is seeking re-election on Thursday.
Bennett has been a councillor since 2006. She, too, has been re-selected by Croydon Conservatives and will be on ballot papers in her ward on Thursday.
Both Benson and Bennett receive only the basic councillor allowances.
Bennett is a “new entry” to the Toss-cars bottom 10.
According to the council’s official figures for the Love Croydon app, Bennett did not submit a single report using the App all year, either.
Benson, for her part, at least managed 20 reports via the council’s Crap App.
New Addington North and Shirley North are both target wards for Reform Ltd in the May 7 local elections.
No3
Favourite of Mayor Perry: former Crystal Palace FC steward Tony Pearson
Missing out on the top spot this year with a grand total of six member enquiries between March 2025 and March 2026 is a favourite of Mayor Perry – Tony Pearson.
Pearson is in his second spell as a councillor for New Addington South. He is also in his second spell as a member of the Conservatives, having resigned and then dabbled in a far-right political group before returning to the true-blue fold.
Pearson is a living and breathing example of the lack of talent on the Conservative benches in the Town Hall Chamber, as Mayor Jason Perry has him as his “deputy cabinet member for regulatory services”.
For this non-job, our cash-strapped council pays Pearson a Special Responsibility Allowance of £5,809 (2026-2027 figures) to add to his basic allowances of £12,367.
Not a bad “bonus” for a bloke working in a funeral parlour. It works out at more than £3,000 for each of the members’ enquiries Pearson submitted in the last year.
This year’s non-performance moves Pearson up from the equal fourth laziest councillor position he held in 2025.
On the Love Croydon app, Pearson managed to submit just five reports in the 12-month period.
Pearson will be not-so-fondly remembered by Crystal Palace fans from the time he was moonlighting as a steward, and got involved in a controversial confrontation with home fans, where one season ticket-holder had their mobile phone smashed. Pearson’s work at Selhurst Park did not last much longer.
Given the precarious nature of polling ahead of Thursday’s local elections, this apparent lack of work rate among Tory councillors in New Addington and Shirley is unlikely to be helpful to them on the doorsteps in the final days before the public vote.
The rest of the Top 10 of less-than-busy councillors looks like this:
Councillors handling the least casework
1=, Adele Benson (Con) and Sue Bennett (Con) 0
3, Tony Pearson (Con) 6
4, Callton Young* (Lab) 7
5, Holly Ramsey* (Con) 8
6, Esther Sutton (Green) 9
7, Richard Chatterjee (Con) 10
8, Jason Cummings (Con) 11
9, Leila Ben-Hassel (Lab) 12
10, Matt Griffiths* (Lab) 15
The asterisk * indicates those councillors who are not seeking re-election this Thursday.
The annual caveat with the figures is that not all councillors choose to use council’s made-for-purpose members’ enquiries system. At least that’s the excuse given by Jason Cummings (Conservative; Shirley South since 2010; cabinet member for finance; £41,460 allowances including SRA).
Perhaps one of the biggest shocks from the figures provided by the council under FoI is quite how poorly used the Love Croydon app has been over the past year by our elected representatives. You know, the very people expected to set an example for reporting issues on our streets, in the wards that they represent.
Because if Croydon is getting more than 1,000 reports of fly-tips every week, then very few of those reports are being made by our council-funded councillors.
The council records show just 1,083 reports via Love Croydon from the borough’s 70 councillors and elected Mayor across the year. Jason Perry used the Crap App just 12 times all year.
On Members’ enquiries, the council data shows a total of 5,015 submitted over the past year (up significantly on the 4,543 pieces of casework submitted over the 15-month period of January 2024 to March 2025).
That’s an average per councillor and Mayor of 70 members’ enquiries during the past year. Yet just 20 of our elected representatives managed to meet that benchmark or better.
As for the rest: below average.
- Click here to discover which councillors submitted the most members’ enquiries in 2025? [Spoiler alert: there’s no surprises]
Read more: Measure the effectiveness of councillors, not just the casework
Read more: Making the case for councillors’ casework to be made public
Read more: The Toss-cars 2025
Read more: The Toss-cars 2024
Read more: The Toss-cars 2023
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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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Around 60% of these underperforming Croydon councillors are Conservative – which tells you quite a lot about who not to back on Thursday.
I know people across four of these Conservative-held wards, and the feedback is depressingly consistent: formulaic, copy-and-paste replies clearly designed to close down queries rather than address them. That’s not representation — it’s box-ticking.
There’s something deeply ugly people who put themselves forward for public office and then fail to do the most basic part of the job: representing the residents they’re meant to serve. The really are the most useless gob-shites amongst us. This isn’t about political differences — it’s about effort, accountability, and basic standards.
The level of inertia and disengagement on display is staggering. If this is the best they can offer, they simply don’t deserve the responsibility of representing their communities. Fuck them.
Adele’s helped both me and my friends in my block with my repairs issues. This doesn’t seem right. Maybe some people don’t use that app?
I use the Love Clean Streets app regularly, over the last 27 days I have made 23 reports, that is far back as the app allows me to check. I find it useful to track if a problem has been dealt with and how quickly.
Works for me!
Many years ago when my dad was a councillor (not in Croydon) they were issued with a pad of triplicate forms for case work. He kept it next to the hall phone and I could hear him go through the form with the constituent who was calling him.
These days there are emails and apps to make it eve easier to record and submit issues and there is no excuse for a councillor not to use them.
Now it could be that constituents simply know these councillors are indeed just lazy and just contact another councillor and save themselves the bother.
Some Councillors (from different parties) eschew the app and use personal contacts from among senior Officers. This is often quicker than using the Council’s system
The system is provided for a reason. If some councillors opt not to use the tools provided, and whinge because they look bad as a consequence, that’s their problem, no one else’s.