ANDREW FISHER has interviewed three of the main candidates standing for election as Croydon Mayor. Only Tory Jason Perry refused our invitations. What has Perry got to hide? These are the questions Perry has left unanswered
Failed Mayor: Tory Jason Perry
Apparently, “Mayor Perry remains focused on talking directly to residents about the progress being made to restore pride in Croydon and the work still ahead.” Yet he won’t talk to Inside Croydon because, according to him, it is “highly partisan”.
Inside Croydon is so partisan, in fact, that Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green candidates for Mayor all willingly participated in my podcast interview series – and all were asked probing questions about themselves, their policies and their parties.
Links to all three of the Andrew Fisher Interview series, plus the lively Inside Croydon Digital Debate – where Perry failed to show up – can be found towards the bottom of this column.
Given you won’t hear an interview with the incumbent Mayor, Jason Perry of the Conservative Party, here are some of the questions I will have put to him.
I’ve read every piece of Perry’s campaign literature that I’ve managed to get my hands on, some of which has even come through my door.
In 2022, Jason Perry promised he would “fix the finances”. How has that gone, Mayor Perry?
In 2026, Perry does not claim to have fixed the finances, but merely to have “stabilised” them. But even this assertion is dubious. A closer analysis by iC reader Simon Jellipot reveals that Croydon’s debt has risen from £1.4billion in 2022 to £1.7billion today.
Perry has only managed to balance the council’s books with increasing levels of “Exceptional Financial Support”.
Where Croydon Council is run from: the MHCLG has taken powers from Mayor Perry
In his latest campaign literature, Perry states, “I will secure a government deal for our debt.” So why hasn’t he done that in his first four years?
For just over half of his term in office, Perry had a Conservative government to negotiate with, and he still couldn’t get a deal. In the 23 months since Labour came to office, there has been no sign of a deal either – though council funding has significantly increased for Croydon.
Given neither the Conservative nor Labour government could trust Perry to run the council, why should we?
Neither government showed much faith in Perry. The Conservatives insisted on an “improvement and oversight panel” of consultants paid up to £1,200 per day out of Council Tax-payers’ money. Then, as Croydon needed an increased level of (far from) exceptional financial support, the Labour government last year imposed Commissioners on Croydon – effectively stripping the Mayor of his “executive” powers.
So Mayor Perry, given that parts of your job have been overseen by Government appointees for almost your whole term, don’t you feel just a little bit conflicted taking your full salary when you’re not doing the full job?
As Executive Mayor, Perry is paid more than £86,000 per year – he and his Conservative colleagues recently voted to increase Perry’s pay from £84,000.
If Mayor Perry was honest, he would concede that half the debt he inherited was run up under the previous Conservative administration, where he was a senior member of the council cabinet.
‘Staring into the abyss’: Croydon Tories’ ex-leader Tim Pollard
In 2013, the then deputy leader of Croydon Tories, Councillor Tim Pollard (Perry’s old boss, in effect), said: “There is a time coming, and it’s not far off, when the costs of dealing with an ageing and increasingly deprived population will mean that there is literally nothing left in many councils’ coffers for anything but social care…
“We are staring into an abyss here, and it’s time we faced up to it.”
And all of that happened in the context of the Conservative government of David Cameron, with George Osborne as Chancellor, imposing large-scale austerity on funding to councils, cutting their annual funding by 50%.
So Mayor Perry, what percentage guilt should each of Croydon Conservatives, Croydon Labour and George Osborne take for the state of Croydon’s finances?
This is before we get to Mr Perry’s own financial mismanagement.
Perry claimed in February that, “our requests for Exceptional Financial Support are going down”. The figures do not support this claim. This year, Croydon Council has been granted £119million in EFS. In 2025, Perry’s council required £110million. In 2024, it was £38million. And it was £50million in 2023-2024.
The finances are getting worse, not better, aren’t they Mayor Perry?
This isn’t all historical either. There have been some financial mishaps under Mayor Perry, too.
End of an error: LTNs were removed on order of the High Court because of remarks made by Mayor Perry, and are likely to cost the council £10m
In March this year, Judge Edward Pepperall handed down his ruling in the case brought against Croydon’s Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, in which he found that comments by Mayor Perry proved that the measures were introduced to make money for the cash-strapped council.
How did the Judge conclude this? Because loose-lipped Perry said so, openly and publicly. As the Judge described in his verdict, “his clear and repeated comments”.
The law does not permit LTNs to be used as revenue-raisers. They are an environmental policy. Perry used them to fleece drivers, not to lower emissions or improve air quality.
This isn’t the only case under Perry where the cash-strapped council’s precious revenue has been squandered. In Coulsdon, the disposal of the final Brick by Brick-built homes has been a multi-million-pound shambles under Perry’s council. The sale-and-leaseback deal was agreed at significantly below the flats’ market value. Then the deal collapsed, leaving our council £22million out-of-pocket.
It also appears that Mayor Perry agreed to pay £500,000 to buy the silence of property company Regen Capital when they failed to settle the balance of the purchase. Both the LibDem and Green mayoral candidates have called for a full investigation.
So, Mayor Perry, how personally responsible do you feel for the reckless loss of revenue due to the court case over LTNs and the debacle at Red Clover Gardens?
Looking to the future, Perry’s campaign literature for the mayoral election on May 7 says “Purley pool on the way”. But in 2022, his mayoral campaign leaflets pledged to “Reopen Purley pool”. Four years on, it’s still on the way!
This is not an engineering project on the scale of HS2, but it’s every bit as delayed and shambolically run.
If reopening Purley pool was one of your top pledges in 2022, why is it still not open in 2026? What have you been doing for the last four years?
Oh, and one last question …
Cashing in: Council Tax has gone up 33% under Mayor Jason Perry – but we are getting fewer services
Was it a mistake for you to hike Council Tax by 15% and by the legal maximum ever since?
Croydon’s Council Tax has increased by 33%, reaching record levels, while Jason Perry has been Mayor of Croydon.
So here’s a question for Croydon’s voters as they go to the polls on Thursday: Are you comfortable with the fact that you are paying more to get less?
- According to Andrew Fisher, Mayor Jason Perry ‘fucked the finances instead of fixing them’
Croydon’s failed Mayor refused to give a pre-election interview to Inside Croydon, where he would have faced 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 our interview with the LibDems’ Richard Howard by clicking here
- Our Andrew Fisher Interview with Peter Underwood is now available by clicking here and paying a subscription to Inside Croydon’s Patreon site
- 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:
- The state of politics is a tragedy. It’s important that you vote
- The Mayor’s record in office has worse delivery than Royal Mail
- Perry has stabilised council finances in state of perpetual crisis
- Reform backs policy that could see children killed on our roads
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
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
- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Jason Part Time Piss Poor Delboy Perry needs his £86k a year job to keep Carlton Plastics Ltd afloat
Why would Perry agree to face off against ‘Red Andy’? Not going to end well, is it?
Because it is his job.
The only thing missing from this article is a picture of a tub of lard.
Perry’s arrogance, greed, duplicity and incompetence should be his undoing but there’s every likelihood that he’ll be returned to power. He’s Croydon’s answer to Trump