Town Hall reporter KEN LEE on the rushed recruitment of a Commissioner-approved appointee to a permanent role in Fisher’s Folly, helped with £30,000 in ‘danger money’
Master of Hall he surveys: Conrad Hall was forced on to the roof of Fisher’s Folly for the obligatory appointment publicity pic this morning
Croydon’s cash-strapped council under Tory Mayor Jason Perry is still able to find enough money to spend more than £1million per year on the salaries of just five members of staff.
The fifth permanent member of staff to be appointed on a stratospheric salary despite the council’s £1.7billion debt is Conrad Hall, who was announced this morning as the permanent “corporate director of resources”, the director of finance in plain English, responsible “for leading and directing financial strategy and operations for the council”.
Hall has been doing the job since January, after the government-appointed Commissioners had spent almost six months “butting heads”, as one insider put it, with Jane West, the Kerswell appointee who had signalled her exasperation with the borough’s insolvable financial problems on several occasions.
Hall had been initially appointed on an 12-month interim basis, on secondment from Newham, where he performed the same, legally required role of Section 151 officer.
Now, following a somewhat rushed recruitment process conducted in just two weeks before the local elections, Hall has been handed a top Town Hall job, on local authority pay Grade 5, but with £30,000 added danger money, or what the council refers to as “occupation scarcity allowance”, just because the recruitment consultants they pay handsomely couldn’t recruit.
The appointment puts Hall in pole position to step up to become Croydon’s next chief executive, should he want that poisoned chalice, with interim CEO Eliane Jackson expected to activate her long-harboured retirement plans within a few weeks now that Perry has been re-elected, and with her assistant CEO, Jenny Rowlands, another iterim, also heading for the exits at Fisher’s Folly.
On their way out: council CEO Elaine Jackson (right) and her assistant, Jenny Rowlands (centre) are both expected to leave their Croydon jobs soon
Hall has already been handed some of the tasks previously undertaken by Jackson and more recently by Rowlands. In a council report from last month, it states: “The chief executive, under delegated authority [meaning: answerable to no one], has recently agreed the transfer of functions for the assistant chief executive to the corporate director of resources [Hall] regarding the [human resources] and [organisational development] division and Croydon Digital Services”.
This suggests Hall will be directly in charge of future rounds of staff redundancies or interim hires (bad news for head of HR Dean Shoesmith and his “mates rates” hires). It may also hint that the council may not replace Rowlands once she leaves. Erasing the assistant CEO non-job will, at least, represent a salary saving of £200,000 per year.
It is clear that Hall already has the approval of Ged Curran and the government-appointed Commissioners – they scouted him on secondment in the first place. Hall’s first task, which he has been working on for a couple of months already, is to re-do the 2026-2027 council budget, as specified in the Commissioners’ report published in February – another example in the litany of failures under Mayor Perry.
Three months ago, the Commissioners wrote to their bosses in government that they “also welcome the council’s intention to review the 2026-2027 budget… It is recognised that the new S151 officer…”, meaning Hall, “… has had limited time to influence the numbers since his arrival.
“Therefore, Commissioners support the proposal to view this 2026-2027 budget as presented to full council on February 25 as a transitional budget [our italics], with a revised financial strategy to be available by May 2026.”
Mayor Perry will be grateful for having had 28 Conservative councillors elected last week, as this guarantees his budgets can be passed since the Town Hall’s new, multi-coloured opposition will not manage to raise the required two-thirds majority to block his proposals, however drastic the measures contained within them.
Money no object: a dishevelled Jason Perry signs on for another term of part-time ribbon-cutting at £86,000 per year
The first set-piece clash in the Town Hall Chamber of piss-poor Perry’s second term, over this “revised budget”, is unlikely to come before early July, since the council has far more important things to do before that, like poncing about in silly costumes and handing out grand certificates, while the councillors pat one another on the back at the annual council meeting on May 27.
Under part-time Perry, there are no meetings of full council currently scheduled for the whole of June. The council’s debt is £1.7billion. With every passing day, Croydon’s Council Tax-payers are being lumbered with more interest payments. So what’s the rush?
In the Commissioners’ report, they described the re-done budget as “a reset”.
“This constitutes a reset moment for Croydon and will require much detailed and focused work to deliver but would provide a firm basis on which to move forward in pursuit of the clear objective for the council to balance its budget.”
Croydon has not managed to have a truly “balanced budget” for at least five years, with its operational figures shored up by hundreds of millions of pounds of exceptional financial support from government. Which is why the Commissioners were appointed last year.
The finance director job vacancy had only been publicly advertised on April 9, demonstrating that, when acting in their own very well-paid self-interest, the council’s senior officials can work at pace.
Appointment report: much of the meeting to appoint Conrad Hall full-time was held in secret
The rushed recruitment of a permanent finance director was questioned at the appointments committee held on April 24, when Perry and Conservative and Labour councillors on the committee were presented with a very short shortlist for the role.
According to the council’s meeting minutes: “Councillor [Stuart] King questioned the approach regarding the timing of recruitment for the corporate director of resources (Section 151) being before the election, whilst permanent recruitment for the chief executives was to be following the election. Penny [first name terms indeed: Ransley, of the recruitment agency Ransley Boardman] advised that potential chief executives candidates were more likely to apply for CE roles following an election when an individual council’s compositions was clearer.”
Which, of course, did not address the point of the question about the rushed, pre-election recruitment of the finance director. And it also underlined that when given a question around his mismanagement of the council, Perry will hide behind outside contractors rather than be answerable for his actions.
According to this morning’s council announcement, Hall “is a highly experienced senior leader in finance, with 23 years of experience in local government, most recently as corporate director of resources, Section 151 officer, at Newham Council.”
Katharine Street sources say that in his first few months, Hall has “made a good start in reassuring them that all parties, not just the Conservative administration, will have access to timely advice and information concerning the council’s finances”.
The council announcement continued: “As Croydon’s corporate director for resources, he will be responsible for a broad range of the council’s support and governance functions, such as finance, audit, property, procurement, human resources, legal and digital services.
“He will be a key member of the corporate management team, helping to ensure it delivers key organisational priorities such as the council’s transformation programme, Future Croydon, and making sure Croydon maintains the highest standards of governance.”
Hall, Croydon’s latest £200,000 a year employee, said: “I’m delighted to be able to join Croydon permanently. It’s a fantastic place with lots of great opportunities. The four months I’ve spent here so far have been immensely rewarding and I have met so many positive and constructive colleagues who I’m looking forward to getting to know even better.”
For his part, Perry mumbled some platitudinous old tosh about, “I am delighted… blah de blah… experience and expertise… blah de blah… to help the borough get back on track.”
See that? “To help the borough get back on track.”
Which suggests that the council’s finances are not “on track”. This from Jason Perry, the man who has just fought an election campaign where he stated, repeastedly, that the finances are “back on track”.
So, self-admission of yet another Perry porkie pie, then.
In a cruel twist of fate, the next full meeting of Croydon Council, the Town Hall annual meeting, is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, May 27. That’s the same evening that thousands of Crystal Palace fans will be in Leipzig, for the UEFA Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano. It is the first European final in the history of Crystal Palace FC. As he never tired of telling people during his election campaign, Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, is a Crystal Palace season ticket-holder.
Read more: Commissioners: council lacks focus and robust delivery plans
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
Read more: Council’s agency staff bill includes £726 PER HOUR consultant
Read more: McMahon acts after serious concerns on ‘aspects of leadership’
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One particular section of this article did make me smile. The quote from the Commissioners. Short of willing the deficit figure to magically move to a newly discovered surplus column, I’m not sure what ‘…influence the numbers’ is supposed to mean. If he can do that trick, then he’s worth a lot more than his current salary.
In all seriousness the only things that can be done are,
1 cut expenditure. Cutting a few posts won’t do it, even shutting Adult Social Care, Children’s Services and housing — completely illegal — probably wouldn’t do it. And before anyone reading this at the council — oh wait they aren’t allowed to read Inside Croydon are they — considers it, I’m not being serious. None of the officers would consider this, who knows what some of our new councillors might think.
2 increase income. A massive tax hike combined with a fire sale , wouldn’t do it either. People wouldn’t/couldn’t pay and selling everything wouldn’t realise the necessary funds as no one would be foolish enough to pay the real value of whatever the council sold knowing its desperation.
So we’re left with the third option. The government will have to, eventually, accept a complete absorption of the debt on to the national balance sheet.
That’s it, there’s no other way. But it looks like we’re going to have to continue this dance of death for some time to come.
“Penny [first name terms indeed: Ransley, of the recruitment agency Ransley Boardman] advised that potential chief executives candidates were more likely to apply for CE roles following an election when an individual council’s compositions was clearer.””
The director of finance role is arguably more important that that of the Chief Execs at the moment so this rushed permanent appointment process should at least raise some questions. As should any reshuffling of the management structure.
Director roles do work closely with the political side – mayor / cabinet for example. Perhaps Hall took a guess on the election result and thought he could work with whatever the result was?
This isn’t some lower tier role whose work doesn’t involve councillor contact and whoever is Mayor etc has little to no impact on doing their job.
Now potential CE candidate know they’ll be dealing with PPP perhaps they’ll be demanding even more danger money!