For the first time since it was created in 1965, Croydon Council has councillors from five political parties. WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, looks at whether they will make any difference – or even be allowed to try
All change: how Croydon has changed from being just red and blue after the May 7 2026 local elections
While other councils in London and across the country have seen radical change following the local elections on May 7, Croydon seems largely the same. At first glance, anyway.
There is still a Conservative Mayor, and Labour councillors still comprise the largest group on the council. The question now, though, is, with 12 councillors from three other parties (and one “independent”), what impact might they have on the running of our council? And will they be allowed to have an impact?
The supplementary question is significant, because it recognises that Croydon Council’s constitution will be the biggest obstacle to change. The council constitution embeds the old Red-Blue duopoly, and the council’s bureaucrats, often acting in their own self-interest, do their utmost to keep power in the hands of Labour and the Tories.
The Mayoral system gives Tory Jason Perry all the power despite him only getting 30.7% of votes cast. The Conservatives, with 28 councillors, won the fewest number of council seats in the 61-year history of Croydon Council. Yet that is still enough to block the two-thirds majority needed to overturn most of the Mayor’s decisions.
Anti-democratic: Jason Perry has all the power, but less than 31% of the votes
As former BBC London political editor Tim Donovan explained on the recent Croydon Insider podcast, ignore those “experts” who have looked at the number of councillors elected in this borough and declared it to be “NOC” – no overall control. Since moving to the mayoral system in 2021, control of Croydon Council is in the hands of whoever wins the mayoral vote.
Croydon is Conservative-run.
So, unless part-time Perry has had some miraculous overnight conversion to democracy, between now and 2030, expect him to continue to treat the other parties (including Labour) as an irritation to be swatted away and ignored, rather than respected representatives of Croydon residents.
Camera shy: Reform’s Scott “110%” Holman tried to bag two sets of councillor allowances
Perry got away with this because, until very recently, the council constitution was based on only having two parties on the council. Over the last four years, Conservatives and Labour have seemed very reluctant to change that status quo in any way. Meetings to update the constitution progressed at less than a snail’s pace and were often cancelled on some spurious reason. The real reason was to prevent there being any worthwhile work getting done.
So almost five years since Croydon voted for the #ABitLessShit mayoral system, our dynamic council officials had still yet to complete a revision or rewriting of the constitution that reflects how we are now run by an Executive Mayor, until they sneaked out a new version in April, just before the election.
It may need external intervention to cut through the political game playing and get the political side of council decision-making working in a far more effective and efficient way than simply “What Perry says goes”.
Turning to the political parties themselves, we have the arrival of two representatives of Reform Ltd in the council chamber. Shy chaps, despite actively seeking public office, they don’t like having their photos taken. They certainly appear to regard any kind of scrutiny of their conduct as an imposition to be avoided.
It’s unclear how Farage fans Scott Holman and Adam Kellett (like so many Reform figures, an ex-Tory) managed to fool so many people into voting for them, given that the only policies their party seems to have are shovelling more money into their own pockets and shouting abuse at minorities. There is little to inform the public how they plan to use their election to benefit residents in New Addington South.
Holman, for his part, has posted on social media since the election the innumerate pledge that he will “give 110%” on behalf of his New Addington neighbours. Though as one commenter on Facebook observed: “If you had got elected to Essex County Council, where you were also a candidate, does that mean you will have given only 55% to New Addington?”
Across Europe, where they have more experience dealing with modern-day fascists, most politicians have an agreement not to work with those parties. This is known as the “cordon sanitaire” – an exclusion zone to stop filth polluting democracy. If this rule is upheld in Croydon, then Reform Ltd will achieve nothing on the council other than pocketing their £1,000 per month councillor allowances.
LibDem duo: Gill Hickson (left) has joined Claire Bonham as a councillor
The Liberal Democrats also now have two councillors, and the advantage that one of them, Claire Bonham, has been on the council for the last four years, representing Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood ward. Bonham has a good reputation with residents in her ward, as shown by her getting 800-plus votes more than her LibDem colleagues, as Labour lost its two council seats to Green Party candidates (including Mark Adderley, who is currently suspended by his party).
But over four years at the council, Bonham was often left frustrated, as she was barely tolerated by the administration as one of those irritations, and wasn’t allowed to make any impact. Will that change at all now she has been joined by Gill Hickson, elected in Old Coulsdon?
Old Coulsdon and Crystal Palace are two high spots at opposite ends of the borough, which seems likely to make it difficult for Croydon’s LibDems to collaborate much on local issues.
They could do a lot worse than look to the example of the two Green councillors who punched far above their weight over the last four years. By working with residents and community groups, they managed to get issues raised that the two biggest parties were ignoring.
Greens’ involvement in campaigns to fund Croydon fairly, divest from genocide, and to protect green spaces, even led to other parties adopting those ideas for themselves – or at least trying to before they were told off by their bosses.
The example of Esther Sutton and Ria Patel in Fairfield, coupled with their rise in popularity nationally, led to the Greens quadrupling their number of Croydon councillors, with Patel now the leader of an official group on Croydon Council.
Status to be determined: Mark Adderley on election day with his partner, TV personality Nadia Sawahla. Suspended by the Greens, electors still voted for him
The Greens’ election success means they have to be recognised by the council bureaucrats as a group. This will give them more opportunities to ask questions of the Mayor and his cabinet, to raise more debates, and even the right to chair one of those committees.
In a council that didn’t have the mayoral system, Croydon would now be NOC, as no single party has an outright majority of councillors. It will be interesting to see if either Labour or the Conservatives attempt to work with the Greens. Patel is known to have had meetings with senior Tory Jason Cummings, and with Labour’s re-elected group leader, Stuart King, last week. Or might Labour and the Tories continue to try to exclude the Greens and LibDems from council business?
All signs suggest that we are stuck with four more years of £86,000 per year Perry performing ceremonial duties, opening school fetes while Croydon falls apart, while the Labour opposition sits on their hands and abstains whenever any big decisions are there to be made.
Read more: ‘The vote on the left split more than the vote on the right’
Read more: #LocalElections2026: Greens make bigger inroads than Reform
Read more: Farage party picked a dead woman to run for Croydon Mayor
Read more: Part-time Perry’s Leipzig dilemma as Mayor faces fixture clash
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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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