Jason Perry’s ‘top team’ for his second term in charge of the Town Hall sees a belated call-up for a 76-year-old pensioner, and an overdue axing for a work-shy colleague. KEN LEE reports
Rubbish councillor: Scott Roche
Scott Roche, the Conservative councillor for Shirley South who has been among the council’s laziest councillors for years, has finally been axed from the Town Hall cabinet.
In 2024, with a day job as an aide to Tory MP Paul Scully, Roche was trousering around £80,000 per year in public money, from a parliamentary salary and Croydon Council allowances.
These days, according to his online public profile, Roche is “available for work”, having not managed to find himself another job since Scully lost his parliamentary seat at the 2024 General Election.
It just might be that prospective employers have concerns about the Tory councillor’s capability for doing any work at all.
Ostensibly, for the past four years, Roche has been Croydon’s cabinet member for streets and environment. So Roche is the schmuck who signed off on a juicy new contract for Veolia just two years after the rubbish contractors were sacked for poor performance.
Veolia are getting paid more, and by most accounts, they are now doing less around the borough than before they got sacked. Under Roche, the Veolia contract that ought to have been made public more than a year ago still remains a closely-guarded Town Hall secret document.
Perry’s piles: rubbish was being dumped in Croydon at a rate of 1,000 reports per week
On Roche’s watch, Croydon became the “fly-tip capital of England”, averaging 1,000 reported fly-tips every week, according to official figures from government department DEFRA.
And meanwhile, after four years of Roche being in charge, the council has Green Flag status for just four of its 127 neglected open spaces and parks.
Roche’s work-rate at Croydon Council has been questioned by many residents, and fellow councillors, over several years.
In 2024-2025, Roche missed one-quarter of the council meetings he was expected to attend. It’s thought highly unlikely that Roche handed back one-quarter of his cabinet member’s council allowance, though – about £10,000.
That was the same year that Councillor Roche did a grand total of three pieces of casework on behalf of residents of Shirley South.
Yet that was an improvement on human dynamo Roche’s work rate in the previous year.
In 2023-2024, Roche did just two pieces of casework all year. Crudely, that works out at £20,000 for each member’s enquiry.
For comparison, the average number of members’ enquiries submitted by the rest of Croydon’s councillors worked out at 56 over the same period, or close to five per month.
In 2022-2023, in the first year of the Tory Mayor’s administration, Roche had managed to carry out just three pieces of casework, according to council data.
Lollipopped: six road safety patrols were axed to save less than £60,000 per year
Yet Mayor Perry kept Roche in his cabinet job, and Roche continued to ensure he pocketed the £40,000 in allowances that went with it.
There were other indicators that Croydon’s cash-strapped council was handing over cash to Roche without getting much back in return.
Local community groups, concerned over the declining state of their neighbourhoods, claim that correspondence to cabinet member Roche – over fly-tipping, the state of parks or the decision to axe six primary school lollipop patrols for a saving of less than £60,000 – often went without even the courtesy of a reply.
In Inside Croydon’s annual round-up of casework undertaken by Croydon’s 70 councillors, this year also showed how many times councillors submitted reports using the council’s own Crap App.
According to these figures, Councillor Scott Roche, the cabinet member responsible for streets and environment, managed to submit reports on the Love Clean Streets app – a council function for which he was directly responsible in the borough with the worst fly-tip record in England – on a total of four occasions in 12 months.
Roche’s uselessness has finally registered with Mayor Jason Perry, who has dropped him from his 12-strong “top team” (ha!) of cabinet and deputy cabinet members, all of whom have jumped aboard the council gravy train thanks to a very marginal, 1% majority in the mayoral election earlier this month.
Part-time Perry made the announcement over the weekend, although Roche won’t be entirely denied “special responsibility allowances”, which may soften the blow somewhat. At public expense, of course.
Roche has been chucked into effective political oblivion for the next two years, being the Conservatives’ nomination as ceremonial deputy civic mayor, getting to dress up in silly robes and chains of office (the expectation is that he will be Civic Mayor in 2027-2028).
For the onerous tasks of cutting ribbons at school fetes and presenting trophies at allotment vegetable shows, Roche will this year pocket the grand total of £20,133, which consists of a basic councillor allowance of £11,984 plus an additional civic mayor allowance of £8,149.
Roche will still be expected to carry out casework for residents in his ward. But don’t hold your breath.
Dour: Alasdair Stewart
Perry has conducted just the lightest of reshuffles as he begins his second four-year term as Croydon Mayor. As well as Roche, Perry had to replace 78-year-old Maria Gatland in his cabinet, as she stood down at this year’s elections after being a South Croydon councillor for 24 years.
So in comes 76-year-old Robert Ward and Alasdair Stewart (who should at least bring down the average age of Perry’s cabinet closer to 40…).
Stewart, who quickly became regarded as a dour and politically motivated obstructor on the Labour-chaired scrutiny committee, is drafted in as Roche’s replacement on what is now named “streets and enforcement”.
Stewart, according to Perry, “has built a reputation as a hardworking and detail-focused councillor”. He will “spearhead” what Perry calls “the council’s tougher enforcement approach” on fly-tipping, graffiti, parking violations abandoned vehicles and illegal e-scooters. No pressure then.
Given that there was virtually no enforcement against fly-tippers for almost three years, anything that happens on Stewart’s watch will be an improvement, starting from a very low base.
Belated promotion: Cllr Robert Ward
Ward has been a hard-grafting councillor on behalf of his ward, Selsdon and Addington Village, and in the previous term he was given deputy cabinet status for contract management, so he was in some part responsible for that Veolia contract.
Ward also did much work into trying to track down where the council’s money went in the £70million refurbishment of the Fairfield Halls, but came up against several dead ends, mostly created by council officials and contractors.
A former senior executive in the oil industry, Ward is now in charge of parks and culture (another tweak to the cabinet portfolios), expected to oversee new playgrounds and outdoor gyms installed in the borough’s parks. The council’s propaganda department’s naff photo-shoots of the septugenarian cabinet member on the kiddies’ swings while Mayor Perry does some pull-ups on parallel bars cannot, surely, be far away.
Under an executive mayor, and on the basis of four years of Perry’s piss-poor performance, it is arguable that the council cabinet is vastly overblown and a waste of public money.
So the one other significant change announced by Perry is that his cabinet member for finance, Jason Cummings, is to continue in that role but now also as a deputy mayor. That will probably mean extra allowances for Cummings, who will be under close scrutiny not only for the cash-strapped council’s finances, but for his conduct in the Town Hall Chamber, where the pressure of the role saw him lose his temper on a couple of occasions.
Lynne Hale retains her position as the statutory deputy mayor and in charge of council homes, while Andy Stranack is shunted from the culture and sport backwater (remember the Borough of Culture? No, nor do we…), children and young people, a direct replacement for Gatland.
Gravy train: Nikhil Sherine-Thampi gets extra allowances
Other Perry cabinet appointments are:
Yvette Hopley, health and adult social care;
Ola Kolade, communities, safety and justice;
Jeet Bains, planning and regulatory services.
Also on the gravy train in a series of non-jobs and political appointments (deputy cabinet members receive £18,176.per year, including almost £6,000 in “special responsibility allowances”) are:
Nikhil Sherine-Thampi, deputy cabinet member for finance;
Danielle Denton, deputy cabinet member for homes;
Richard Chatterjee, deputy cabinet member for children and young people;
Margaret Bird remains deputy cabinet member for health and adult social care;
Luke Shortland remains chief whip of the much-reduced Conservative group;
And even Simon Brew gets an allowance for taking notes at Tory group meetings (group secretary).
All of the above-named councillors voted to increase your Council Tax by 33% in the past three years, while also voting in favour of … increased allowances for councillors and a wage hike for £86,000 per year part-time Perry.
Over Perry’s four-year term, Croydon Council will spend at least £950,000 on “special responsibility allowances” for the council cabinet and (Labour’s) shadow cabinet.
As well as chuntering on about “stabilising” the council finances – at £1.7billion, £300million worse than in 2022 – and his administration’s “zero tolerance” for a whole raft of things, Perry said, “This is a cabinet focused on delivery.”
Probably meaning delivery for themselves. Trebles all-round!
Read more: #BINMAGEDDON: Veolia performance is worse under new deal
Read more: Saga of Croydon’s vanished bins and the audit that never was
Read more: Here’s the Mayor and 33 Croydon Tory councillors who THREE times voted in favour of hitting you with a 15% Council Tax hike
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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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I must admit inside Croydon as a very humorous approach to Croydon council’s appointments and sackings. The biggest joke is we are paying their wages what a waste of money may be one day the residents might get a seat on the council at mate’s rates now that would be funny.
I wrote to Cllr Roche on a number of occasions and, as you report, am in good company in not even receiving the courtesy of an acknowledgement, let alone a reply. This does contrast with Cllr Cummings who not only replied but actually offered to meet with me to discuss the issues I raised, which resulted in a lengthy, wide ranging, useful and pleasant conversation. The money paid from my council tax to Cllr Roche ranks very high on the list of Croydon Council’s wastes of money. That he will represent the Borough ceremonially, at further expense, in the next few years is a travesty and a reward for indolence. I am amazed he has the gall to accept the role and the money.
Scott Roche manages to project a rare trinity of laziness, gormlessness, and an almost transcendent smugness.
For someone so young to occupy public office, you’d expect at least the foresight not to look permanently bone idle. Instead, he wears the expression of a man interrupted halfway through a lobotomy — all slack-jawed vacancy and that dim, self-satisfied grin that somehow explains everything without saying a word.
Cruel, Sally. Very cruel.
But neatly accurate.
I shudder at the thought of you turning your attention to Michael Neal. Or Jack Barwell.
He must have hidden talents, visible only to the higher echelons of Croydon Conservative Party