Our cash-strapped council has squandered millions on its failed Croydon Digital department, and then wasted millions more on outside consultants who pressed on with the ‘Digital First’ policy. Yet we now have a council website which makes it more difficult for residents to pay their Council Tax
This dropped into the email inbox at Inside Croydon Towers this week. “I live in America and am visiting my elderly father in Croydon.
“His laptop had been playing up for a few months. I got it working again.
“I looked through his emails and found Council Tax reminders.
“I don’t know how many instalments he’s missed. The council emails didn’t say what he owed.
“I called the number in the council email. It’s an automated line. It won’t tell you what you owe.
“I thought to call the council. But you can’t. They are having ‘problems with their phones’.
“I went online and entered his details. Again, it will take a payment, but it cannot tell you what you owe
“It is beyond belief that they tell you that you owe money, but not how much!
“Nobody in the States would ever believe that a government department organised their accounts receivable in this way.
“Anyway, I enjoy your site – real journalism is a rare thing. Just wanted to vent.”
“Digital First” has been the staff-cutting, money-saving mantra of successive, failed and discredited council chief execs, such as Jo ‘Negreedy’ Negrini and natural yoghurt expert Katherine Kerswell.
Digital first: Katherine Kerswell knows more about natural yoghurt than she does about computers. But she became expert at wasting council money
The suspicion has long been held, by those inside Fisher’s Folly as well as outsiders, that the Kerswell-approved digital adventure has been a false economy from the start, and over the medium term has ended up costing the council more than it might ever save.
It has reached a point now where law-abiding residents, who want to pay their Council Tax, are unable to do so.
Too often, the council’s website doesn’t work. Or the council’s phones are malfunctioning. Getting to talk to actual people at our council has become almost impossible.
The public can’t even roll up at the council offices and pay what they owe, since Kerswell designated the public area at Access Croydon to be a public-free zone, without a prior appointment. Which has to be booked via the council website…
GIGO: what other pieces of information offered by the council’s AI bot cannot be relied upon?
Kerswell spent more than £1million on Boston Consulting, whose advice amounted to the suggestion that the council should add an AI robot to the council website. The council unleashed its little bot on the unsuspecting Croydon public a year ago. “Croydon’s AI Assistant pilot aims to help residents find answers to their questions about Council Tax more quickly and easily, using the information on the website.”
Except it doesn’t work.
The council’s AI assistant firmly adheres to the programming principle of “GIGO”: garbage in, garbage out.
According to Croydon’s own AI assistant as recently as March this year, the council CEO was Katherine Kerswell. Even though Kerswell left Fisher’s Folly – helped on her way with a £50,000 pay-off from Mayor Jason Perry – six months earlier. The council’s own records had been updated in November 2025, but in March 2025, Croydon’s AI assistant had still not caught up.
Hardly the calibre of information that you’d want to rely upon when dealing with something as important as Council Tax.
Council Tax, paying annual parking permits, getting refunds on unlawful LTN fines… nothing on the council’s website appears to work. But under our £86,000 per year lame duck Mayor Jason Perry, we now have five senior executives working at Fisher’s Folly on salaries of £200,000-plus per year.
Trebles all round!
Read more: CEO Kerswell ordered block on staff accessing Inside Croydon
Read more: Cash-strapped council has spent £6.4m… to make more cuts
Read more: Kerswell takes another pay-off as she quits as council’s CEO
Read more: The Kerswell Affair: Croydon is worse off after CEO’s five years
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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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Boston Consulting Group (BCG) are well dodgy.
In Angola, BCG enabled the bribery and corruption practised by the then President’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos, who ripped off the country’s assets. Wanted in several countries, and banned from the UK whose assets here have been frozen, she’s living a life of ill-gotten luxury in Dubai.
In Palestine, BCG actively support Israeli policies that amount to war crimes and genocide, including devising strategies that would forcibly remove at least 25% of Palestinians permanently. Trump Riviera? One of their big ideas.
In Sweden, BCG has been implicated in the corruption scandals surrounding the construction and management of Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital.
No wonder they’ve rocked up in Croydon council
The use of AI is just another way of privatising public services and in the long term will cost far more.
It’s fair to assume that the Council hasn’t developed its own the AI system and has to pay an outside company for it. Making services dependant on AI means the Council can then be held to ransom by the AI owners who can just keep putting up prices in the knowledge that the Council has no other choice. It’s just like handing over other vital services to the private sector like water, energy, transport, etc. – and we all know how well that’s going…
And do not forget that these companies also mine personal information from the systems that they run which they share out the third party partners.
How is ‘the use of AI tantamount to ‘privatisation’? The council has used a private company – Microsoft – for its Office suite for 30 years or so, but no one called that ‘privatisation’. The article makes it clear that Croydon’s attempt at doing things in house and in ‘public ownership’ has been a disaster. As for the Council Tax bods, I had excellent, helpful service when we moved home.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day…
Why do people never contact their local councillor to sort out these problems?
Do I hear the answer to my own question.
Go onto Croydon council’s website, and see how difficult it is to find out who your councillor/s is/are. Go to just about any other council and see how easy it is, e.g. Sutton.
The difference? With Croydon, you have to know which Ward you live in (and good luck to finding that out from their websheight).
In Sutton, for example, just type in your postcode, and hey presto
Quite right, but now the council is locked away in a silo, councillors should let their constituents know they exist.