EXCLUSIVE: Once the election results were in last month, Croydon’s Labour leader agreed what’s been called ‘a shabby, short-sighted stitch-up’ to keep Green councillors away from important planning decisions – while also boosting allowances paid to their party. By STEVEN DOWNES
Secret deal: Labour’s Stuart King (left) and Tory Jason Cummings have worked together to marginalise elected Greens
Croydon Labour entered into a secret deal with the Town Hall’s Conservatives to block the Greens from having a seat on the all-important council planning committee, Inside Croydon can reveal.
The behind-closed-doors deal led to the planning committee being reduced in size from 10 seats to just eight, in order to make it impossible to include a Green councillor, under council rules which are supposed to distribute committee seats proportionately among the five political parties now represented at the Town Hall.
Most council committees, as announced last week, have been increased in size for 2026-2027, to enable Greens, Liberal Democrats and even Reform Ltd councillors to take part in the various functions of the local authority.
The Green Party, with eight seats (including the “independent” Mark Adderley) now the third-largest group on Croydon Council following the May local elections, has also been denied the position of chair or deputy chair on any of the council’s committees, as ought to have been the case with 11.4% of the Town Hall’s 70 seats.
A spokesperson for Croydon’s Greens has described the Lab-Con pact as “a shabby, short-sighted stitch-up”.
The 1% club: Cllr Rowenna Davis
Senior Katharine Street sources have confirmed that the deal over the Green shut-out was agreed at a secret meeting in the aftermath of the local elections. Present at the meeting were the Tories’ Jason Cummings, promoted to “deputy mayor” after failing to fix the council finances over the past four years, and Stuart King, the leader of the Town Hall Labour group who “masterminded” Rowenna Davis’s losing campaign to become Croydon Mayor.
Croydon remains a Conservative-controlled council as a consequence of Jason Perry scraping back as executive Mayor by just over 1,000 votes.
But Labour has the most councillors, 30. The Conservatives have 28 councillors, their lowest tally since 1965. The LibDems and Reform have two councillors each.
The rules on political balance and committees are set out in Sections 15 to 17 of the
Local Government and Housing Act 1989, as amended. According to a report that went before last week’s full council meeting, “The council is required to review the representation of different political groups… The allocation is determined by applying the political balance rules prescribed by Section 15(5) of the 1989 Act.”
The first bit of the “fix” agreed between King and Cummings was to continue with the charade that Mayor Perry is a 71st member of the council, thus giving the Tories a bonus extra seat. It also had the (albeit marginal) effect of reducing the proportions allocated to Greens, LibDems and Reform – but crucial when only parties with 12% or more of council seats quality for a place on an eight-seat planning committee.
Under the Lab-Con pact, last week six other committees were all increased in size by one seat: the appeals committee (now seven-strong, with a Green councillor, three Labour and three Tory), the appointments and disciplinary committee (7: 3L, 3C, 1G), audit and governance committee (8: 3L, 3C, 1G, 1LD), civic mayoralty and honorary freedom committee (7: 3L, 3C, 1G), the ethics committee (7: 3L, 3C, 1G) and the scrutiny and overview committee (7: 3L, 3C, 1G).
Division of power: how the official council papers did the arithmetic for who gets committee seats
Had the planning committee remained at 10 seats, as it has been for more than a decade, then the Greens will have taken one seat under the proportionality rules. But with just eight planning committee seats, the Greens’ 11% was not enough to warrant a seat.
Under the Lab-Con stitch-up, Labour has allowed the Tories to continue to chair a handful of committees, but has doled out positions which are worth more than £50,000 in additional allowances between five councillors.
Not a single chair or deputy chair position at the council has been allocated to the Greens.
The Lab-Con pact is a sign of how badly Labour has taken defeat in the Croydon mayoral election. Nearly 20,000 voted for the Greens’ Peter Underwood, as Labour’s candidate Davis missed out by just 1% of votes cast. Last week, Davis wrote, “We lost because the left split more than the right.”
Labour responded to the growing popularity of Green leader Zack Polanski and the loss of the Gorton and Denton byelection earlier this year by declaring all-out attack on the Greens, ordered by No10.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer – or “Uncle Keir” as he is known in Croydon Labour circles – urged his party to paint the Greens as extremists, even declaring at PM Questions that Polanski’s party is “high on heroin, soft on Putin”.
Witchhunt: Labour MP Steve Reed
It has been a mission enthusiastically embraced by Zionist-funded Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North when he can be bothered), whose public witchhunt saw Green candidates suspended by their party over historic social media postings. This included Adderley, who was nonetheless elected in Reed’s backyard of Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood and has taken his Croydon Council seat as an “independent” councillor.
It’s not just Labour who have adopted smear tactics. Throughout Wednesday’s council meeting in the Town Hall Chamber, far-right Tory blow-hard Mark Johnson repeatedly interrupted proceedings by shouting “Hamas supporter!” or similar whenever Green Party councillors were named or speaking.
National Green Party sources described the attacks on their party from others as “desperate”. “They’re trying everything in their power to stop us,” Polanski said last month.
All of which makes any electoral pact between Labour and the Greens at the Makerfield byelection on June 18 increasingly unlikely, and therefore could make the return to Parliament of “the King of the North”, Andy Burnham, a tighter race than it might need to be.
Nasty party: far-right Mark Johnson
Elsewhere in London, Labour has entered into deals with their Tory opponents in Brent and Barnet after having lost their controlling majorities on those councils. Those moves – to the disgust of many union members and the remaining socialists in Starmer’s party – were at least conducted in an open manner.
But not in Croydon, where such manipulation over the planning committee and lucrative chair appointments is liable to make future collaboration between Labour and Greens to try to vote down Mayor Perry’s policies very unlikely.
“They’ve neutered the council,” one Katharine Street source said of the impact of Labour’s move with the Tories.
“And they’ve played into the hands of Reform, who accuse Tories and Labour of being ‘the uniparty’.
“The pay-off to Labour for keeping the Greens off planning and allowing the Tories to chair that committee is the tens of thousands of pounds they will get in special responsibility allowances.”
Today, Paul Ainscough, one of the Green councillors elected last month, told Inside Croydon: “Keeping Green Party councillors off the planning committee is a shabby, short-sighted stitch-up by Conservatives and Labour.
“It highlights that the Green Party is the real opposition in Croydon.”
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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- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
I’m so glad that I didn’t waste any of my four votes on Labour last month. Unscrupulous, unprincipled and untrustworthy sums up that party. Shower of shit puts it even better
No wonder the Labour-Tory duopoly in Croydon are scrabbling to keep control of the Council, in the hope of better election results to come, despite the Tories having their smallest number of councillors in the more than 60 years since LB of Croydon was formed in 1965.
After all, if the mayor, Piss-Poor Perry, can fail to fix the finances or keep any of his manifesto pledges during his first term, and still (somehow) manage to get re-elected for a second term, the duopoly know that they can continue to destroy Croydon and line their own pockets with impunity because THEY never underestimate the stupidity of the (Croydon) electorate and know that they can always retain control of the council !
What was it George Galloway said about Labour and the Tories being “two cheeks of the same….” something or other?
Arse, David. The word you are too polite to mention is arse.
And yet you were able to write out the words “George” and “Galloway” in the same sentence.
My worry in regard to planning, is that Shirley Park Golf Course land is coveted by Trinity School as part of it’s expansion, and that last years apparently aborted sale attempt of the freehold was infact a value gathering exercise should SPGC fail. The parkland of the club is particularly lovely and is very rich in wildlife more so than adjoining Lloyd Park – yet mysteriously is unprotected. I am not sure that Trinity have a great respect for the environment or their neighbours the appalling unshaded floodlights illuminating much of the Park and inconveniencing neighbours whose protests have hitherto fallen on deaf ears, being one example.
Interesting, apart from a few essential details.
1, Trinity School’s £40million expansion is all contained within its own grounds and involved not a single square foot of the golf course.
2, The recent planning permission was granted with particular restrictions on lighting, imposed at the request of residents and ward councillor Jason Cummings.
3, The golf course is “protected”, as it is Green Belt land.
It is a mediocre (surprisingly flat) old Local Authority course in an area containing more golf courses than Hospitals. Managed areas with the use of extensive cutting and chemical additions do not enourage wildlife. You are conflating spill of wildlife from surrounding location as signs of wildllife. Any sane administration should consider the use of its assets to manage the debts and the burdens placed on all its residents by their actions.
You will happy to know your man Perry quietly extended the lease within his first few years of power (without external oversight) to demonstrate you are simply creating a false narrative in the first place.
That’s a bit unfair on Shirley Park GC’s course, Delboy. But you’re right in your assessment of its ecological value, because it is an essential corridor for wildlife (especially deer) between Croham Hurst and the Addington Hills and beyond into the North Downs.
It was once – maybe still is – the favoured golf course of Tony Newman, which would be a very good reason for flogging it off.
I did think long and hard about whether I could or should vote for Rowena, as she did have vision, and seemed to show remorse for at least some of the things that Labour have done in Croydon, but the statement that “We lost because the left split more than the right” shows that actually she doesn’t really get that they failed to rebuild public trust. Last time I lent my vote to Val Shawcross, but the alleged vote rigging, and hacking of this site that have happened since prevented me from trusting Labour this time. Back room deals are going to do nothing to change that.
If you required evidence of my assertion that in essence Croydon Conservatives & Labour are two faces of the same coin. Thankfully some genuine opposition has finally emerged in the second decade of this de facto arrangement. Democracy cannot live without effective political opposition to challenge and provide real scrutiny of the ruling Politicians and their Senior Officers administration of their actions. Something that has never really happened during the Westfield, Regen Capital, Balfour Beatty and Brick by Brick debacles.
Perhaps there’s a way of getting a higher authority to intervene to stop this reduction?
Since some of Croydon’s electorate have started to see sense and the Greens have come in as proper opposition to the incumbent power tripping ConLab con-artists, they should have a proportional say in everything. The ConLab clowns are probably scared that the opposition will be more popular than them hence the action they’ve taken.
Croydon’s new Planning Committee is set to be a monthly shit-show of deadlock, grandstanding and municipal ass-scratching.
Split down party lines, it’ll decide less than a broken Magic 8 Ball. And part-presiding over the farce is Sean Fitzsimons, the ex-Scrutiny Chair who saw the iceberg coming and filed an expenses claim for watching it hit.
Labour won the most votes, then somehow handed the chair to a Tory — a decision so brainless it makes a cranial lobotomy look like strategic planning.
Harsh, Jenny.
But planning meets once a fortnight
Planning committees aren’t run on political grounds,
Members have to decide based on planning grounds and sometimes that includes making politically difficult decisions to approve something that is unpopular but which meets planning grounds.
With planning decisions elsewhere I’ve seen all sorts of voting combinations but rarely just on a political bloc basis.
Besides if an application is refused on what are clearly political grounds the applicant will just appeal to the Planning Inspectorate who would grant the appeal. At great cost to the council to hire a barrister to present what would be very thin refusal reasons.
The rules state that planning committees are supposed to be quasi-judicial, where party whipping is not allowed. We know that, Chris. But what is the reality?
In the instance where Sutton granted planning permission to Viridor, it took a second meeting, before which one councillor said that they were put under pressure by their party colleagues to vote in a particular way, while another member of the committee was a lifelong friend of a director of Viridor, something that he neglected to declare ahead of the meeting.
Of course, the public has no right of appeal against clearly fixed planning committee decisions.
With respect to Chris, repeatedly I hear non political and frankly when one view events and outcomes they are visibly political and to the extremes. That is not just the committees but also those public planners making those decisions. The antics of politics in Croydon is mirroed daily by miscreants on the streets off the London road and the stretch from the the pond to South end. What one sees has its roots in planning decisions of both parties. You only ahve to look at Ms Townsend signing off conditions sight unseen and totally on the submission of stock photo’s supplied by developers agents. Shocking dereliction of duty towards residents. Nothing has changed from Fishers reign.
Regarding your report that “throughout Wednesday’s council meeting in the Town Hall Chamber, far-right Tory blow-hard Mark Johnson repeatedly interrupted proceedings by shouting “Hamas supporter!” or similar whenever Green Party councillors were named or speaking”, he needs to be referred to the Council’s Constitution, specifically the Members’ Code of Conduct.
It states that “as a councillor, treat other councillors and members of the public with respect”. It also says “I do not harass any person.”
Slandering other councillors as supporters of a proscribed terrorist organisation (which, as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009, was “spawned by Israel”) is anything but respect, is in fact harassment, and could put their lives in danger.
Johnson should be put in his place before the Greens find it necessary to complain that his behaviour falls under the terms of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
He can sort himself out by reading the contents of the Code: https://www.croydon.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-12/member-code-of-conduct.pdf and apologising for his gross misconduct