EXCLUSIVE: Croydon’s answer to Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s Supreme Leader, is making a public appearance tonight where only residents’ associations who meet his approval are allowed to attend. By KEN LEE, our Town Hall correspondent
Jason Perry, Croydon’s failed Mayor, begins a new public engagement initiative tonight, with a “Residents’ Association Forum” meeting in the Braithwaite Hall, next to the Town Hall.
Totalitarian: Jason Perry picks and chooses which RAs are allowed to attend his ‘forum’
But petty Perry is picking and choosing who gets to ask him questions about the cash-strapped council, where he has hiked Council Tax by 33% since 2023.
Inside Croydon can reveal that the Tory Mayor has blocked representatives of at least two residents’ groups, who have been told that they cannot attend a meeting for residents’ groups.
The formal invite went out a fortnight ago, under the heading “OFFICIAL”.
“Dear Resident Association,
“We would like to extend an invitation for the first of the new Mayoral and Resident Association meetings, taking place on Tuesday August 18, 6pm-7.30pm. The meeting will be hosted in the Braithwaite Hall, which is located in Croydon Town Hall on Katharine Street.
“This meeting, which is intended to take place on a quarterly basis moving forward, will be an opportunity for discussion with Executive Mayor Perry on a range of matters relating to the borough.”
Tonight’s agenda demonstrates that this is not a “listening” exercise by Mayor Perry, but another council-funded bit of political promotion.
First up is Perry and “Update from Executive Mayor on state of the council…”, plot spoiler, it ain’t good, “… and priorities for the second Mayoral term.” The agenda doesn’t mention it, but since the government appointed Commissioners a year ago, Perry has been rendered impotent. It makes no difference what his priorities might be. It’s the Commissioners who have hold of the council’s purse strings.
Then there’s “Introduction to Councillor Alasdair Stewart”, another Conservative councillor.
There’s “The new zero-tolerance approach to enforcement”, and “Introduction to key council officers”, by which they mean senior council staff, including Haily Cluff, who has just started as Croydon’s head of environmental services and sustainable neighbourhoods – basically overseeing Veolia and the bins, a job that in “the fly-tip capital of England” has seen more churn than a Moulinex mixer.
Then there’s to be a “Discussion on new or returning waste management schemes”, “Blitz Cleans” and “Rolling rubbish”. Only after the meeting has waded through all of that self-promotion might Perry open the floor to questions.
Star attraction: Perry is tonight platforming Alasdair Stewart
The invitation email was signed off by the borough’s £86,000 per year Mayor, and distributed by a council official who provides “support” for four members of Perry’s cabinet: Ola Kolade (“communities, safety and justice”), Robert Ward (“parks and culture”), Alasdair Stewart (“streets and enforcement”) and Jeet Bains (“planning and regulatory services”).
Thanks to a pay rise approved earlier this year when Perry was putting up your Council Tax to record levels, these four Conservative councillors now receive more than £165,000 per year in council allowances between them.
Summoning the RAs to Katharine Street is a departure from part-time Perry’s approach during his first term in office when he staged a series of “Mayor’s Question Time” events, “delivering a commitment which the Mayor made to residents during his [2022] campaign to listen to residents of Croydon”.
It was at one of these meetings that Perry let slip that he was using fines raised from LTNs – low-traffic neighbourhoods – as a revenue generator – which led to the Tory Mayor being admonished by a High Court judge and costing the borough up to £10million in refunded fines and lost revenues.
The Mayor’s Question Time events were thinly-disguised political booster sessions for the Tory Mayor, all paid for out of residents’ Council Tax. The “Question Time” title was misleading, since few questions were ever taken from the floor. Only closely vetted submissions were chosen at these carefully stage-managed events.
Staging similar meetings but with representatives of RAs is probably seen as lower risk and more readily controllable. Most residents’ associations are from the south of the borough, and will have Conservative councillors embedded as “observers” or even acting in some cases as committee officials running the “non-political” organisation.
New signing: Haily Cluff, is the new head of environmental services
There are around 30 residents’ associations or groupings within the borough, and another 46 officially recognised friends’ groups – usually focused on the maintenance and upkeep of open spaces or parks – in Croydon.
But some residents’ groups were never sent the invite to tonight’s event, and when they found out about the meeting, they were told they would not be welcome.
“Litter Free Norbury didn’t get an invitation to a meeting clearly geared toward streets and environment issues,” according to LFN’s Tony Hooker. And Graham Mitchell, who has been running residents’ action groups in nearby Thornton Heath asked to attend, “but they declined his request”.
“This is our totalitarian ‘Listening Mayor’ regime in action,” Hooker said. “No dissenting voices allowed.”
Hooker and Mitchell have been asking for sight of the renewed Veolia contract for 18 months, which Perry promised to make public, but never has.
Other RAs are also approaching tonight’s gathering with some scepticism. “I think that people talking directly to the Mayor is a good thing,” said a member of another residents’ association who asked not to be identified in case Perry decides to block them and their organisation too.
“The key questions will be who sets the agenda, who is allowed to talk and will it actually lead to any changes?
“Is it really a ‘forum’ for a proper exchange of views and to raise legitimate concerns, or will it be just another public-funded photo opportunity for Perry?”
Inside Croydon asked the council for a list of invitees to Perry’s little gathering tonight. There had been no response by the time of publication.
Read more: The art of the deal: what is Perry hiding over Veolia contract?
Read more: #BINMAGEDDON: Veolia performance is worse under new deal
Read more: Council spends thousands to promote Perry’s political events
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So two of the three people who are supposedly responsible for 50% of all fly tips in Croydon are upset they didn’t get invited to a residents’ association meeting… When they are not a residents’ association.
Maybe instead of complaining, they should form a residents’ association, so they can attend residents’ association meetings?
Kelsey, there seem to be a couple of rather odd assumptions in your comment.
Firstly, being a residents’ association isn’t determined simply by whether the words “Residents Association” appear in the organisation’s name.
Litter Free Norbury is an organisation of local residents, established by residents and working on behalf of residents to improve our local environment. Whether you choose to describe that as a residents’ association is rather beside the point when the meeting concerned environmental issues and waste policy affecting local residents. We have over 300 residents engaging with us, so I think your statement that we’re not a residents association isn’t valid.
Secondly, to suggest that myself and Graham are responsible for over 50% of all fly-tips is to suggest we must be running an organised fly-tipping crime network across the Borough. I suggest you clarify this statement immediately.
I’m sure you actually meant fly-tipping reports, not fly-tips.
So thirdly, I’m intrigued by your claim that two of the three people you refer to account for 50% of Croydon’s fly-tipping reports.
How exactly do you know that?
In particular, how have you established the identity of the individuals behind those reports?
Genuinely interested to know the source of your information.
Kelsey Peters? Alasdair Stewart, more like it
Try again, Arfur.
Looking for a Tory troll, and one who likes to bandy about numbers that he has access to, but which really ought not be bandied about in public without breaching data protection laws.
The reason I said Alasdair Stewart was that the dismissive and patronising tone taken by “Kelsey” reminded me of this from https://insidecroydon.com/2024/05/29/perry-stages-scrutiny-stitch-up-to-dodge-the-tough-questions/
“Cllr Alasdair Stewart says:
May 29, 2024 at 7:44 pm
There is clear legislation setting out the need for political balance on both the council’s committees and scrutiny committees.
Cllr Patel seems to forget she is only one of 70 council members, and yet has been given far more opportunities to speak and ask questions at council meetings than is proportionate – because both the Conservatives and Labour believe that is the right thing to do. But those extra opportunities come at the expense of other elected councillors from all parties – who have equally as much entitlement to speak and ask questions in behalf of their residents.
But beyond that, if the Greens want more representation and speaking time, might I suggest the Greens find some sensible candidates who can win some more seats?”
Alasdair might not be a troll but he is a tool, and his position as Cabinet Member for Streets & Enforcement would give him privileged access to facts and figures on fly-tipping
Apparently the answer to residents wanting to hear directly about Council services is that we should first form a Residents’ Association so that we can qualify to attend the meeting.
Which rather proves the point.
The subjects discussed included enforcement, environmental services, waste, recycling and the general state of the Council. That information belongs to every Croydon resident, not merely those who happen to live in an area with an established Residents’ Association.
And the statistics being thrown around in the comments are wrong anyway.
What is rather more interesting is the suggestion that people should simply “form an RA” if they want access. Perhaps the Council should be encouraging exactly that in areas where Residents’ Associations are scarce, rather than creating an engagement structure which favours those areas that already have them.
As for “Kelsey Peters” — some anonymous commentators do seem to have an unusually intimate interest in defending the political establishment. I think I know who you are.
I’ll leave others to wonder why. 😉
I would suspect it’s the same Croydon Councillor who has spent the last year trolling the LFN Facebook group making all manner of false statements.
Including that one person was responsible for over 50% of all fly-tip reports in Croydon. This appears to have now been amended to 3, but is still incorrect.
The same person also stated that the majority of fly-tips are litter, which is also untrue.
The same person who accused LFN as being politically motivated and only interested in Norbury being “Litter Free” if it’s the right people doing it. Which is hilarious as we’ve never turned anyone away from our litter picks based on party affiliation (including Mayor Perry) and to my knowledge the Croydon Conservatives are the only party who organised a litter pick in Norbury without inviting anyone else – not even the Friends of Norbury Park where the litter pick was taking place!
Laughable really. Pretty desperate stuff.
If it’s not the Cllr, or one of his colleagues, it could be someone who has been told this rubbish and “Kelsey” is just repeating it.
I see the Agenda for Perry’s meeting is headed “Executive Mayor’s Resident’s Association Quarterly Forum”. The positioning of the apostrophe in “Resident’s” seems to indicate he only expects one person to turn up.
It’s straight out of the Farage/Trump playbook.
Perry is the pits. Why not gatecrash the meeting and give him hell?
C’MON SHOW US THAT CONTRACT CROYDON COUNCIL
C’mon Ellie. Turn off the caps lock!
‘Dear Resident Association’ is also ungrammatical and curt, apart from the poor substance of these selected audience events.
I was active in a Residents’ Association for many years and learned how to spell the phrase.
Each one is the association of the residents, ie the Residents’ Association.
It would also be more polite to address a recipient by name and/or position eg ‘Dear Mr Jones, Chair(man) of the Springfield Valley Residents’ Association.
Maybe the mail-merge did not work?
Thanks for calling out this as an undemocratic, closed and likely unproductive event.
I enjoyed the image of the Mayor in the fashion of a North Korean Leader.
Previous Croydon Council propaganda mags have been called Your Croydon, Croydon Reports, and now Piss-Poor has Our Croydon, but Dour Croydon probably crushes the hopes of Croydon residents more accurately ?!
I find the comment “Most residents’ associations are from the south of the borough, and will have Conservative councillors embedded as “observers” or even acting in some cases as committee officials running the “non-political” organisation.” deeply offensive.
Coulsdon West RA does not have any politicians embedded or observing our committee meetings. For sure we invite elective politicians to attend and say a few words at the AGM, where members get to ask questions.
Be offended.
You have experience of a single RA.
We have evidence from several.
This Mayor is an absolute joke. Probably more underhand dealings. Why did people vote this lump back in. He throws millions down the drain and fills the odd pothole and thinks he’s worth his weight.
Is IC going to the COSTA DEL CROYDON to interview a half naked Mayor Perry in his beach shorts on the 25th August 5.30pm to 6.30pm ?