The borough’s Conservative Mayor, rendered impotent by the presence of government Commissioners, has spent much of the summer conducting some personal political campaigning, all paid for by tax-payers, that is often deliberately misleading, that sometimes gaslights residents and, very often, is simply untrue.
ANDREW FISHER provides a fact check

“We’ve been busy,” Jason Perry, Croydon’s executive Mayor, tells his followers on social media in an upbeat and well-produced video to mark what he’s called his first 100 days, but which in fact follows his previous four years of not very much.

Comedy routine: Jason Perry’s video shows he won’t have a future as a stand-up – the joke’s not funny any more

It’s delivered with the patter of an old-school comic.

Trouble is, in Jason Perry’s Music Hall, the joke is on Croydon’s residents.

There’s an eclectic rundown of “achievements”, breathlessly taking in playgrounds, outdoor gyms, parks, fly-tipping, potholes, live facial recognition, investment and regeneration.

It all sounds an impressive programme in just 100 days since his re-election in May. But is it all that it’s cracked up to be?

Perry claims that “3,000 potholes have been filled since January”. So not all in the 100 days since the local elections, then. It’s possible about half of those claimed 3,000 potholes might have been filled since May.

Deliberately misleading: ‘January’ is long before Perry’s first 100 days of his second term. And the pothole-filling is funded by the government, and has little to do with the Mayor

But what has enabled this fresh burst of activity on the pothole-filling front?

In March 2025, the Department for Transport announced £1.6billion in funding for councils to fill in potholes. “For the first time, every council in England must publish how many potholes they’ve filled or lose road cash,” said the DfT.

So at least the Mayor is fulfilling his statutory obligation to tell us how many potholes he’s filled in, even if his publicly-funded video strangely omits the source of the extra funding that enabled and required him to do it.

The new outdoor gyms are a legitimate benefit – free workouts in our parks for people who can’t afford private gym membership, helping to keep Croydon healthier and, hopefully, in the long run reducing costs to the NHS and local social care.

I’ve used the one in Addiscombe Recreation Ground – and it’s been great to see groups like Croydon Calisthenics using the equipment to boost fitness and strength training among young people and children.

But given Croydon has been in such dire financial straits for so long, how is the council suddenly able to fund these great new resources?

Could it be that there’s been a long overdue substantial increase in local government funding? This year, Croydon is receiving an extra 9.7%, which will be followed by 8.0% in 2027-2028 and 7.6% in 2028-2029. That’s a cumulative increase of 27.5%, as part of a three-year settlement by the Labour government.

Those figures include Council Tax increases (likely to be 5% each year, in one of the London boroughs with already one of the highest rates of local taxation) but, even stripping those out, core government funding increased by £26.6 million this year.

Contrast that with a decade ago, in 2016, under a Conservative government, when Croydon got one of the biggest funding cuts in the country – and the council issued a press release warning that: “It is incredibly disappointing the proposals leave Croydon worse off, when in fact the Government should be providing us with extra funding to help tackle the huge pressures and shortfalls in adult social care.”

Double lie: ‘six months’ is a lot longer than 100 days, and it has been the police catching criminals, not Jason Perry

Mayor Perry claims to be “catching and fining fly-tippers”. Croydon Labour has issued a response on social media claiming the Mayor has failed to deliver on his promises that within his first 100 days he would, “reintroduce his ‘blitz clean’ programme, extend recycling centres’ opening hours, and introduce a rolling rubbish collection service”.

Also on Perry’s list of “achievements” since his re-election is another claim that lies well outside the months of May to August, and something over which Croydon’s Mayor has had only very little influence.

Mayor Perry boasts that there is “live facial recognition in our town centre every single week”. Leaving aside the civil liberties concerns around LFR, including alleged differential identification accuracy between ethnicities, this is actually something being funded by the Metropolitan Police – accountable to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. There are at least six town centre areas around London where live facial recognition is being rolled out by the Met.

On the subject of crime, the Mayor claims to have started a GPS tagging pilot for persistent shoplifters. I’m not convinced it is Croydon’s Mayor who has such powers over convicted shoplifters. It is no bad thing to find new ways to tackle persistent shoplifters, who are often part of organised criminal networks and a blight on local businesses and shop workers. But if anyone is putting tags on criminals’ ankles, it won’t be Mayor Perry.

Mayor Perry’s proposals have been in various national media in the past week – including both the Mirror and The Sun. They also report: “However, a start date for the pilot has yet to be confirmed, as the scheme is dependent on the council securing funding.”

More false claims: the £30m refurbishment of the Selsdon Park Hotel is nothing to do with Mayor Perry. It simply had to go through the council’s planning process

So unless the scheme received funding (from the Labour government or the Metropolitan Police budget) in the 48 hours between national media coverage and Perry’s video, it has not been “started” as the Mayor falsely claimed.

The Mayor’s video says he has “set-up a new Motorists’ Forum”, and shows him meeting some people in a room. But the accompanying press release sends users to his July update reporting that the forum will be set-up in… September. So another bogus claim.

I’ve also searched the council website and can find no details of how to apply to be on the Motorists’ Forum or what the eligibility criteria might be. And what about pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users? Do they not get a forum? After all, they are road users too. Why are only motorists being privileged?

Another boast of Perry’s is that “we’ve approved the £30million regeneration of Selsdon Park Hotel”. But this is a private project, being undertaken by a hotel company. They needed to get some routine planning clearance, which was granted by the council’s cross-party planning committee. By law, planning committee decisions cannot be made on a party political basis, and nor can there be any political influence, whether by party whips or a Mayor. So good news for the Selsdon Park Hotel, but delivered by the corporate investors and the independent planning committee, and nothing to do with Mayor Perry.

It’s also worth considering what was omitted from the Mayor’s video. For example, there was no mention of Purley Pool. One of Perry’s top pledges in 2021, when he was seeking election as Mayor, was to reopen Purley Pool. Five years on, and not only is the pool still not open, but there is no date set for work to begin to replace it. No wonder it isn’t mentioned.

Who does he think he’s kidding: Perry’s often misleading promotional video was funded out of your Council Tax

The Mayor also states he is “working with URW to take forward the regeneration of Croydon town centre”.

But there’s no indication that the timetable for delivery has altered at all from the 2030-something that was suggested pre-election.

The URW planning application that was supposed to be submitted in 2024, then in 2025, has still not been submitted. Croydon town centre’s paralysis began more than a decade ago, when Mayor Perry was mere Councillor Perry and the council’s cabinet member for… regeneration.

Mayor Perry didn’t mention that in his video, either.

Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:

• As Brandt Report warned, we can’t afford to be small-minded
• It’s a red card for those who use crime as a political football
• Burnham’s challenge is to rebalance Britain yet cherish London
• Perry has stabilised council finances in state of perpetual crisis

• Andrew Fisher also conducts a podcast interview with a leading academic, sector expert or political figure.
• Last month’s Andrew Fisher Interview was with Fiona Fletcher-Smith, the head of giant housing association L&Q, who has some forthright ideas about how to end, or at least reduce, the housing crisis.
• To hear this in-depth and informed interview, click here

• From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
• Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes

• Click here for more by Andrew Fisher

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